bell hooks
By
John C Abercrombie
Today is day 18 of the 31 tribute to amazing Black women we should all know featuring bell hooks.
Born Gloria Jean Watkins, adopted the pen name bell hooks to honor her great-grandmother, because she was known for her snappy and bold tongue. Something that Watkins admired. She uses the lower case to distinguish herself from her great-grand mother and to focus on the work rather than the writer.
She has been inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.
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This post looks at bell hooks the prolific and well respected author who passed in December 2021.
Born Gloria Jean Watkins in Hopkinsville, on September 25, 1952, to Veodis and Rosa Bell Watkins. She was one of 6 children born to the couple. Her father worked as a janitor and her mother a maid in the homes of White families.
Watkins is better known by her pen name bell hooks which she took from her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. The name bell hooks is written in lower case in an effort to have people concentrate on her ideas and work rather than the person.
Hopkinsville, Kentucky was strictly segregated meaning that people were forced to live in certain sections and were faced with minimal interaction with Whites, forced to work the most menial jobs, receive diminished resources for education, medical services, access to services and amenities of all kind.
Hopkinsville was not alone in this manner as most cities in the South predominately practiced this form off apartheid. While it was not completely absent in the North, it was not as plain and in your face.
Gloria Jean Watkins started her education in the segregated public schools and moved to an interrogated school in the late 1960’s, graduating from Hopkinsville High School before attending Stanford University graduating with a BA in English in 1973. She obtained a MA in English from the University of Wisconsin—Madison in 1976. It was during tis time that she began writing her well known and highly acclaimed book “Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism.” This great work was started when she was 19 and published in 1987 under the name bell hooks.
bell hooks taught at many prestigious institutions of higher learning including
- University of California – Santa Cruz
- San Francisco State University
- Yale
- Oberlin
- City College of New York
in 2004 she joined Berea College as Distinguished Professor in Residence. In her 2008 book she discusses her move back to Kentucky. She has also been a scholar in residence at the New School 3 times with the most recent being in 2014. She also founded the bell hooks institute at Berea College. In 2018, she was inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.
Berea College is a private liberal college located in Berea, Kentucky and was the first college in the South to be coeducational and racially integrated. They charge no tuition. Most students receive grants or scholarships which help with incidentals such as room and board, textbooks and personal expenses.
In 1983 while teaching and writing she completed her doctorate in English at the University of California – Santa Cruz with a dissertation on author Toni Morrison entitled “keeping a Hold on Life: Reading Toni Morrison’s Fiction.
Published author bell hooks was an avid reader. Reading is a leading key to the best thinkers of our time. Hint to the wise.
She started her academic career as an English professor and senior lecturer at the University of Southern California in 1976.
She adopted the pen name of bell hooks because she was known for her snappy and bold tongue. Something that Watkins admired. Lower case to distinguish herself from her great-grand mother and to focus on the work rather than the writer.
In 1992 Publishers Weekly named “Ain’t I a Woman” one of the 20 most influential women’s book in the last 20 years. The New York Times Min Jin Lee in 2019 said “remains a radical and relevant work of political theory. hooks lays 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.”
bell hooks focused on the interconnected nature of social categorization such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group regarding the overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage. While we can look at a problem from one dimension it gives a skewed view and is quite ineffective. The term has been credited to Kimberlé Crenshaw but has been effectively viewed in the works of bell hooks. Much of her work shows the depth of thought from a great intellect that is focused on sharing of ideas. bell hooks was excellent at challenging the status quo.
She examined the historical impact of sexism, fascism on Black women, devaluation of Black womanhood, media roles, portrayals, the education system. She explored the idea of White supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy, the marginalization of Black women and the disregard for issues of race and class within feminism.
A word of warning to ALL!
bell hooks cause of death has been attributed to advanced kidney disease and it is time to raise our aware of this devastating disease. We need to protect our health at all times. Preventive action is a major way of increasing the quality of life. Watch your heart pressure, diabetic maintenance and exercise among other ways of paying tribute to yourself! Don’t take your health for granted. An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure!
