bell hooks

For the mixtape, see Bell Hooks (mixtape).

bell hooks
bell hooks in October 2014
Born	Gloria Jean Watkins (1952-09-25)September 25, 1952 Hopkinsville, Kentucky, U.S.
Died	December 15, 2021(2021-12-15) (aged 69) Berea, Kentucky, U.S.
Education	Stanford University (BA) University of Wisconsin–Madison (MA) University of California, Santa Cruz (PhD)
Occupations	Author academic activist
Years active	1978–2018
Known for	Oppositional gaze
Notable work	Ain't I a Woman? (1981) Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984) All About Love: New Visions (2000) We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (2004)
Website	bellhooksinstitute.com

Gloria Jean Watkins (September 25, 1952 – December 15, 2021), better known by her pen name bell hooks, was an American author, professor, feminist, and social activist. The name "bell hooks" is borrowed from her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks.

The focus of hooks's writing was the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she described as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination. She published more than 30 books and numerous scholarly articles, appeared in documentary films, and participated in public lectures. Her work addressed race, class, gender, art, history, sexuality, mass media, and feminism. In 2014, she founded the bell hooks Institute at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky.

Early life

Gloria Jean Watkins was born on September 25, 1952, in Hopkinsville, a small, segregated town in Kentucky, to a working-class African-American family. Watkins was one of six children born to Rosa Bell Watkins (née Oldham) and Veodis Watkins. Her father worked as a janitor and her mother worked as a maid in the homes of caucasian families.

An avid reader, Watkins was educated in racially segregated public schools, later moving to an integrated school in the late 1960s. She graduated from Hopkinsville High School before obtaining her BA in English from Stanford University in 1973, and her MA in English from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1976. During this time, at 24 Watkins was writing her book Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, which was published in 1981.

In 1983, after several years of teaching and writing, she completed her doctorate in English at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1987, with a dissertation on author Toni Morrison.

Teaching and writing

Hooks' academic career began in 1976 as an English professor and senior lecturer in ethnic studies at the University of Southern California. During her three years there, Golemics, a Los Angeles publisher, released her first published work, a chapbook of poems titled And There We Wept (1978), written under the name "bell hooks". She adopted her maternal great-grandmother's name as a pen name because her great-grandmother "was known for her snappy and bold tongue, which [she] greatly admired". She put the name in lowercase letters "to distinguish [herself from] her great-grandmother." She said that her unconventional lowercasing of her name signified that what is most important to focus upon is her works, not her personal qualities: the "substance of books, not who I am."

She taught at several post-secondary institutions in the early 1980s and 1990s, including the University of California, Santa Cruz, San Francisco State University, Yale (1985 to 1988, as assistant professor of African and Afro-American studies and English), Oberlin College (1988 to 1994, as associate professor of American literature and women’s studies), and beginning in 1994, as distinguished professor of English at City College of New York.

In 1981 South End Press published her first major work, Ain't I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism, though it was written years earlier while she was an undergraduate student. In the decades since its publication, Ain't I a Woman? has been recognized for its contribution to feminist thought, with Publishers Weekly in 1992 naming it "One of the twenty most influential women's books in the last 20 years." Writing in The New York Times in 2019, Min Jin Lee said that Ain't I a Woman "remains a radical and relevant work of political theory. hooks lays the groundwork of her feminist theory by giving historical evidence of the specific sexism that black female slaves endured and how that legacy affects black womanhood today". Ain't I a Woman? examines themes including the historical impact of sexism and racism on black women, devaluation of black womanhood, media roles and portrayal, the education system, the idea of a white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy, the marginalization of black women, and the disregard for issues of race and class within feminism.

bell hooks in 2009

hooks also became significant as a leftist and postmodern political thinker and cultural critic. She published more than 30 books, ranging in topics from black men, patriarchy, and masculinity to self-help; engaged pedagogy to personal memoirs; and sexuality (in regards to feminism and politics of aesthetics and visual culture). Reel to Real: race, sex, and class at the movies (1996) collects film essays, reviews, and interviews with film directors. In The New Yorker, Hua Hsu said these interviews displayed the facet of hooks's work that was "curious, empathetic, searching for comrades".

In Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), hooks develops a critique of white feminist racism in second-wave feminism, which she argued undermined the possibility of feminist solidarity across racial lines.

hooks argued that communication and literacy (the ability to read, write, and think critically) are necessary for the feminist movement because without them people may not grow to recognize gender inequalities in society.

In 2002, hooks gave a commencement speech at Southwestern University. Eschewing the congratulatory mode of traditional commencement speeches, she spoke against what she saw as government-sanctioned violence and oppression, and admonished students who she believed went along with such practices. The Austin Chronicle reported that many in the audience booed the speech, though "several graduates passed over the provost to shake her hand or give her a hug".

