“You deserve to be here, we all do. The earth is a big round table that everyone belongs at.”
Belvie Rooks
Belvie Rooks
Belvie Rooks is an essayist, educator and human rights and social justice activist whose work weaves the worlds of spirituality, feminism, and ecology. Meeting Dr. Martin Luther King as a teenager at a weekend high school retreat organized by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) had a profoundly lasting and transformative impact on Belvie’s understanding of and commitment to human and civil rights and social justice.
During the anti-apartheid era and movement, Belvie was one of the first two women on the National Steering Committee of the African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC). As Associate Director of the Third World Fund she traveled frequently to UN and OAU sponsored anti-apartheid meetings in Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan and Nigeria. In that connection, she was the principal organizer of the Zimbabwe Medical Campaign, which successfully raised over $250,000 in medical supplies, clothing, and equipment for Zimbabwean Refugees. Her anti-apartheid organizing efforts are referenced in the book No Easy Victories, about the US anti-apartheid movement.
She was honored to serve as an election monitor during the transition to majority rule in South Africa and to later attend Nelson Mandela’s historic inauguration as South Africa’s first democratically elected president. Belvie was invited by TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson to serve as the northern California chairperson of TransAfrica. She was also honored to be part of one of the first US solidarity delegations invited to Mozambique by Samora Machel and the newly independent government to celebrate the end of 500 years of Portuguese colonial rule.
As an educator, Belvie was a member of the founding faculty of the College of Social Justice at the State University of New York (SUNY) Old Westbury and is the creator of Hey Listen Up: A Sense of Self-A Sense of Place, a groundbreaking multimedia urban eco-literacy project featured as part of the Educational Series for Journey of the Universe.
She is creator and host of ConverZations That Matter, a series featuring thought leaders and innovative thinkers from around the globe. Belvie has served on the boards of Bioneers, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and the Institute for Noetic Sciences, and also served as Core Faculty at Holy Names University’s Sophia Center Program in Culture and Spirituality and Visiting Faculty at Naropa University’s Graduate Program in Environmental Studies.
She was a founding staff member of Wild Trees Press, cofounded by Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker. As an essayist, her published works have appeared in many publications and anthologies including: Sacred Poems and Prayers in Praise of Life; The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult; My Soul is a Witness: African American Women’s Spirituality; Life Notes: Personal Writings by Black Women; Birthing God: Women’s Experiences of the Divine; Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart; and Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women’s Voices. She is an American Book Award winner as senior editor of Paris Connections: African American Artists in Paris, and co-producer (with Damani Baker and Danny Glover) of the award-winning film The House on Coco Road (now on Netflix). She is co-author with Dedan Gills of the celebrated book, I Give You the Springtime of My Blushing Heart: A Poetic Love Song, and co-narrator of the audiobook version with Danny Glover. Belvie and Dedan are also featured in The Power of Love: A Transformed Heart Changes the World by Dr. Fran Grace, and both have chapters in Global Chorus: 365 Voices for the Future of the Planet.
Belvie has also has been dedicated to the cultivation of intergenerational spaces and wisdom sharing. She currently serves as a Strategic Advisor to both the Pseads Institute and Pie Ranch, and is a beloved speaker and cherished mentor whose voice, work and wisdom creates unexpected bridges to new expressions of love and community.
Creative Works
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The Prophet Returns: Calm Words for Troubled Times (Kirk Heriot, 2022)
By Kirk Heriot, with foreword by Belvie Rooks
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Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women’s Voices (Routledge, 2016)
Edited by Jeanine Canty, with contribution from Belvie Rooks
“This book is an edited collection of essays by fourteen multicultural women (including a few Anglo women) who are doing work that crosses the boundaries of ecological and social healing. The women are prominent academics, writers and leaders spanning Native American, Indigenous, Asian, African, Latina, Jewish and Multiracial backgrounds.”
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“I Was a Participant” (Peace Works: Century of Action)
By Belvie Rooks
Belvie Rooks discusses the experience and impact of meeting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a teenager.
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Birthing God: Women’s Experiences of the Divine (SkyLight Paths, 2013)
By Lana Dalberg, with contribution from Belvie Rooks
“Forty women relate Spirit-filled moments: a grieving pastor walks a labyrinth and rediscovers the Rock of her existence; a human rights advocate re-encounters Allah in an intensely visceral moment in the sun; an educator, moved by an ancestral vision, launches a global tree-planting project to heal the wounds of slavery…”
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Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading From the Heart (Park Street Press, 2010)
Edited by Nina Simons, with contributions from Belvie Rooks, Rachel Naomi Remen, Julia Butterfly Hill, Alice Walker, Eve Ensler, Rha Goddess, and more.
“Nina Simons’ Moonrise brings together thirty wise essays on transforming the old ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ division into a human style of leadership. These are writers and activists who know how to link rather than rank, and so can help each of us to learn as well as to lead” (Gloria Steinem).
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My Soul is a Witness: African American Women’s Spirituality (Beacon Press, 2002)
Edited by Gloria Wade-Gayles, with contributions from Toni Morrison, Belvie Rooks, Alice Walker, Rita Dove, Nikki Giovanni, and more.
“A wonderful book…Nowhere will you find a more comprehensive work on spirituality of African-American women” (Toni Campbell, Real African World Magazine)
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“How to Look at a Brownfield and See a Flower Garden” (2000)
Describes Belvie’s groundbreaking urban education project: Hey, Listen Up!
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Sacred Poems and Prayers of Love (Doubleday, 1998)
Edited by Mary Ford-Grabowsky, with contribution from Belvie Rooks
“The collection includes approximately 200 prayers from around the world and the last 5,000 years. In addition to prayers from each of the five major religions, the author has included Native American, Celtic and African poems and prayers, and prayers by contemporary religious leaders that have been written or translated specifically for this volume.”
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Life Notes: Personal Writings by Contemporary Black Women (Norton, 1994)
Edited by Patricia Bell-Scott, with contribution from Belvie Rooks
“A collection of writings, culled from the journals, diaries, and personal notebooks, presents the personal testimonies of contemporary black women who illuminate the complexities of their lives, offering unique reflections on family, work, intimacy, politics, violation, and recovery.”