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Bell hooks

Bell hooks

Overview
Gloria Jean Watkins better known by her pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...

 bell hooks, is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

, and social activist.
Discussion
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Unanswered Questions
Quotations

Revolutionary feminism embraces men who are able to change, who are capable of responding mutually in a subject-to-subject encounter where desire and fulfillment are in no way linked to coercive subjugation. This feminist vision of the sexual imaginary is the space few men seem able to enter.

Outlaw Culture - Resisting Representations (1994) ISBN 0-415-90811-6

The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.

Outlaw Culture - Resisting Representations (1994) ISBN 0-415-90811-6

As we search as a nation for constructive ways to challenge racism and white supremacy, it is absolutely essential that progressive female voices gain a hearing.

Killing Rage - Ending Racism (1995) ISBN 0-8050-5027-2

To counter the fixation on a rhetoric of victimhood, black folks must engage in a discourse of self-determination.

Killing Rage - Ending Racism

Black women control the world. We are through being discriminated against.

Communion - The Female Search for Love (2002) ISBN 0-06-093829-3

"Popular escapist fiction enchants adult readers without challenging them to be educated for critical consciousness." - From 2003 Rock My Soul

"People with healthy self-esteem do not need to create pretend identities." - From 2003 Rock My Soul

"What nationalist educators often fail to recognize is that merely being taught by teachers who are black has not and will not solve the problem if the teachers have been socialized to internalize racist thinking." - From 2003 Rock My Soul

"A dangerous form of psychological splitting had to have taken place, and it continues to take place, in the psyches of many African Americans who can on one hand oppose racism, and then on the other hand passively absorb ways of thinking about beauty that are rooted in white supremacist thought." - From 2003 Rock My Soul

"When television screens had only rare images of black folks, black people were more critically vigilant about these representations. Even when blackness was represented 'positiviely,' as it was in early black television shows like Julia, which focused on the life of a black nurse, the beauty standard was a reflection of white supremacist aesthetics." - From 2003 Rock My Soul

Encyclopedia
Gloria Jean Watkins better known by her pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...

 bell hooks, is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

, and social activist.

Her writing has focused on the interconnectivity of race, class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...

, and gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...

 and what she describes as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression
Oppression
Oppression is the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner. It can also be defined as an act or instance of oppressing, the state of being oppressed, and the feeling of being heavily burdened, mentally or physically, by troubles, adverse conditions, and...

 and domination. She has published over thirty books and numerous scholarly and mainstream articles, appeared in several documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

s and participated in various public lectures. Primarily through a postmodern perspective, hooks has addressed race, class, and gender in education, art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

, history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

, sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...

, mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...

 and feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

.

Early life


Gloria Jean Watkins was born on September 25, 1952 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

. She grew up in a working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...

 family with five sisters and one brother. Her father, Veodis Watkins, was a custodian and her mother, Rosa Bell Watkins, was a homemaker. Throughout her childhood, she was an avid reader.

Her early education took place in racially segregated
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...

 public schools, and she wrote of great adversities when making the transition to an integrated
Racial integration
Racial integration, or simply integration includes desegregation . In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of race, and the development of a culture that draws on diverse traditions, rather than merely...

 school, where teachers and students were predominantly white. She graduated from Hopkinsville High School
Hopkinsville High School
Hopkinsville High School is a four-year public high school located in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, with over 1,000 students. It is operated by the Christian County Public Schools school district.-History:...

 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

, earned her B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 in English from Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 in 1973 and her M.A.
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

 in English from the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...

 in 1976. In 1983, after several years of teaching and writing, she completed her doctorate in the literature department from the University of California, Santa Cruz
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...

 with a dissertation on author Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...

. She also taught at Yale.

Career


Her teaching career began in 1976 as an English professor and senior lecturer in Ethnic Studies at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

. During her three years there, Golemics (Los Angeles) released her first published work, a chapbook
Chapbook
A chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...

 of poems titled "And There We Wept" (1978), written under her pen name, "bell hooks". She adopted her grandmother's name as her pen name because her 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 grandmother." Her name's unconventional lowercasing signifies what is most important in her works: the "substance of books, not who I am."

