Gloria Jean Watkins (September 25, 1952 – December 15, 2021), better known by her pen namebell hooks (stylized in lowercase),[1] was an American author, theorist, educator, and social critic who was a Distinguished Professor in Residence atBerea College.[2] She was best known for her writings on race,feminism, and class.[3][4] She used the lower-case spelling of her name to decenter herself and draw attention to her work instead. The focus of hooks's writing was to explore theintersectionality of race,capitalism, and gender, and what she described as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems ofoppression andclass domination. She published around 40 books, including works that ranged from essays, poetry, and children's books. She published numerous scholarly articles, appeared in documentary films, and participated in public lectures. Her work addressed love,race,social class, gender, art, history, sexuality, mass media, and feminism.[5]
Gloria Jean Watkins was born on September 25, 1952, to a working-class African-American family, inHopkinsville,[9] a small,segregated town inKentucky.[10] Watkins was one of six children born to Rosa Bell Watkins (née Oldham) and Veodis Watkins.[5] Her father worked as a janitor and her mother worked as a maid in the homes of white families.[5] In her memoirBone Black: Memories of Girlhood (1996), Watkins would write of her "struggle to create self and identity" while growing up in "a rich magical world of southern black culture that was sometimes paradisiacal and at other times terrifying."[11]
She began her academic career in 1976 as an English professor and senior lecturer inethnic studies at theUniversity of Southern California.[28] During her three years there, Golemics, a Los Angeles publisher, released her first published work, achapbook of poems titledAnd There We Wept (1978),[29][30] written under the name "bell hooks". She had adopted her maternal great-grandmother's name as her pen name because, as she later put it, her great-grandmother "was known for her snappy and bold tongue, which [she] greatly admired".[8] She also said she put the name in lowercase letters to convey that what is most important to focus upon is her works, not her personal qualities: the "substance of books, not who [she is]".[31] On the unconventional lowercasing of her pen name, hooks added that, "When the feminist movement was at its zenith in the late '60s and early '70s, there was a lot of moving away from the idea of the person. It was: Let's talk about the ideas behind the work, and the people matter less... It was kind of a gimmicky thing, but lots of feminist women were doing it."[32]
In the early 1980s and 1990s, hooks taught at several post-secondary institutions, 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),[33]Oberlin College (1988 to 1994, as associate professor of American literature and women's studies), and, beginning in 1994, as distinguished professor of English atCity College of New York.[34][35]
South End Press published her first major work,Ain't I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism, in 1981, though she had started writing it years earlier at the age of 19, while still an undergraduate.[13][36] In the decades since its publication,Ain't I a Woman? has been recognized for its contribution to feminist thought, withPublishers Weekly in 1992 naming it "one of the twenty most influential women's books in the last 20 years".[37] Writing inThe New York Times in 2019,Min Jin Lee said thatAin't I a Woman "remains a radical and relevant work of political theory. She 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."[33]Ain't I a Woman? examines themes including the historical impact of sexism and racism on black women, devaluation of black womanhood,[38] media roles and portrayal, the education system, the idea of awhite-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy and themarginalization of black women.[39]
bell hooks in 2009
At the same time, hooks became significant as aleftist andpostmodern political thinker andcultural critic.[40] She published more than 30 books,[3] ranging in topics from black men, patriarchy, andmasculinity to self-help; engagedpedagogy[41] to personal memoirs; and sexuality (in regards to feminism and politics of aesthetics andvisual culture).Reel to Real: race, sex, and class at the movies (1996) collects film essays, reviews, and interviews with film directors.[42] InThe New Yorker,Hua Hsu said these interviews displayed the facet of hooks's work that was "curious, empathetic, searching for comrades".[5]
As hooks argued, communication and literacy (the ability to read, write, andthink critically) are necessary for the feminist movement because without them people may not grow to recognize gender inequalities in society.[44]
InTeaching to Transgress (1994), hooks attempts a new approach to education for minority students.[45] Particularly, hooks strives to make scholarship on theory accessible to "be read and understood across different class boundaries".[46]
In 2002, hooks gave acommencement speech atSouthwestern 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.[47][48]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".[47]
In 2004, she joined Berea College as Distinguished Professor in Residence.[49] Her 2008 book,belonging: a culture of place, includes an interview with authorWendell Berry as well as a discussion of her move back to Kentucky.[50] She was a scholar in residence atThe New School on three occasions, the last time in 2014.[51] Also in 2014, thebell hooks Institute was founded at Berea College;[4] in 2017 she dedicated her papers to the college.[52]