In 2004, she joined Berea College as Distinguished Professor in Residence. Her 2008 book, belonging: a culture of place, includes an interview with author Wendell Berry as well as a discussion of her move back to Kentucky. She was a scholar in residence at The New School on three occasions.

She was inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2018.

Personal life

She described her sexual identity as "queer-pas-gay".

On December 15, 2021, hooks died from kidney failure at her home in Berea, Kentucky, aged 69.

Filmography

• Black Is... Black Ain't (1994)
• Give a Damn Again (1995)
• Cultural Criticism and Transformation (1997)
• My Feminism (1997)
• Voices of Power (1999)
• BaadAsssss Cinema (2002)
• I Am a Man: Black Masculinity in America (2004)
• Happy to Be Nappy and Other Stories of Me (2004)
• Is Feminism Dead? (2004)
• Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets Action (2008)
• Occupy Love (2012)
• Hillbilly (2018)

Awards and nominations

• Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics: The American Book Awards/ Before Columbus Foundation Award (1991)
• bell hooks: The Writer's Award from the Lila Wallace–Reader's Digest Fund (1994)
• Happy to Be Nappy: NAACP Image Award nominee (2001)
• Homemade Love: The Bank Street College Children's Book of the Year (2002)
• Salvation: Black People and Love: Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominee (2002)
• bell hooks: Utne Reader's "100 Visionaries Who Could Change Your Life"
• bell hooks: The Atlantic Monthly's "One of our nation's leading public intellectuals"
• bell hooks: TIME 100 Women of the Year, 2020

Select bibliography

Books

• And there we wept: poems. Los Angeles: Golemics. 1978. OCLC 6230231.
• Ain't I a Woman?: Black women and feminism. Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press. 1981. ISBN 978-0-89608-129-1.
• Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. South End Press. 1984. ISBN 978-0-89608-613-5.
• Talking Back: Thinking feminist, thinking Black. Between the Lines. 1989. ISBN 978-0-921284-09-3. Excerpted in Busby, Margaret, ed. (1992). Daughters of Africa. New York: Pantheon Books.
• Yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics. Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press. 1990. ISBN 978-1-1-38821-75-0.
• With Cornel West, Breaking bread: insurgent Black intellectual life. Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press. 1991. ISBN 978-0-89608-414-8.
• Hooks, Bell (1992). Black Looks: Race and representation. ISBN 978-0-89608-434-6.
• Sisters of the yam: Black women and self-recovery. Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press. 1993. ISBN 978-1138821682.
• Teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge. 1994. ISBN 978-0-415-90808-5.
• Outlaw culture: resisting representations. New York: Routledge. 1994. ISBN 978-0-415-90811-5.
• Killing rage: ending racism. New York: Henry Holt and Co. 1995. ISBN 978-0-8050-5027-1.
• Art on my mind: visual politics. New York: The New Press. 1995. ISBN 978-1-56584-263-2.
• Reel to real: race, sex, and class at the movies. 1996. ISBN 978-0-415-91824-4.
• Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1996. ISBN 978-0-8050-4146-0.
• Wounds of passion: a writing life. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1997. ISBN 978-0-8050-5722-5.
• Remembered rapture: the writer at work. Henry Holt and Co. 1999. ISBN 978-0-8050-5910-6.
• hooks, bell (2000). Justice: childhood love lessons. ISBN 978-0-688-16844-5.
• All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow. 2000. ISBN 978-0-06-095947-0.
• Feminism is for everybody: passionate politics. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. 2000. ISBN 978-0-89608-628-9.
• Where we stand: class matters (PDF). Routledge. 2000. ISBN 978-0-415-92913-4.
• Salvation: Black people and love. New York: Perennial. 2001. ISBN 978-0-06-095949-4.
• Communion: the female search for love. New York, NY: Perennial. 2002. ISBN 978-0-06-093829-1.
• Teaching community: a pedagogy of hope. New York: Routledge. 2003. ISBN 978-0-415-96818-8.
• Rock my soul: Black people and self-esteem. New York: Atria Books. 2003. ISBN 978-0-7434-5605-0.
• The will to change: men, masculinity, and love. New York: Atria Books. 2004. ISBN 978-0-7434-5607-4.
• Space. 2004.
• We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. New York: Routledge. 2004. ISBN 978-0-203-64220-7.
• Soul sister: women, friendship, and fulfillment. Cambridge, Massachusetts: South End Press. 2005. ISBN 978-0-89608-735-4.
• Witness. 2006.
• With Amalia Mesa-Bains, Homegrown: engaged cultural criticism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: South End Press. 2006. ISBN 978-0-89608-759-0.
• Belonging: a culture of place. New York: Routledge. 2009. ISBN 978-0-203-88801-8.
• Teaching critical thinking: practical wisdom. New York: Routledge. 2010. ISBN 978-0-415-96820-1.
• Appalachian elegy: poetry and place. Kentucky Voices Series. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 2012. ISBN 978-0-8131-3669-1.
• Writing beyond race: living theory and practice. New York: Routledge. 2013. ISBN 978-0-415-53914-2.
• Uncut Funk: A Contemplative Dialogue. New York: Routledge. 2018. ISBN 978-2-238-10210-1.