She taught at several post-secondary institutions in the early 1980s, including the University of California, Santa Cruz
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...

 and San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...

. South End Press
South End Press
South End Press is a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, John Schall, Pat Walker, Juliet Schor, Mary Lea, Joe Bowring, and Dave Millikan, among others, in Boston's South End...

 (Boston) published her first major work, Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism
Ain't I a Woman? (book)
Ain't I a Woman?: Black women and feminism is a 1981 book by bell hooks titled after Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech, ISBN 0-89608-129-X. hooks examines the effect of racism and sexism on black women, the civil rights movement, and feminist movements from suffrage to the seventies...

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 postmodern 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
Cultural critic
A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole and typically on a radical basis. There is significant overlap with social and cultural theory.-Terminology:...

. 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
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....

 to personal memoirs, and sexuality (in regards to feminism and politics of aesthetic/visual culture
Visual culture
Visual Culture as an academic subject is a field of study that generally includes some combination of cultural studies, art history, critical theory, philosophy, and anthropology, by focusing on aspects of culture that rely on visual images.- Overview :...

). A prevalent theme in her most recent writing is the community and communion, the ability of loving 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 and African-American Studies and English at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and American Literature at Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...

 in Oberlin
Oberlin, Ohio
Oberlin is a city in Lorain County, Ohio, United States, to the south and west of Cleveland. Oberlin is perhaps best known for being the home of Oberlin College, a liberal arts college and music conservatory with approximately 3,000 students...

, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

, and as Distinguished Lecturer of English Literature at the City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

.

A commencement speech
Commencement speech
A commencement speech or commencement address is a speech given to graduating students, generally at a university, although the term is also used for secondary education institutions. The "commencement" is a ceremony in which degrees or diplomas are conferred upon graduating students...

 hooks gave in 2002 at Southwestern University
Southwestern University
Southwestern University is a private, four-year, undergraduate, liberal arts college located in Georgetown, Texas, USA. Founded in 1840, Southwestern is the oldest university in Texas. The school is affiliated with the United Methodist Church although the curriculum is nonsectarian...

 was considered controversial. 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. 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 forces with Berea College
Berea College
Berea College is a liberal arts work college in Berea, Kentucky , founded in 1855. Current full-time enrollment is 1,514 students...

 in Berea
Berea, Kentucky
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 9,851 people, 3,693 households, and 2,426 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,055.4 people per square mile . There were 4,115 housing units at an average density of 440.9 per square mile...

, Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

 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 most recent book is entitled belonging: a culture of place, which includes a very candid interview with author Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays...

 as well as a discussion of her move back to Kentucky.

Influences


Writers who have influenced hooks include abolitionist and feminist Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth was the self-given name, from 1843 onward, of Isabella Baumfree, an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son, she...

 (whose speech Ain't I a Woman? inspired her first major work), Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian educator Paulo Freire
Paulo Freire
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and influential theorist of critical pedagogy.-Biography:...

 (whose perspectives on education she embraces in her theory of engaged pedagogy), Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

vian theologian and Dominican
Dominican Order
The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...

 priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...

 Gustavo Gutierrez
Gustavo Gutiérrez
Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, O.P., is a Peruvian theologian and Dominican priest regarded as the founder of Liberation Theology...

, psychologist Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
Erich Seligmann Fromm was a Jewish German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.-Life:Erich Fromm was born on March 23, 1900, at Frankfurt am...

, playwright Lorraine Hansberry
Lorraine Hansberry
Lorraine Hansberry was an African American playwright and author of political speeches, letters, and essays...

, Buddhist monk
Monk
A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...

 Thich Nhat Hanh, writer James Baldwin
James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...

, Guyanese
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...

 historian Walter Rodney
Walter Rodney
Walter Rodney was a prominent Guyanese historian and political activist, who was assassinated in Guyana in 1980.-Career:...

