What do Vice President JD Vance and feminist scholar bell hooks have in common?

At first blush, the answer would seem to be: pretty much nothing. hooks, who died in 2021, is known for her books about feminism and race, including Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism and Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Vance, a Republican, is an outspoken opponent of abortion rights who once said that women who made their careers a priority are on “a path to misery” and mocked Democratic women politicians as “childless cat ladies.”

But, The New York Times reports, podcaster and blogger Whitney Alese noticed some similarities between the politician and the late professor, and they have to do with their book titles.

Vance became a national celebrity after the success of his first book, a 2016 account of life in Appalachia titled Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. hooks is the author of the 2012 book Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place.

Vance’s latest book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith was published last month, and Alese noticed that the book shares its main title with hooks’ 2002 book Communion: The Female Search for Love.

Alese took to Instagram in hopes that readers would seek out hooks’ books instead of the vice president’s. “Hi, you want to get in some good trouble with me and combat this administration and combat the erasure of Black women’s work?” she said in a reel. “If you would like to join me, we are going to read these books, Appalachian Elegy and Communion. We’re going to search for them in all of our search engines.…We’re going to request them at our libraries. We’re going to request them at our bookstores. We’re going to read these books and we’re going to talk about them.”

Alese told The Times, “My goal was to say, ‘Hey, instead of putting all our energy into opposing JD’s work, why don’t we lift up bell hooks’ work?…Her work was so focused on love, and this particular book was all about loving yourself.’”

Her plan seems to be working. The Times reports that hooks’ Communion made the newspaper’s paperback bestseller list and also was Bookshop.org’s No. 1 bestseller during one week last month.

Scholar E. Gale Greenlee said, “I get giddy when I think about all the communities, indie bookstores and readers that are rallying around this book. bell was afraid when she passed that she would be forgotten. This just proves she will not be forgotten, we will not let it happen, and that her work is still so meaningful and necessary for us all.”

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.