= Bell_hooks =

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= Bell_hooks =
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Introduction
======================================================================
Gloria Jean Watkins (September 25, 1952 - December 15, 2021), better
known by her pen name bell hooks (stylized in lowercase), was an
American author, theorist, educator, and social critic who was a
Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College. She was best
known for her writings on race, feminism, and class. She used the
lower-case spelling of her name to decenter herself and draw attention
to her work instead. The focus of hooks' writing was to explore the
intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she
described as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of
oppression and class 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.

She began her academic career in 1976 teaching English and ethnic
studies at the University of Southern California. She later taught at
several institutions including Stanford University, Yale University,
New College of Florida, and The City College of New York, before
joining Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, in 2004. In 2014, hooks also
founded the bell hooks Institute at Berea College. Her pen name was
borrowed from her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks.hooks,
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.

Early life
======================================================================
Gloria Jean Watkins was born on September 25, 1952, to a working-class
African-American family, in Hopkinsville, a small, segregated town in
Kentucky. Watkins was one of six children born to Rosa Bell Watkins
('née' Oldham) and Veodis Watkins. Her father worked as a janitor and
her mother worked as a maid in the homes of white families. In her
memoir 'Bone 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".

An avid reader (with poets William Wordsworth, Langston Hughes,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Gwendolyn Brooks among her favorites),
Watkins was educated in racially segregated public schools, later
moving to an integrated school in the late 1960s. This experience
greatly influenced her perspective as an educator, and it inspired
scholarship on education practices as seen in her book, 'Teaching to
Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom'. She graduated from
Hopkinsville High School before obtaining her BA in English from
Stanford University in 1973, and her MA in English from the University
of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976. During this time, Watkins was writing
her book 'Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism', which she began
writing at the age of 19 ( 1971) and then published (as bell hooks) in
1981.

In 1983, after several years of teaching and writing, hooks 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".

Influences
======================================================================
Included among hooks' influences is the American abolitionist and
feminist Sojourner Truth. Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" inspired hooks'
first major book. Also, the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire is
mentioned in hooks' book 'Teaching to Transgress'. His perspectives on
education are present in the first chapter, "engaged pedagogy". Other
influences include Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, psychologist
Erich Fromm, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, Buddhist monk Thích Nhất
Hạnh, and African American writer James Baldwin.

Figures who influenced hooks include African-American abolitionist and
feminist Sojourner Truth (whose speech 'Ain't I a Woman?' inspired her
first major work), Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (whose perspectives
on education she embraces in her theory of engaged pedagogy), Peruvian
theologian and Dominican priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, psychologist Erich
Fromm, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh,
African-American writer James Baldwin, Guyanese historian Walter
Rodney, African-American black nationalist leader Malcolm X, and
African-American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (who
addresses how the strength of love unites communities). She said of
Martin Luther King Jr.'s notion of a beloved community, "He had a
profound awareness that the people involved in oppressive institutions
will not change from the logics and practices of domination without
engagement with those who are striving for a better way."

Teaching and writing
======================================================================
She began her academic career 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 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".
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]". 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."

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), Oberlin College
(1988 to 1994, as associate professor of American literature and
women's studies), and, beginning in 1994, as distinguished professor
of English at 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 she had started writing it
years earlier at the age of 19, while still an undergraduate. In the
decades since its publication, 'Ain't I a Woman?' has been recognized
for its contribution to feminist thought, with 'Publishers Weekly' in
1992 naming it "one of the twenty most influential women's books in
the last 20 years". Writing in 'The New York Times' in 2019, Min Jin
Lee said that 'Ain'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."
'Ain't I a Woman?' examines themes including 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 and the marginalization of
black women.

At the same time, hooks became significant as a leftist and postmodern
political thinker and cultural critic. She published more than 30
books, ranging in topics from black men, patriarchy, and masculinity
to self-help; engaged pedagogy to personal memoirs; and sexuality (in
regards to feminism and politics of aesthetics and visual culture).
'Reel to Real: race, sex, and class at the movies' (1996) collects
film essays, reviews, and interviews with film directors. In 'The New
Yorker', Hua Hsu said these interviews displayed the facet of hooks'
work that was "curious, empathetic, searching for comrades".

In 'Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center' (1984), hooks develops a
critique of white feminist racism in second-wave feminism, which she
argued undermined the possibility of feminist solidarity across racial
lines.

