It was during her time there that she adopted the pen name bell hooks for a chapbook of poems, And There We Wept. Soon after, hooks began her career as an educator at the University of Southern California, where she was a senior lecturer in ethnic studies and a professor of English. Her studies continued at University of Wisconsin, from which she obtained a master’s degree in English in 1976. Hooks eventually landed at Stanford University, where she earned a degree in English literature in 1974.

Every night we would try to sleep, but the sounds of her writing or page turning caused us to yell down to Mom to make her turn the light off.”

As a child, hooks showed a hunger for knowledge, spending all of her free time reading and dreaming about leaving her hometown.Īs her siblings said in a statement following hooks’ death, “Gloria learned to read and write at an early age and even proclaimed she would be famous one day. Her parents, Rosa Bell Watkins and Veodis Watkins, were a homemaker and a postal worker, respectively. “I know from teaching her work in my classes what an enormous, and lasting impact her writing has had on generations of our students-and on generations of scholar-activists across our country and the globe.”īorn Gloria Jean Watkins on September 25, 1952, hooks grew up in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. “Her career has been extraordinary,” said Bettina Aptheker, a longtime friend of hooks and Distinguished Professor of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz. “It was here as a graduate that I dared to dream beyond the fate that was designated for me as a Black woman,” hooks said during a 2007 lecture she gave on campus.

She was also a proud graduate of UC Santa Cruz, earning a doctorate in literature in 1983 with her dissertation on Toni Morrison. Hooks was the author of over two dozen books that ranged from the groundbreaking text Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism to her deeply felt memoir Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood to her acclaimed children’s book Happy To Be Nappy. Bell hooks, celebrated feminist theorist, cultural critic, artist, and writer, died on Wednesday, Dec.

Bell hooks happy to be nappy