Bell Hooks Bio
Bell Hooks’ real name Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen name bell hooks, is an American author, professor, feminist, and social activist. The focus of hooks’ writing has been the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she describes as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination.
She has published over 30 books and numerous scholarly articles, appeared in documentary films, and participated in public lectures.
Bell Hooks Age
Bell Hooks was born on September 25, 1952. He is currently 56 years old as per 2019.
Bell Hooks Family
Hooks was born in Hopkinsville, a small, segregated town in Kentucky, to a working-class family. Her father, Veodis Watkins, was a custodian and her mother, Rosa Bell Watkins, was a homemaker. She had five sisters and one brother.
An avid reader, she was educated in racially segregated public schools and wrote of great adversities when making the transition to an integrated school, where teachers and students were predominantly white.
She later graduated from Hopkinsville High School in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. She obtained her BA in English from Stanford University in 1973, and her MA in English from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1976.
In 1983, after several years of teaching and writing, she completed her doctorate in literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a dissertation on author Toni Morrison.
Bell Hooks Husband
Bell Hooks has been in a relationship with Nathaniel Mackey. According to today’s records, bell hooks is possibly single.
Bell Hooks Career
Hooks’ 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 her pen 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 what is most important is her works: 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.
South End Press published her first major work, Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism in 1981, though it was written years earlier, while she was an undergraduate student.
In the decades since its publication, Ain’t I a Woman? has gained widespread recognition as an influential contribution to feminist thought.
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.
Since the publication of Ain’t I a Woman? she has become eminent as a leftist and postmodern political thinker and cultural critic. She targets and appeals to a broad audience by presenting her work in a variety of media using various writing and speaking styles. As well as having written books, she has published in numerous scholarly and mainstream magazines, lectures at widely accessible venues, and appears in various documentaries.
She is frequently cited by feminists as having provided the best solution to the difficulty of defining something as diverse as “feminism”, addressing the problem that if feminism can mean everything, it means nothing. She asserts an answer to the question “what is feminism?” that she says is “rooted in neither fear nor fantasy… ‘Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression’”.
She has published more than 30 books, ranging in topics from black men, patriarchy, and masculinity to self-help, engaged pedagogy to personal memoirs, and sexuality. A prevalent theme in her most recent writing is the community and communion, the ability to love 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.
She has 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 after an “irate Arizonian” had criticized the speech in a letter to the editor. 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 the place, includes a candid interview with author Wendell Berry as well as a discussion of her move back to Kentucky.[19] She has undertaken three scholar-in-residence at The New School. Most recently she did one for a week in October 2014. She engaged in public dialogues with Gloria Steinem, Laverne Cox, and Cornel West.
Bell Hooks Feminist Theory
Noting a lack of diverse voices in popular feminist theory, hooks published Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center in 1984. In this book, she argues that those voices have been marginalized, and states: “To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside the main body.”
She argues that if feminism seeks to make women equal to men, then it is impossible because, in Western society, not all men are equal. She claims, “Women in the lower class and poor groups, particularly those who are non-white, would not have defined women’s liberation as women gaining social equality with men since they are continually reminded in their everyday lives that all women do not share a common social status.”
She used the work as a platform to offer a new, more inclusive feminist theory. Her theory encouraged the long-standing idea of sisterhood but advocated for women to acknowledge their differences while still accepting each other. Hooks challenged feminists to consider gender’s relation to race, class, and sex, a concept known as intersectionality.
She also argues for the importance of male involvement in the equality movement, stating that for change to occur, men must do their part. Hooks also calls for a restructuring of the cultural framework of power, one that does not find the oppression of others necessary.
Part of this restructuring involves allowing men into the feminist movement, so that there is not a separationist ideology, so much as an incorporating camaraderie. Additionally, she shows great appreciation for the movement away from feminist thought as led by bourgeois white women, and towards a multidimensional gathering of both genders to fight for the raising up of women.
This shifts the original focus of feminism away from victimization, towards harboring understanding, appreciation, and tolerance for all genders and sexes so that all are in control of their own destinies, uncontrolled by patriarchal, capitalist tyrants.
Another part of restructuring the movement comes from education: hooks points out that there is an anti-intellectual stigma among the masses. Poor people do not want to hear from intellectuals because they are different and have different ideas. As she points out, this stigma against intellectuals leads to the shunning of poor people who have risen up to graduation from post-secondary education, because they are no longer like the rest of the masses.
In order for us to achieve equality, people must be able to learn from those who have been able to smash these stereotypes. This separation leads to further inequality and in order for the feminist movement to succeed, they must be able to bridge the education gap and relate to those in the lower end of the economic sphere. If they are able to do this, then there will be more success and less inequality.
In “Rethinking The Nature of Work”, hooks goes beyond discussing work and raises a pertinent question that feminists may need to ask themselves. “Many Women active in the feminist movement do not have radical political perspectives and are unwilling to face these realities, especially when they, as individuals, gain economic self-sufficiency within the existing structure.”
Bell Hooks Media Theory
In her book Reel to Real, hooks discuss the effect that movies have on any given individual, with specific emphasis on the black female spectator. She argues that, although we know that movies are not real life, “no matter how sophisticated our strategies of critique and intervention, we are usually seduced, at least for a time, by the images we see on the screen. They have power over us, and we have no power over them.”
Hooks focuses on problematic racial representations. Hooks has written a number of essays and articles, and in Reel, to Real, she describes her experiences growing up watching mainstream movies as well as engaging in the media.
Hooks believes that to engage in the film was to engage in the negation of black female representation in media domination. We keep coming back to the question of representation because identity is always about representation”.
Bell Hooks Books
1. All About Love: New Visions
2. Ain’t I a Woman?
3. Feminism Is for Everybody
4. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
5. Teaching to transgress
6. The will to change
7. Bone Black
8. Black looks
9. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black
10. Killing Rage: Ending Racism
11. We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity
12. Outlaw Culture
13. Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope
14. Communion: The Female Search for Love
15. Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life
16. Yearning
17. Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life
18. Art on my mind
19. Remembered rapture
20. Happy to be Nappy
21. Where We Stand: Class Matters
22. Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies
23. Sisters Of The Yam
24. Skin Again
25. Salvation: Black People and Love
26. Homemade Love
27. Be Boy Buzz
28. Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom
29. Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice
30. Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem
31. Belonging: A Culture of Place
32. Grump Groan Growl
33. Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place
34. A Woman’s Mourning Song
35. When Angels Speak of Love
36. Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism
37. Soul Sister: Women, Friendship, and Fulfillment
38. Uncut Funk: A Contemplative Dialogue
39. Marcia Lippman Sacred Encounters
40. Be Love, Baby Love
41. Todo Sobre El Amor
42. Sisters of the Yam (Audio Edition): Black Women and Self-Recovery
43. Frisettes en fête
44. Hooks
45. Meu Crespo É De Rainha
46. Feminism Is for Everybody – 2015 Edition: Passionate Politics
Bell Hooks Poems
To find more of Bell Hooks poems follow the link below.
Bell Hooks Quotes
1. I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else’s whim or to someone else’s ignorance.
2. I began writing a book on love because I felt that the United States is moving away from love.
3. Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.
4. Many spiritual teachers – in Buddhism, in Islam – have talked about the first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.
5. When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.
6. It’s in the act of having to do things that you don’t want to that you learn something about moving past the self. Past the ego.
7. The political core of any movement for freedom in society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech.
Bell Hooks Net Worth
Bell Hooks’ net worth is estimated to be around $5 million.