As you watch the collection of videos that accompany this post, you will be given great insight into this amazing intellectual that opens discussions and eyes. She forces us not only to focus on the problem but most important, the solution.
You will also see some of the books she has written and most importantly peruse and even obtain.
There is one lingering question you will ask. Why didn’t I know about this intellectual person?
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This is a 2 part post. Part covers additional books by bell hooks. There is a link to that post at the end of this post. You will find an amazing, although incomplete list of books by the outstanding thinker and author bell hooks.
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For Black History Month 2020, we posted daily. These posts focus on the reality of Black life in America after the Civil War culminating in the landmark Brown v Board of Education that changed so many of the earlier practices. To see the posts, click here
For Black History Month 2021, we focused on Black Medical Achievements, Inventors and Scientists’ see those posts, click here.
For Black History Month 2022, we focused on “Health and Wellness.” To see the entire series, click this link.
This post is part of a 31 day series on Black Women we should all know. To see this series, click on this link.
We also posted a 5 part mini-series on the 100th anniversary of one of the most horrific massacres in the history of America. Hundreds of Blacks were slaughtered and 10,000 left homeless in this largely unknown event. To see the posts, click here.
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Remembering bell hooks and her enormous legacy
The influential critic, author and feminist bell hooks died Wednesday at the age of 69. She was at home, surrounded by friends and family. Amna Nawaz looks at her work and legacy.
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Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism 2nd Edition
A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain’t I a Woman has become a must-read for all those interested in the nature of black womanhood. Examining the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism among feminists, and the black woman’s involvement with feminism, hooks attempts to move us beyond racist and sexist assumptions. The result is nothing short of groundbreaking, giving this book a critical place on every feminist scholar’s bookshelf.
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Speaking Freely: Bell Hooks
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All About Love:
New Visions The acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks’ “Love Song to the Nation,” All About Love is a revelation about what causes a polarized society and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces. “The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness–not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love.
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Remembering bell hooks & Her Critique of “Imperialist White Supremacist Heteropatriarchy”
We look at the life and legacy of trailblazing Black feminist scholar and activist bell hooks, who died at the age of 69 on Wednesday. We speak with her longtime colleague Beverly Guy-Sheftall, professor of women’s studies at Spelman College, who remembers her as “a person who would sit with young people and community people and students and help them understand this world in which we live, which is full of all kinds of domination.” Working in the tradition of intersectionality and Black radical feminism, hooks’ critiques of “imperialist white supremacist heteropatriarchy” called attention to the interlocking systems of oppression in hopes of eradicating them, Guy-Sheftall says.
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Teaching to Transgress:
Education as the Practice of Freedom “After reading Teaching to Transgress I am once again struck by bell hooks’ never-ending, unquiet intellectual energy, an energy that makes her radical and loving.” — Paulo Freire In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks–writer, teacher, and insurgent black intellectual–writes about a new kind of education, education as the practice of freedom. Teaching students to “transgress” against racial, sexual, and class boundaries in order to achieve the gift of freedom is, for hooks, the teacher’s most important goal. bell hooks speaks to the heart of education today: how can we rethink teaching practices in the age of multiculturalism? What do we do about teachers who do not want to teach, and students who do not want to learn? How should we deal with racism and sexism in the classroom?
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Cell Phones and Accessories
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Bell Hooks Final Moments, Biography, Books
Celebrated author, feminist and activist bell hooks has died, aged 69. The author was surrounded by her close friends and family at home when se died from an illness, a press release from her niece, Ebony Motley, said. hooks was known for writing about the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality and class, and she published numerous novels and scholarly articles about the subject matter during her lifetime. Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
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Jewelry
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The Will to Change:
Men, Masculinity, and Love Everyone needs to love and be loved—even men. But to know love, men must be able to look at the ways that patriarchal culture keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving. In The Will to Change, bell hooks gets to the heart of the matter and shows men how to express the emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are—whatever their age, marital status, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. But toxic masculinity punishes those fundamental emotions, and it’s so deeply ingrained in our society that it’s hard for men to not comply—but hooks wants to help change that.
