American author bell hooks (born Gloria Jean Watkins; September 25, 1952) borrowed her pen name from her maternal great grandmother Bell Blair-Hooks. bell hooks was one of six siblings; five sisters and a younger brother raised in Hopkinson, Kentucky. hooks’ characterized her town as
a world where folks were content to get by on a little, where Baba, mama’s mother, made soap, dug fishing worms, set traps for rabbits, made butter and wine, sewed quilts, and wrung the necks of chickens.
Additionally, her father, Veodis provided for his family laboring as a janitor for the postal service. hooks’ mother, Rosa Bell also attended to her family fulfilling her role as a maid for neighboring white families. However, hook’s home life was less than idyllic. Veodis had a stern hold on his family and was oppressive towards his daughter.
Outside of the home, hooks attended racially segregated public schools. Her dedicated educators were primarily single black women whose efforts positively impacted the self-esteem of their pupils of color.
After school, she tailored her days to reading poetry and writing to escape from her father’s wrath.
At the age of 10, hooks combined her love of reading with communal speaking, often echoing poems and Bible verses at church functions. Similarly, her passion for the written word would later motivate her to talk about the restorative power of critical thinking.
A senior in high school, hooks graciously accepted a scholarship from Stanford University.
While a student at Stanford, she began to compose her first book, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, Soon after, hooks received her bachelor’s degree from Stanford in 1973.
Then she majored in English when she entered graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Several years later, hooks earned a Master’s degree in English. From there she enrolled in a doctoral degree program at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
As a doctoral student at Santa Cruz, hooks worked for two years on her dissertation about the compositions of novelist Toni Morrison. Simultaneously, she finalized her manuscript Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, and published her first book of poems And There We Wept in 1978.
Accordingly, hooks began teaching and lecturing at colleges along the West Coast. She secured a publisher for her book Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism in 1981 and subsequently in 1983 hooks received her doctorate.
Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism was conceivably her most significant scholarly work.
Concurring with the opinions of preceding academics, hooks realized that the mainstream feminist movement focused solely on the predicament of a collective of white, middle- and upper-class, college-educated women. She also comprehended that this subset of society had no stake in the difficulties of women of color.
Ain’t I a Woman symbolizes the beginning of hook’s initiatives to expand the cultural interests of African American women into the prevailing feminist movement.
In the early 1980s, hooks left the West and traveled to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where she was invited to teach in their African American Studies program. Similarly, in 1988, she joined the staff at Oberlin College, in Ohio, to lecture in the Women’s Studies department on the critique of racism.
Throughout her life, hooks published over forty books and scholarly essays, on subjects ranging from feminist consciousness and racism, social justice, and cultural criticism. When she reflected on her position as a writer, hooks proclaimed
Some people act as though art that is for a mass audience is not good art, and I think this has been a very negative thing. I know that I have wanted to write books that are accessible to the widest audience possible.
On December 15th, 2021 bell hooks passed away peacefully surrounded by her loved ones.
