bell hooks is an American author, feminist, and social activist whose work deals with issues of race, gender, class, and sexual oppression.
hooks was born Gloria Jean Watkins in 1952, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, a small, segregated town in rural Kentucky. Her experience in growing up within this community shaped her feminism and her father represented the fierce oppression she would later come to associate with the patriarchy. hooks’ early education began in segregated public schools where the majority of her teachers were single black women who helped to shape the self-esteem of children of colour. In the late 1960’s, Kentucky schools became desegregated and hooks experienced great adversities when making the transition to an integrated school where the majority of the teachers and students were white.
hooks began writing poetry at the age of ten and despite a lack of support for her writing from her family who felt that, as a woman she should be focusing on a more traditional role, she pursued her passion. hooks combined her love of reading with public speaking, often reciting poems and scriptures in her church congregation. She also gained a reputation for being a woman who “talked back” instead of the quiet, demure young woman she was supposed to become. She would later name a volume of essays after this discussing the development of a strong sense of self that allows black women to speak out against racism and sexism.
hooks graduated from Hopkinsville High School in Hopkinsville, Kentucky and accepted a scholarship to Stanford University, in California where she earned a B.A. in English in 1973. While at Stanford, hooks began writing “Ain’t I a Woman” inspired by African-American abolitionist and feminist Sojourner Truth. She managed to write in between her studies and a job as a telephone operator. Her job provided her with an opportunity to be among a community of working-class, black women.
hooks then attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison where she earned an M.A. in English. In 1976 she began teaching as an English professor and senior lecturer in Ethnic Studies at the University of Southern California. While at the University, a chapbook of poems titled “And There We Wept” (1978) was published under her pen name, “bell hooks”. hooks adopted her grandmother’s name as she was known for her “snappy and bold tongue” to both honour her female ancestors and rebel against the woman that she had been expected to become. She chose to only use lower case letters to get away from the ego associated with names. In 1983 after a few years of teaching and writing, she completed her doctorate in the literature department from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a dissertation on author Toni Morrison.
During the early 80’s, hooks continued her teaching career. She felt that, as a woman of colour for whom historically and legally she would have previously been denied the right to education, teaching was one of the best forms of political resistance she could choose. In 1981, after six years of rewriting, “Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism” was published by South End Press (Boston). The book became a key work in discussions of racism and sexism and has gained widespread recognition as an influential contribution to postmodern feminist thought.
hooks held the position of Professor of African-American Studies and English at Yale University until 1988 when she joined the faculty at Oberlin College as an Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and American Literature at Oberlin College. The program offered a critique of racism that was absent during her undergraduate years. She has also held the position of Distinguished Lecturer of English Literature at the City College of New York. In 2004, she joined Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, as Distinguished Professor in Residence.
hooks has written more than 30 books on topics including black men, patriarchy and masculinity to self-help, engaged pedagogy to personal memoirs, and sexuality. She believes that communication and education are crucial to developing healthy communities and relationships that are not marred by race, class, or gender inequalities. hooks has challenged feminists to consider gender’s relation to race, class, and sex, a concept coined as intersectionality. She believes that there must be solidarity: between genders, races and classes and that if there is to be liberation for women, men must also play a role in the struggle to expose, confront, oppose, and transform sexism.
hooks continues to be a provocative feminist theorist and remains an important figure in the fight against racism and sexism in America.