As hooks argued, communication and literacy (the ability to read,
write, and think critically) are necessary for the feminist movement
because without them people may not grow to recognize gender
inequalities in society.

In 'Teaching to Transgress' (1994), hooks' attempts a new approach to
education for minority students. Particularly, hooks' strives to make
scholarship on theory accessible to "be read and understood across
different class boundaries".

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. '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".

In 2004, she joined Berea College as Distinguished Professor in
Residence. Her 2008 book, 'belonging: a culture of place', includes an
interview with author Wendell Berry as well as a discussion of her
move back to Kentucky. She was a scholar in residence at The New
School on three occasions, the last time in 2014. Also in 2014, the
'bell hooks Institute' was founded at Berea College; in 2017 she
dedicated her papers to the college.

During her time at Berea College, hooks also founded the bell hooks
center along with professor Dr. M. Shadee Malaklou. 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. The center cites hooks' 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.

She was often critical of the films of Spike 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." 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 imperilaism and colonialism" and the film
"certainly" did not contain Malcolm's "critique of capitalism". She
also said that he wrote Black women in the same objectifying way that
White male filmmakers write the characters of White women.

She also criticized the documentary 'Paris Is Burning' for depicting
the ritual of the balls as a spectacle to "pleasure" white spectators.

She was inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2018.

In 2020, during the George Floyd protests, there was a resurgence of
interest in hooks' work on racism, feminism, and capitalism.

Personal life and death
======================================================================
Regarding her sexual identity, hooks described herself as
"queer-pas-gay". She used 'pas' from the French language, translating
to 'not' in the English language. She describes being queer in her own
words as follows: "As the essence of queer, I think of Tim 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." 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."

On December 15, 2021, bell hooks died from kidney failure at her home
in Berea, Kentucky, aged 69.

Buddhism
==========
Through her interest in Beat poetry and after an encounter with the
poet and Buddhist Gary Snyder, hooks was first introduced to Buddhism
in her early college years. 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. 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.

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.

Buddhist thought, especially the work of Thích Nhất Hạnh, appears in
multiple of hooks' essays, books, and poetry. 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.

Legacy and impact
======================================================================
Bell hooks was included in Utne Reader's 1995 "100 Visionaries Who
Could Change Your Life" and included in TIME 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".

With a literary repertoire comprising over 30 books and contributions
to prominent magazines such as Ms., Essence, and Tricycle: The
Buddhist Review, hooks commands attention with her blend of social
commentary, autobiography, and feminist critique. Regardless of the
subject matter, her writings consistently display scholarly rigor
conveyed through accessible prose.

Prior to her tenure at Berea College, hooks held teaching positions at
esteemed institutions like Stanford, Yale, and The 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".

The popularity of hooks' writing surged amidst the racial justice
movements ignited by the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in
2020, with her book 'All About Love: New Visions' entering the New
York Times bestseller list over 20 years after its publication.

''Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom''
======================================================================
In her 1994 book 'Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of
Freedom,' hooks writes about a transgressive approach in education
where educators can teach students to "transgress" against what she
sees as racial, sexual, and class boundaries. She sees the classroom
as a source of constraint but also a potential source of liberation.
She argues that teachers' use of control and power over students dulls
the students' enthusiasm and teaches obedience to authority,
"confin[ing] each pupil to a rote, assembly-line approach to
learning". She advocates that universities should encourage students
and teachers to transgress, and seeks ways to use collaboration to
make learning more relaxing and exciting. She describes teaching as a
performative act and teachers as catalysts that invite everyone to
become more engaged and activated. According to hooks, the
performative aspect of learning "offers the space for change,
invention, spontaneous shifts, that can serve as a catalyst drawing
out the unique elements in each classroom". She dedicates a chapter
of the book to Paulo Freire, written in a form of a dialogue between
herself, Gloria Watkins, and her writing voice, Bell Hooks. In the
last chapter of the book, hooks raises the question of eros or the
erotic in classroom environments. According to hooks, eros and the
erotic do not need to be denied for learning to take place. She argues
that one of the central tenets of feminist pedagogy has been to
subvert the mind-body dualism and allow oneself as a teacher to be
whole in the classroom, and as a consequence wholehearted.

''Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope''
======================================================================
In 2004, 10 years after the success of 'Teaching to Transgress', Bell
Hooks published 'Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope'. In this
book, hooks offers advice about how to continue to make the classroom
what she sees as a place that is life-sustaining and mind expanding, a
place of liberating mutuality where teacher and student together work
in partnership. She writes that education as a practice of freedom
enables us to confront feelings of loss and restore our sense of
connections and consequently teaches us how to create community.

