Bell hooks

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bell hooks (born Gloria Jean Watkins on September 25, 1952) is an American intellectual, feminist, and social activist. Hooks focuses on the interconnectivity of race, class, and gender and their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and domination. She has published over thirty books and numerous scholarly and mainstream articles, appeared in several documentary films, and participated in various public lectures. Primarily through an African American female perspective, hooks addresses race, class, and gender in education, art, history, sexuality, mass media, and feminism.

Contents 1 Pen name 2 Early life 3 Career 4 Video 5 Influences 6 Criticism 7 Quotations 8 Awards and nominations 9 Select bibliography 10 Film appearances 11 Footnotes 12 Background sources 13 External links

[edit] Pen name

Hooks adopted her pen name from those of her mother and grandmother. Her name uses an unconventional lowercasing, which, to hooks, signifies that what is most important in her works is the "substance of books, not who I am."^[1]

[edit] Early life

hooks was born Gloria Jean Watkins on September 25, 1952 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. She grew up in a working class family with five sisters and one brother. hooks' father, Veodis Watkins, was a custodian, and her mother, Rosa Bell Watkins, was a homemaker. She was raised in an abusive family in an all black community. She writes that the experience of growing up poor, black, and female had a profound effect on her that continues to inform her writing and activism.

hooks' early education took place in racially segregated public schools, and she writes of great difficulty making the transition to an integrated school, where the teachers and students were predominantly white. She graduated from Crispus Attucks High School in Hopkinsville. She received her B.A. in English from Stanford University in 1973 and her M.A. in the same subject from the University of Wisconsin in 1976. In 1983, after several years teaching and writing, hooks completed her doctorate in the literature department from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a dissertation on African American author Toni Morrison.

[edit] Career

hooks began her teaching 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 (Los Angeles) released her first published work, a chapbook of poems titled "And There We Wept" (1978), and written under her pen name, bell hooks.

She taught at several post-secondary institutions in the early 80s, including the University of California, Santa Cruz and San Francisco State University. South End Press (Boston) published her first major work, Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism, in 1981, written while she was an undergraduate student. In the decades since its publication, it has gained widespread recognition as an influential contribution to modern feminist thought.^[2]

Ain’t I a Woman? examines several themes that recur in hooks’s later work. Namely, the history and impact of sexism and racism on black women and the consequential devaluation of black womanhood; the role of the media, the education system, and the white supremacist patriarchal capitalist systems in the marginalization of black women; and the displacement of black women and the disregard for issues of race, class, and gender within feminism.

Since the publication of Ain’t I a Woman?, hooks has become a well-known as a leftist political thinker and cultural critic. hooks tries to reach a broad audience by presenting her work in a variety of media and using writing and speaking styles that are audience-specific. As well as writing books, hooks publishes numerous articles in scholarly journals and mainstream magazines, lectures at widely accessible venues, and appears in various documentary films.

She has published over thirty books, ranging in topics from black men and masculinity to self-help, engaged pedagogy to personal memoir, and sexuality to the politics of visual culture. A theme in hooks’s most recent writing is the ability of community and love to overcome race, class, and gender. In three conventional books and four children's books, she tries to demonstrate that communication and literacy (the ability to read, write, and think critically) is the key 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 Afro-American Studies and English at Yale University, as 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.

hooks gave a controversial commencement speech in 2002 at Southwestern University, then her employer. Eschewing the congratulatory mode of traditional commencement speeches, hooks spoke of government-sanctioned violence and oppression, and admonished students who went with the flow. The speech was booed by many in the audience, though "several graduates passed over the provost to shake hooks' hand or give her a hug."^[3]

In 2004 hooks joined the faculty of Berea College in Berea, Kentucky as Distinguished Professor in Residence,^[4] where she participates 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".

bell hooks believes that in order for the feminist perspective to make a difference in the world, feminists must return back to their original grassroots efforts. hooks believes that today most feminist thinkers and theorists do their work in the elite setting of the University and, because of this, their work is written in highly academic language that is not easily understood by those who have not completed post-secondary education. hooks believes this type of language is evident in the works that she herself produced during the first half of her career. hooks believes she is doing her part to return feminism to it's roots by striving to write her works in language that is more accessible to all people.

[edit] Video

In a two-part video, extensively illustrated with many of the images under analysis, hooks argues for the transformative power of cultural criticism.

In Part One, hooks discusses the theoretical foundations and positions that inform her work (such as the motives behind representations, as well as their power in social and cultural life). hooks also explains why she insists on using the phrase "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" to describe the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality.

In Part Two, she discusses the value of cultural studies in concrete analysis through such subjects as the OJ Simpson case, Madonna, Spike Lee, and Gangsta rap. The aim of cultural analysis, she argues, should be the production of enlightened witnesses - audiences who engaged with the representations of cultural life knowledgeably and vigilantly.