, black nationalist
Black nationalism
Black nationalism advocates a racial definition of indigenous national identity, as opposed to multiculturalism. There are different indigenous nationalist philosophies but the principles of all African nationalist ideologies are unity, and self-determination or independence from European society...

 leader Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...

, and civil rights
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...

 leader Martin Luther King, Jr (who addresses how the strength of love unites communities).

Teaching to Transgress


In her book Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, hooks investigated the classroom as a source of constraint but also a potential source of liberation. She argued 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 advocated that universities encourage students and teachers to transgress, and sought ways to use collaboration to make learning more relaxing and exciting. She described teaching as “a catalyst that calls everyone to become more and more engaged”.

Criticism


She has attracted a measure of criticism, often from conservative writers. Peter Schweizer
Peter Schweizer
Peter Schweizer is a conservative author and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.Schweizer's book Do as I Say : Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy received praise from conservative political pundits including Bill O'Reilly. Schweizer's book Reagan's War was the basis of the...

 has accused her of hypocrisy
Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie....

 in sexual politics
Sexual Politics
Sexual Politics is a classic feminist text written by Kate Millett, said to be "the first book of academic feminist literary criticism", and "one of the first feminist books of this decade to raise nationwide male ire"....

. Writer David Horowitz
David Horowitz
David Joel Horowitz is an American conservative writer and policy advocate. Horowitz was raised by parents who were both members of the American Communist Party. Between 1956 and 1975, Horowitz was an outspoken adherent of the New Left before rejecting Marxism completely...

 has specifically objected a passage in the first chapter of Killing Rage, in which hooks states that she is "sitting beside an anonymous white male that [she] long[s] to murder" because he was complicit in a boarding pass misunderstanding that resulted in the harassment of her black, female friend. Of these kind of "irrational, violent impulses," hooks states, "My irrational impulse to want to kill people who bore me or whose ideas are not very complex clearly has to do with an exaggerated response to situations where I feel powerless."

Awards and nominations

  • Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics: The American Book Award
    American Book Award
    The American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It seeks to recognize outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre...

    s/ Before Columbus Foundation
    Before Columbus Foundation
    The Before Columbus Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1976 by Ishmael Reed, Victor Hernández Cruz, Shawn Wong and Rudolfo Anaya to be "a multi-ethnic organizing dedicated to promoting a pan-cultural view of America," especially through the promotion of multicultural writers.One of...

     Award (1991)
  • Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism: "One of the twenty most influential women’s books in the last 20 years" by Publishers Weekly (1992)
  • 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 Readers "100 Visionaries Who Could Change Your Life"
  • bell hooks: The Atlantic Monthlys "One of our nation’s leading public intellectuals"

Select bibliography

  • Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism
    Ain't I a Woman? (book)
    Ain't I a Woman?: Black women and feminism is a 1981 book by bell hooks titled after Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech, ISBN 0-89608-129-X. hooks examines the effect of racism and sexism on black women, the civil rights movement, and feminist movements from suffrage to the seventies...

    (1981) ISBN 0-89608-129-X
  • All About Love: New Visions
    All About Love: New Visions
    All About Love: New Visions is a book by bell hooks published in 2001. The book discusses aspects of love in modern society. hooks combines personal anecdotes, psychological and philosophical ideas to make her point. She focuses on romantic love and believes that in American culture men have been...

    (2000) ISBN 0-06-095947-9
  • Art on My Mind: Visual Politics (1995) ISBN 1-56584-263-4
  • Be Boy Buzz (2002) ISBN 0-7868-0814-4
  • Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992) ISBN 0-89608-433-7
  • Bone Black: memories of girlhood
    Bone Black: memories of girlhood
    Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood is a memoir by bell hooks. It details her childhood experiences as a poor, African American girl growing up against a background of racial segregation....

    (1996) ISBN 0-8050-5512-6
  • Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life (1991) (with Cornel West
    Cornel West
    Cornel Ronald West is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor, civil rights activist and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America....