''Feminist Theory''
======================================================================
In 1984, hooks published 'Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center' .
Here she argues that popular feminist theory has marginalized diverse
voices, and states: "To be in the margin is to be part of the whole
but outside the main body." She argues that it is impossible for
feminism to make women equal to men because in Western society not all
men are equal. She says, "Women in 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 offers what she sees as a new, more inclusive feminist theory. Her
theory encourages the long-standing idea of sisterhood, but advocates
that women acknowledge their differences while accepting each other.
She urges feminists to consider gender's relation to race, class, and
sex, a concept which came to be known as intersectionality. She argues
for the importance of male involvement in the movement toward
equality, as necessary for change to occur. She calls for a
restructuring of the cultural framework of power to one that does not
find the oppression of others necessary.

Part of this restructuring involves accepting men into the feminist
movement, so that a separatist ideology is discouraged in favor of an
inclusive one. Additionally, hooks wants feminism to move away from
the predominant views of bourgeois white women and toward a movement
of varied social classes, and both genders, for the raising up of
women.

Another part of restructuring the movement involves education: hooks
observes that there is an anti-intellectual bias among the masses.
Poor people do not want to hear from intellectuals, according to
hooks, because they are different and have different ideas. This bias
against intellectuals leads the poor to shun those people of poor
backgrounds who have risen up to graduation from post-secondary
education, because they are no longer like the rest of the masses. In
order for society to achieve equality, hooks says people must be able
to learn from those who have been able to break these stereotypes.
This separation of the poor from their potential teachers leads to
further inequality, according to hooks, and in order for the feminist
movement to succeed, it must be able to bridge the education gap and
relate to those at the lower end of the economic sphere. In the
chapter "Rethinking The Nature of Work", hooks criticizes those in the
feminist movement who "do not have radical political perspectives" and
accept the existing economic structure, especially when they are
successful within it.

''Reel to Real''
======================================================================
In her book 'Reel to Real', hooks discusses the effect that movies
have on the 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."

She focuses on what she sees as problematic racial representations.
She describes her experiences growing up watching mainstream movies
and
other media and believes that film's representations have largely
negated the black female. She states, "Representation is the 'hot'
issue right now because it's a major realm of power for any system of
domination. We keep coming back to the question of representation
because identity is always about representation".

''Black Looks: Race and Representation''
======================================================================
In her book 'Black Looks: Race and Representation', in the chapter
"The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators", hooks discusses what
she calls an "oppositional gaze". She describes it as a way for black
people, especially black women, to develop a critical approach to
mass media. Writing that for her this "gaze" had always been
political, hooks says that the idea began when she thought about
incidents of black slaves being punished merely for gazing at their
white owners. She wondered how much such experience had been absorbed
and carried through the generations to affect black spectatorship and
black parenting. hooks writes that because she remembered how she had
dared to look at adults as a child, even though she was forbidden to,
she knew that slaves had looked too. Drawing on Michel Foucault's
thoughts about power always coexisting with the possibility of
resistance, hooks discusses this looking as a form of resistance, as a
way of finding voice and declaring: "Not only will I stare. I want my
look to change reality."

She writes that when black people started watching films and
television in the United States, they realized that mass media was
part of the system of white supremacy, and thus watching became a
space for black people to develop a critical spectatorship; an
oppositional gaze. Prior to racial integration, according to hooks,
black viewers "... experienced visual pleasure in a context where
looking was also about contestation and confrontation". However, she
avers that this spectatorship was quite different for black women than
for black men. According to hooks, black men could renounce the racism
of the screen images while also imagining "phallocentric" power by
objectifying the white female cast as the object of male desire;
privately rebelling against a reality in which black men were punished
for publicly gazing at white women.

For hooks, black women's spectatorship was more complicated. In a
media environment that was both racist and sexist, black female bodies
were largely absent from early motion pictures and, when present, were
there in maidservant roles to "... enhance and maintain white
womanhood as object of the phallocentric gaze". The response of many
black women, according to hooks, was to turn away in alienation from
such images. Another was to evade conflict and be entertained by
identifying with the white female object of desire. A third
possibility was the oppositional gaze, a willingness to stare
critically at the on-screen images with the intent to change reality.