During her time at Berea College, hooks also founded the bell hooks center[53] along with professor Dr. M. Shadee Malaklou.[54] The center was established to provide underrepresented students, especially black and brown, femme, queer, and Appalachian individuals at Berea College, a safe space where they can develop their activist expression, education, and work.[55] The center cites hooks's work and her emphasis on the importance of feminism and love as the inspiration and guiding principles of the education it offers. The center offers events and programming with an emphasis on radical feminist and anti-racist thought.[54]
She was often critical of the films ofSpike Lee. In her essay, 'Spike Lee Doing Malcolm X: Denying Black Pain', hooks argues that Lee's "film does not compel viewers to confront, challenge, and change. It embraces and rewards passive response - inaction. It encourages us to weep, but not to fight."[56] She saw Lee as an "insider" to the film industry, making a film for predominantly white audiences that followed the conventions of "other Hollywood epic ... fictive biographies". She described the first half of the film as being half "neo-minstrel spectacle" and half "tragic"; criticised the portrayal of Malcolm's relationship with Sophia as having the "same shallowness of vision" as Lee's other filmic portrayals of interracial relationships; and disavowed Denzel Washington's potential to escape his reputation as "everybody's nice guy", meaning that he could never portray Malcolm's "'threatening' physical presence". All of which made Malcolm "appear less militant, more open". In her reading of the film, Lee is "primarily fascinated by Malcolm's fierce critique of white racism" and his early view of racism as "a masculinist phallocentric struggle for power between white men and black men". Thus, the film missed Malcolm's later politics in which he had a "critique of racism in conjunction with imperialism and colonialism" and the film "certainly" did not contain Malcolm's "critique of capitalism". She also said that Lee wrote Black women in the same objectifying way that White male filmmakers write the characters of White women.[57]
She also criticized the documentaryParis Is Burning for depicting the ritual of the balls as a spectacle to "pleasure" white spectators.[58]
She was inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2018.[3][59]
In 2020, during theGeorge Floyd protests, there was a resurgence of interest in hooks's work on racism, feminism, and capitalism.[60]
Regarding her sexual identity, hooks described herself as "queer-pas-gay".[61][62][63] She usedpas from the French language, translating tonot in the English language. She describes beingqueer in her own words as follows: "As the essence of queer, I think ofTim Dean's work on being queer, and queer not as being about who you're having sex with—that can be a dimension of it—but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it, and it has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live."[64][65] During an interview with Abigail Bereola in 2017, hooks revealed to Bereola that she was single while they discussed her love life. During the interview, hooks told Bereola, "I don't have a partner. I've been celibate for 17 years. I would love to have a partner, but I don't think my life is less meaningful."[66]
On December 15, 2021, bell hooks died from kidney failure at her home in Berea, Kentucky, aged 69.[3]
Through her interest inBeat poetry and after an encounter with the poet and BuddhistGary Snyder, hooks was first introduced toBuddhism in her early college years.[67] She described herself as finding Buddhism as part of a personal journey in her youth, centered on seeking to recenter love and spirituality in her life and configure these concepts into her focus on activism and justice.[68] After her initial exposures to Buddhism, hooks incorporated it into her Christian upbringing and this combined Christian-Buddhist thought influenced her identity, activism, and writing for the remainder of her life.[69]
She was drawn to Buddhism because of the personal and academic framework it offered her to understand and respond to suffering and discrimination as well as love and connection. She describes the Christian-Buddhist focus on everyday practice as fulfilling the centering and grounding needs of her everyday life.[70]
Buddhist thought, especially the work ofThích Nhất Hạnh, appears in multiple of hooks's essays, books, and poetry.[69] Buddhist spirituality also played a significant role in the creation of love ethic which became a major focus in both her written work and her activism.[71]
Utne Reader's 1995 "100 Visionaries Who Could Change Your Life" includes hooks,[72] as doesTIME magazine's "100 Women of the Year" in 2020, where she was described as "that rare rock star of a public intellectual who reaches wide by being accessible".[73]
Prior to her tenure at Berea College, hooks held teaching positions at esteemed institutions likeStanford, Yale, andThe City College of New York. Her influence transcends academia, as evidenced by her residencies both in the United States and abroad. In 2014,St. Norbert College dedicated an entire year to celebrating her contributions with "A Year of bell hooks".[74]
hooks, bell (1996), "Continued devaluation of Black womanhood", inJackson, Stevi;Scott, Sue (eds.),Feminism and sexuality: a reader, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 216–223,ISBN978-0231107082.
