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	Berea, Kentucky, U.S.
Education	Stanford University (BA) University of Wisconsin, Madison (MA) University of California, Santa Cruz (PhD)
Occupation	Author academic activist
Years active	1978–2021
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. She 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.

Life and career

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 white families. An avid reader, Watkins was educated in racially segregated public schools, later writing that this is where she had experienced education as the practice of freedom. She described the great adversities she faced when making the transition to an integrated school, where teachers and students were predominantly white. 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

Her teaching 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 signifies 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, Oberlin College and 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 naming it "One of the twenty most influential women's books in the last 20 years" in 1992. 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 several recurring themes in her later work: 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. She later became significant as a leftist and postmodern political thinker and cultural critic. 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.

bell hooks in 2009

Her definition of feminism – "a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression" – is frequently cited by feminists:

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 aesthetic/visual culture). A prevalent theme in her most recent writing is the community and communion, the ability of loving communities to overcome race, class, and gender inequalities. In three conventional books and four children's books, she suggests that communication and literacy (the ability to read, write, and think critically) are crucial to developing healthy communities and relationships that are not marred by race, class, or gender inequalities.

During the course of her life, she held positions as Professor of African-American Studies and English at Yale University, Associate Professor of Women's Studies and American Literature at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and as Distinguished Lecturer of English Literature at the City College of New York.

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. This was followed by a controversy described in the Austin Chronicle. The newspaper 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 in Berea, Kentucky, as Distinguished Professor in Residence, where she participated in a weekly feminist discussion group, "Monday Night Feminism"; a luncheon lecture series, "Peanut Butter and Gender"; and a seminar, "Building Beloved Community: The Practice of Impartial Love". 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 has undertaken three scholar-in-residences at The New School. She did one for a week in October 2014, engaging in public dialogues with Gloria Steinem, Laverne Cox, and Cornel West.

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

Personal life

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

Hooks died at her home in Berea, Kentucky, on December 15, 2021, at the age of 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)
• Writing About a Revolution: A Talk (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"

Select bibliography

Books

• Excerpted in
• With Cornel West,
• With Amalia Mesa-Bains,
• Uncut Funk: A Contemplative Dialogue. New York: Routledge. 2018. ISBN 978-2-238-10210-1.

Book chapters

• Pdf.

Further reading

• 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

External links

• Ejournal website (several critical resources for bell hooks)
• Real Change News (interview with hooks by Rosette Royale)
• 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 the Internet Movie Database
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • In Depth interview with hooks, May 5, 2002
• Interview in BOMB magazine

{{#related: Patriarchy}} {{#related: Feminism}}

{{#related: Toni Morrison}}