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Computers, Tablets and Components
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bell hooks on interlocking systems of domination
bell hooks explains how white supremacy, imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy are interlocking systems of domination that define our reality.
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Clothing and Accessories
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Belonging: A Culture of Place
A Culture of Place What does it mean to call a place home? Who is allowed to become a member of a community? When can we say that we truly belong? These are some of the questions of place and belonging that renowned cultural critic bell hooks examines in her new book, Belonging: A Culture of Place. Traversing past and present, Belonging charts a cyclical journey in which hooks moves from place to place, from country to city and back again, only to end where she began–her old Kentucky home. hooks has written provocatively about race, gender, and class; and in this book she turns her attention to focus on issues of land and land ownership. Reflecting on the fact that 90% of all black people lived in the agrarian South before mass migration to northern cities in the early 1900s, she writes about black farmers, about black folks who have been committed both in the past and in the present to local food production, to being organic, and to finding solace in nature. Naturally, it would be impossible to contemplate these issues without thinking about the politics of race and class. Reflecting on the racism that continues to find expression in the world of real estate, she writes about segregation in housing and economic racialized zoning. In these critical essays, hooks finds surprising connections that link of the environment and sustainability to the politics of race and class that reach far beyond Kentucky.
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Grocery and Gourmet Foods
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bell hooks and Laverne Cox in a Public Dialogue at The New School
Laverne Cox is a critically acclaimed actress who currently appears in the Netflix original series Orange is the New Black, playing the groundbreaking role of “Sophia Burset,” an incarcerated African American transgender woman. Laverne is the first trans woman of color to have a leading role on a mainstream scripted television show. Time Magazine named Sophia Burset the 4th most influential fictional character of 2013. bell hooks (née Gloria Watkins) is among the leading public intellectuals of her generation. Her writings cover a broad range of topics including gender, race, teaching, and contemporary culture. This fall marks the 20th Anniversary of the publication of Teaching to Transgress: Education as a Practice of Freedom, Dr. hooks’ seminal book on educational practices. This weeklong residency is an opportunity for The New School community to directly engage with Dr. hooks and her commitment to education and learning as a place “where paradise can be created.”
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Video Games
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killing rage: Ending Racism (Owl Book)
Ending Racism One of our country’s premier cultural and social critics, bell hooks has always maintained that eradicating racism and eradicating sexism must go hand in hand. But whereas many women have been recognized for their writing on gender politics, the female voice has been all but locked out of the public discourse on race. Killing Rage speaks to this imbalance. These twenty-three essays are written from a Black and feminist perspective, and they tackle the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it. They address a spectrum of topics having to do with race and racism in the United States: psychological trauma among African-Americans; friendship between black women and white women; anti-Semitism and racism; and internalized racism in movies and the media. And in the title essay, hooks writes about the “killing rage”―the fierce anger of black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism―finding in that rage a healing source of love and strength and a catalyst for positive change.
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Health and Household
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bell hooks & john a. powell: Belonging Through Connection (Othering & Belonging Conference 2015)
john a. powell & bell hooks: Dialogue at the Othering & Belonging Conference
“Belonging Through Connection, Connecting Through Love: Oneself, the Other, and the Earth”
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We hope you have enjoyed the view of bell hooks and gained insight on a critical thinker, a great writer and a person who challenges us to face the reality of life and solve problems associated with a fresh point of view.
We have gone further and put together a number of bell hooks books which you can review, sample either electronic or audio versions of. To see that post and list, click here
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Trace, document, record, and write your family’s history with this easy-to-read, step-by-step authoritative guide.
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As we look at the power of words as used in the books by bell hooks, we may wonder if they have anything to do with our past. Yes, because it was easy to justify slavery if you could “prove” there was a difference in those enslaved. If denied an education, you could say that these people did not know basic materials not taught to them and find a receptive audience. No longer, we need more people to express themselves, not less. Take advantage of the ability to express yourself and stand out, not fit in. The choice is yours.