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,ISBN978-0072824230.Pdf.
hooks, bell (2005), "Black women: shaping feminist theory", inCudd, Ann E.; Andreasen, Robin O. (eds.),Feminist theory: a philosophical anthology, Oxford, UK; Malden, Massachusetts:Blackwell Publishing, pp. 60–68,ISBN978-1405116619.
hooks, bell (2009), "Lorde: The Examination of Justice", in Byrd, Rudolph P.; Cole, Johnnette Betsch; Guy-Sheftall, Beverly (eds.),I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 242–248,ISBN978-0199846450.
^Smith, Dinitia (September 28, 2006)."Tough arbiter on the web has guidance for writers".The New York Times. p. E3.Archived from the original on July 3, 2018. RetrievedFebruary 21, 2017.But the Chicago Manual says it is not all right to capitalize the name of the writer bell hooks because she insists that it be lower case.
^Holland, Jennifer L. (2020).Tiny you: a western history of the anti-abortion movement. Oakland, California: University of California Press.ISBN978-0-520-96847-9.
^abhooks, bell, "Inspired Eccentricity: Sarah and Gus Oldham" in Sharon Sloan Fiffer and Steve Fiffer (eds),Family: American Writers Remember Their Own, New York: Vintage Books, 1996, p. 152.
hooks, bell,Talking Back, Routledge, 2014 [1989], p. 161.
^Williams, Heather (March 26, 2013)."Bell Hooks Speaks Up".The Sandspur. p. 1.Archived from the original on February 28, 2021. RetrievedNovember 10, 2019 – via Issuu.
^Leatherman, Courtney (May 19, 1995)."The Real Bell Hooks".The Chronicle of Higher Education.Archived from the original on December 16, 2021. RetrievedDecember 16, 2021.
^"Bell Hooks". Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Retrieved June 12, 2018.
^Olson, Gary A. (1994). "Bell Hooks and the Politics of Literacy: A Conversation".Journal of Advanced Composition.14 (1):1–19.ISSN0731-6755.JSTOR20865945.
^Judd, Caitlin (December 31, 2021)."What Bell Hooks taught me".Cambridge Girl Talk. Archived from the original on September 20, 2023. RetrievedJanuary 17, 2024.
^abApple, Lauri (May 24, 2002)."Bell Hooks Digs In".The Austin Chronicle.Archived from the original on December 22, 2013. RetrievedDecember 11, 2013.
^Phillip Brian Harper (1994). "'The Subversive Edge':Paris Is Burning, Social Critique, and the Limits of Subjective Agency".Diacritics.24 (2/3):90–103.doi:10.2307/465166.JSTOR465166.
^abMedine, Carolyn M. Jones Medine. "Bell Hooks, Black Feminist Thought, and Black Buddhism: A Tribute".Journal of World Philosophies. 7 (Summer 2022): pages 187–196.
^"10 Writers Win Grants".The New York Times. December 22, 1994.Archived from the original on November 18, 2021. RetrievedDecember 15, 2021.
^"Happy to Be Nappy". Alkebu-Lan Image.Archived from the original on December 15, 2021. RetrievedDecember 15, 2021.
^"Bell Hooks". The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.Archived from the original on December 15, 2021. RetrievedDecember 15, 2021.
^"Footlights".The New York Times. August 21, 2002.ISSN0362-4331.Archived from the original on March 5, 2020. RetrievedDecember 15, 2021.
^abRappaport, Scott (April 25, 2007)."May 10 Bell Hooks event postponed". University of California, Santa Cruz, Regents of the University of California.Archived from the original on August 18, 2021. RetrievedDecember 15, 2021.
hooks, bell (2005). "Black women: shaping feminist theory". InCudd, Ann E.; Andreasen, Robin O. (eds.).Feminist theory: a philosophical anthology. Oxford, UK; Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. pp. 60–68.ISBN978-1405116619.
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,ISBN978-0415912471
Stanley, Sandra Kumamoto, ed. (1998).Other Sisterhoods: Literary Theory and U.S. Women of Color. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.ISBN978-0-252-02361-3.OCLC36446785.
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