Children's books

• Happy to be Nappy. Chris Raschka (illustrator). 1999. ISBN 978-0-7868-2377-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
• Homemade Love. New York: Hyperion Books for Children. 2002. ISBN 978-0786825530.
• Be boy buzz. New York: Hyperion Books for Children. 2002. ISBN 978-0786816439.
• Skin again. Chris Raschka (illustrator). New York: Hyperion Books for Children. 2004. ISBN 9780786808250.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
• Grump groan growl. Chris Raschka (illustrator). New York: Hyperion Books for Children. 2008. ISBN 978-0786808168.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)

Book chapters

• hooks, bell (1993), "Black women and feminism", in Richardson, Laurel; Taylor, Verta A. (eds.), Feminist frontiers III, New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 444–449, ISBN 978-0075570011.
• hooks, bell (1996), "Continued devaluation of Black womanhood", in Jackson, Stevi; Scott, Sue (eds.), Feminism and sexuality: a reader, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 216–223, ISBN 978-0231107082.
• hooks, bell (1997), "Sisterhood: political solidarity between women", in McClintock, Anne; Mufti, Aamir; Shohat, Ella (eds.), Dangerous liaisons: gender, nation, and postcolonial perspectives, Minnesota, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 396–414, ISBN 978-0816626496.
• hooks, bell (2004), "Selling hot pussy: representations of Black female sexuality in the cultural marketplace", in Richardson, Laurel; Taylor, Verta A.; Whittier, Nancy (eds.), Feminist frontiers (5th ed.), Boston: McGraw-Hill, pp. 119–127, ISBN 978-0072824230. Pdf.
• hooks, bell (2005), "Black women: shaping feminist theory", in Cudd, Ann E.; Andreasen, Robin O. (eds.), Feminist theory: a philosophical anthology, Oxford, UK; Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 60–68, ISBN 978-1405116619.

References

Cited sources

• hooks, bell (2005). "Black women: shaping feminist theory". In Cudd, Ann E.; Andreasen, Robin O. (eds.). Feminist theory: a philosophical anthology. Oxford, UK; Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 60–68. ISBN 978-1405116619.
• hooks, bell (1992). Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press.
• hooks, bell (1996). Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-91824-4.
• McCluskey, Audrey Thomas (2007). Frame by Frame III: A Filmography of the African Diasporan Image, 1994–2004. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-34829-6.

Further reading

• hooks, bell; Trend, David (1996), "Representation and democracy an interview", in Trend, David (ed.), Radical democracy: identity, citizenship, and the state, New York: Routledge, pp. 228–236, ISBN 978-0415912471
• Florence, Namulundah (1998). bell hooks' Engaged Pedagogy. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. ISBN 978-0-89789-564-4. OCLC 38239473.
• Leitch et al., eds. "bell hooks". The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001. pp. 2475–2484. ISBN 0-393-97429-4
• South End Press Collective, ed. (1998). "Critical Consciousness for Political Resistance". Talking About a Revolution. Cambridge: South End Press. pp. 39–52. ISBN 978-0-89608-587-9. OCLC 38566253.
• Stanley, Sandra Kumamoto, ed. (1998). Other Sisterhoods: Literary Theory and U.S. Women of Color. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-02361-3. OCLC 36446785.
• Wallace, Michele (1998). Black Popular Culture. New York: The New Press. ISBN 978-1-56584-459-9. OCLC 40548914.
• Whitson, Kathy J. (2004). Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-32731-5. OCLC 54529420.

External links

• bell hooks articles published in Lion's Roar magazine.
• South End Press (books by hooks published by South End Press)
• University of California, Santa Barbara (biographical sketch of hooks)
• "Postmodern Blackness" (article by hooks)
• Whole Terrain (articles by hooks published in Whole Terrain)
• Challenging Capitalism & Patriarchy (interviews with hooks by Third World Viewpoint)
• Ingredients of Love (an interview with Ascent magazine)
• bell hooks at IMDb
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • In Depth interview with hooks, May 5, 2002
• Interview in BOMB magazine