"The issue is not freeing ourselves from representations. It's really about being enlightened witnesses when we watch representations." -bell hooks

[edit] Influences

hooks' influences include abolitionist and feminist Sojourner Truth (whose speech Ain't I a Woman? inspired hooks' first major work), Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (whose persectives on education hooks embraces in her theory of engaged pedagogy), theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, writer James Baldwin, black nationalist leader Malcolm X, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.^[5]

[edit] Criticism

Some writers have criticized hooks. David Horowitz mocks her statement that "it is difficult not to hear in standard English always the sound of slaughter and conquest" (Teaching to Transgress, p.169).^[6] Peter Schweizer accuses her of hypocrisy in sexual politics,^[7] and Jamie Glazov accuses her of "gutter hate diatribes."^[8]

One passage Horowitz and Glazov specifically object to is a discussion 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".^[9] She explains that her impulse was occasioned by a ticket/boarding pass dispute involving her black and female friend. To hooks, the dispute was symptomatic of the role of racism and sexism in American society, describing her reaction to this man, and of another white man who was similarly given preferential treatment:^[10]

It was not a question of your giving up the seat, it was an occasion for you to intervene in the harassment of a young black woman and you chose your own comfort and tried to deflect away from your complicity in that choice by offering an insincere, face saving apology... It was this sequences of racialized incidents involving black women that intensified my rage against the white man sitting next to me. I felt a 'Killing Rage.' I wanted to stab him softly, to shoot him with the gun I wished I had in my purse. And as I watched his pain, I would say to him tenderly 'racism hurts.'-bell hooks, Killing Rage

[edit] Quotations

• "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
• "The more Lil' Kim distorted her natural beauty to become a cartoonlike caricature of whiteness, the larger her success." - From 2003 Rock My Soul
• "Indeed much of the literature written about black folks in the post-civil rights era emphasized the need for jobs. Material advancement was deemed the pressing agenda. Mental health concerns were not a high priority." - From 2003 Rock My Soul

[edit] Awards and nominations

• Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics: The American Book Awards/ Before Columbus Foundation 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 Reader’s “100 Visionaries Who Could Change Your Life”
• bell hooks: The Atlantic Monthly's “One of our nation’s leading public intellectuals”

[edit] Select bibliography

• Ain't I a Woman?: Black women and feminism (1981) ISBN 0-89608-129-X
• Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984) ISBN 0-89608-614-3
• Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (1989) ISBN 0-921284-09-8
• Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (1990) ISBN 0-921284-34-9
• Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life (1991) (with Cornel West) ISBN 0-89608-414-0
• Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992) ISBN 0-89608-433-7
• Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-recovery (1993) ISBN 1-896357-99-7
• Teaching to Transgress: Education As the Practice of Freedom (1994)ISBN 0-415-90808-6
• Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (1994) ISBN 0-415-90811-6
• Art on My Mind: Visual Politics (1995) ISBN 1-56584-263-4
• Killing Rage: Ending Racism (1995) ISBN 0-8050-5027-2
• Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood (1996) ISBN 0-8050-5512-6
• Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies (1996)
• Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life (1997) ISBN 0-8050-5722-6
• Happy to be Nappy (1999) ISBN 0-7868-0427-0
• Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work (1999) ISBN 0-8050-5910-5
• All About Love: New Visions(2000) ISBN 0-06-095947-9
• Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (2000) ISBN 0-89608-629-1
• Where We Stand: Class Matters (2000)
• Salvation: Black People and Love (2001) ISBN 0-06-095949-5
• Communion: The Female Search for Love (2002) ISBN 0-06-093829-3
• Homemade Love (2002) ISBN 0-7868-0643-5
• Be Boy Buzz (2002) ISBN 0-7868-0814-4
• Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-esteem (2003) ISBN 0-7434-5605-X
• The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2003) ISBN 0-7434-5607-6
• Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (2003) ISBN 0-415-96817-8
• We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (2004) ISBN 0-415-96926-3
• Skin Again (2004) ISBN 0-7868-0825-X
• Space (2004) ISBN 0-415-96816-X
• Soul Sister: Women, Friendship, and Fulfillment (2005) ISBN 0-89608-735-2
• Witness (2006) ISBN 0-89608-759-X

[edit] Film appearances

• Black Is, Black Ain't (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 (2002)
• Writing About a Revolution: A talk (2004)
• Happy to Be Nappy and other stories of me (2004)
• Is Feminism Dead? (2004)

[edit] Footnotes

1. ^ Heather Williams. bell hooks Speaks Up. The Sandspur (2/10/06). Retrieved on 2006-09-10.
2. ^ Google Scholar, for example, shows 894 citations of Ain't I a Woman (as of August 30, 2006)
3. ^ http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A93217
4. ^ http://www.berea.edu/catalog/officers.asp
5. ^ Notes on IAPL 2001 keynote speaker, bell hooks
6. ^ "Top 10 Most Dangerous Academics in America," Human Events, February 13, 2006, p.10
7. ^ Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, Peter Schweizer, Doubleday, 2005, p.9
8. ^ bell hooks and the Politics of Hate
9. ^ hooks, bell. Killing Rage, p. 8. Henry Holt & Co. New York, NY. 1995
10. ^ hooks, bell. Killing Rage, p. 11. Henry Holt & Co. New York, NY. 1995

[edit] Background sources

• Florence, Namulundah. bell hooks' 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. 2475-2484. ISBN 0-393-97429-4
• South End Press Collective, eds. “Critical Consciousness for Political Resistance”Talking About a Revolution.Cambridge: South End Press, 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

[edit] External links

• University of Pennsylvania hooks' article “Postmodern Blackness”
• The ejournal website link to several critical resources for bell hooks
• Shambhala Sun link to hooks' articles published in Shambhala Sun Magazine
• Real Change News link to hooks' interview with Rosette Royale
• bell hooks and the Politics of Hate Criticism of hooks
• all about bell link to biography, interviews, articles, and book information
• Crossing Boundaries, Reaching Out: The Public Scholarship of bell hooks link to article by Alice Marwick
• University of California, Santa Barbara link to a biographical sketch of hooks
• Z Magazine - Challenging Capitalism & Patriarchy: Third World Viewpoint interviews bell hooks