According to hooks, the more black women are able to construct
themselves as subjects rather than objects in daily life, the more
they are likely to develop an oppositional gaze. This process is
affected in turn by the representation of black women in mass media.
Thus, hooks stresses the importance of black female film makers such
as Julie Dash, Ayoka Chenzira, and Zeinabu Davis among others.
-->

Films
======================================================================
*'Black is... Black Ain't' (1994)
*'Give a Damn Again' (1995)
*'Cultural Criticism and Transformation' (1997)
*'My Feminism' (1997)
*'Voices of Power' (1999)
*'BaadAsssss Cinema' (2002)
*'I Am a Man: Black Masculinity in America' (2004)

*'Happy to Be Nappy and Other Stories of Me' (2004)
*'Is Feminism Dead?' (2004)
*'Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets Action' (2008)
*'Occupy Love' (2012)
*'Hillbilly' (2018)

Awards and nominations
======================================================================
*'Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics': The American Book
Awards / Before Columbus Foundation Award (1991)
*bell hooks: The Writer's Award from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest
Fund (1994)
*'Happy to Be Nappy': NAACP Image Award nominee (2001)
*'Homemade Love': The Bank Street College Children's Book of the Year
(2002)
*'Salvation: Black People and Love': Hurston/Wright Legacy Award
nominee (2002)
*bell hooks: 'Utne Reader's' "100 Visionaries Who Could Change Your
Life"
*bell hooks: 'The Atlantic Monthly's' "One of our nation's leading
public intellectuals"
*bell hooks: 'Time' 100 Women of the Year, 2020

Adult books
=============
*
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* Excerpted in
*
*With Cornel West,
*
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*
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*
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*With Amalia Mesa-Bains,
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*With Stuart Hall, 'Uncut Funk: A Contemplative Dialogue', Foreword by
Paul Gilroy. New York, NY: Routledge. 2018. .

Book sections
===============
*
*
*
*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160304064830/http://www.feminish.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/bell-hooks-Selling-Hot-Pussy-representation-of-black-womens-sexuality.pdf
Pdf.]
*
*

Further reading
======================================================================
*
*
*Leitch et al., eds. "bell hooks". 'The Norton Anthology of Theory and
Criticism'. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001. pp. 2475-2484.
*
*
*
*

External links
======================================================================
* [https://bereaarchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/resources/137
bell hooks papers] (archival finding aid published by Berea College
Special Collections & Archives)
*[https://www.lionsroar.com/author/bell-hooks/ bell hooks articles]
published in 'Lion's Roar' magazine.
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070927203415/http://www.southendpress.org/authors/46
South End Press] (books by hooks published by South End Press)
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20060222215043/http://www.library.ucsb.edu/libwaves/mar00/hooks.html
University of California, Santa Barbara] (biographical sketch of
hooks)
*[https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Postmodern_Blackness_18270.html
"Postmodern Blackness"] (article by hooks)
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070730222132/http://www.wholeterrain.org/bio.cfm?Contributor_ID=198
Whole Terrain] (articles by hooks published in 'Whole Terrain')
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20070119143606/http://www.soaw.org/new//article.php?id=910
Challenging Capitalism & Patriarchy] (interviews with hooks by
Third World Viewpoint)
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20110707174919/http://ascentmagazine.com/articles.aspx?articleID=133&page=read&subpage=past&issueID=24
Ingredients of Love] (an interview with 'Ascent' magazine)
*
*
**[https://www.c-span.org/video/?169843-1/depth-bell-hooks 'In Depth'
interview with hooks, May 5, 2002]
*Lawrence Chua, [https://bombmagazine.org/articles/bell-hooks/ "bell
hooks"] (interview), 'BOMB' magazine, July 1, 1994
*[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/dec/16/bell-hooks-remembered-she-reminded-us-of-the-better-world-we-were-working-towards
"bell hooks remembered: 'She embodied everything I wanted to be'"],
'The Guardian', December 16, 2021.
*[https://mediadiversified.org/2021/12/16/for-bell-hooks/ "For bell
hooks"], Media Diversified, December 16, 2021.
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkJKJZU7xXU "Remembering bell hooks
& Her Critique of 'Imperialist White Supremacist
Heteropatriarchy]. 'Democracy Now!'
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJk0hNROvzs "bell hooks - Are You
Still a Slave? Liberating the Black Female Body | Eugene Lang
College"], The New School (via YouTube), May 6, 2014.

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=========
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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_hooks