    ) ISBN 0-89608-414-0
  • Communion: The Female Search for Love (2002) ISBN 0-06-093829-3
  • Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (2000) ISBN 0-89608-629-1
  • Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
    Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
    Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center is the second book by bell hooks, published in 1984. The book confirmed her importance as a leader in radical feminist thought....

    (1984) ISBN 0-89608-614-3
  • Happy to be Nappy (1999) ISBN 0-7868-0427-0
  • Homemade Love (2002) ISBN 0-7868-0643-5
  • Justice: Childhood Love Lessons (2000)
  • Killing Rage: Ending Racism (1995) ISBN 0-8050-5027-2
  • Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (1994) ISBN 0-415-90811-6
  • Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies (1996)
  • Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work (1999) ISBN 0-8050-5910-5
  • Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-esteem (2003) ISBN 0-7434-5605-X
  • Salvation: Black People and Love (2001) ISBN 0-06-095949-5
  • Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-recovery (1993) ISBN 1-896357-99-7
  • Skin Again (2004) ISBN 0-7868-0825-X
  • Soul Sister: Women, Friendship, and Fulfillment (2005) ISBN 0-89608-735-2
  • Space (2004) ISBN 0-415-96816-X
  • Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (1989) ISBN 0-921284-09-8
  • Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (2003) ISBN 0-415-96817-8
  • Teaching to Transgress: Education As the Practice of Freedom (1994) ISBN 0-415-90808-6
  • We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity
    We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity
    We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity by bell hooks is a book collection of 10 essays on the way in which white culture marginalizes black males. The essays are intended to provide cultural criticism and solutions to the problems she identifies....

    (2004) ISBN 0-415-96926-3
  • Where We Stand: Class Matters (2000) ISBN 9780415929134
  • The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2003) ISBN 0-7434-5607-6
  • Witness (2006) ISBN 0-89608-759-X
  • Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life (1997) ISBN 0-8050-5722-6
  • Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (1990) ISBN 0-921284-34-9
  • ″Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom‘’ (2010) ISBN 0-978-0-415-96820-1

Film appearances

  • Black Is... Black Ain't
    Black is... Black Ain't
    Black is... Black Ain't is a 1994 documentary film directed by Marlon Riggs. The film was awarded the Filmmakers Trophy for best documentary at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival.-Overview:...

    (1994)
  • Give a Damn Again (1995)
  • Cultural Criticism and Transformation (1997)
  • My Feminism (1997)
  • I Am a Man: Black Masculinity in America (2004)
  • Voices of Power (1999)
  • Baadasssss Cinema
    BaadAsssss Cinema
    BaadAsssss Cinema is a 2002 documentary film, directed by Isaac Julien. Julien looks at the Blaxploitation era of the 1970s in this hour long documentary.-Plot:...

    (2002)
  • Writing About a Revolution: A Talk (2004)
  • Happy to Be Nappy and Other Stories of Me (2004)
  • Is Feminism Dead? (2004)

Further reading

  • Florence, Namulundah. bell hooks's Engaged Pedagogy. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1998. ISBN 0-89789-564-9
  • Leitch et al., eds. "Bell Hooks." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. pages 2475-2484. ISBN 0-393-97429-4
  • South End Press
    South End Press
    South End Press is a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, John Schall, Pat Walker, Juliet Schor, Mary Lea, Joe Bowring, and Dave Millikan, among others, in Boston's South End...

     Collective, eds. "Critical Consciousness for Political Resistance"Talking About a Revolution.Cambridge: South End Press
    South End Press
    South End Press is a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, John Schall, Pat Walker, Juliet Schor, Mary Lea, Joe Bowring, and Dave Millikan, among others, in Boston's South End...

    , 1998. 39-52. ISBN 0-89608-587-2
  • Stanley, Sandra Kumamoto, ed. Other Sisterhoods: Literary Theory and U.S. Women of Color. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998. ISBN 0-252-02361-7
  • Wallace, Michelle. Black Popular Culture. New York: The New Press, 1998. ISBN 1-56584-459-9

External links