Bell Hooks Popular Books
Bell Hooks Biography & Facts
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. 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 at the age of 19 (c. 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. 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 written it years earlier 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 raci.... Discover the Bell Hooks popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Bell Hooks books.
Best Seller Bell Hooks Books of 2024
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Respondona
bell hooksTras la buena acogida de Todo sobre el amor de bell hooks, una de las voces del feminismo más relevantes de la actualidad, publicamos Respondona, un recorrido intelectual por su la...
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Black Women Taught Us
Jenn M. JacksonA reclamation of essential history and a hopeful gesture toward a better political future, this is what listening to Black women looks likefrom a professor of political science and...
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Critical Digital Pedagogy in Higher Education
Suzan Köseoğlu, George Veletsianos & Chris RowellRecent efforts to solve the problems of educationcreated by neoliberalism in and out of higher educationhave centred on the use of technology that promises efficiency, progress tra...
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All About Love
bell hooksA New York Times bestseller and enduring classic, All About Love is the acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' "Love Song to the Nation" trilogy. All About Love ...
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Growing Out
Barbara Blake Hannah'A gorgeously exuberant account. . . writing that is natural and vivacious . . . a fascinating and hugely enjoyable read.' Bernardine Evaristo, from the IntroductionTravelling over...
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Medieval Writings on Secular Women
Penguin Books Ltd'Woman, who is equal to the moon in the flower of youth,Is equal to a little old ape after the onset of old age'This remarkable collection brings together a host of writings from a...
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Flat-Footed Truths
Patricia Bell-Scott & Juanita Johnson-BaileyA new and exciting collection from Patricia BellScott, the editor of the enormously successful Life Notes and the awardwinning Double Stitch. With a foreword by Marcia Ann Gillespi...
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Jane Austen and Her Times
G. E. MittonOf Jane Austen's life there is little to tell, and that little has been told more than once by writers whose relationship to her made them competent to do so. It is impossible ...
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Peter Pan
J.M. Barrie & Alison LurieGenerations of readers have traveled to Neverland and all the secret places of a child's heart. A story rich in adventure, humor, and sadness, J.M. Barrie's masterpiece remains a s...
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Black Joy
Tracey Michae'l Lewis-GiggettsWinner of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work Instructional With deeply personal and uplifting essays in the vein of Black Girls Rock!, You Are Your Best Thing, an...
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Gender Talk
Johnnetta B. Cole & Beverly Guy-SheftallWhy has the African American community remained silent about gender even as race has moved to the forefront of our nation’s consciousness? In this important new book, two of the na...
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Peter Pan
J.M. BarrieThe character of Peter Pan first came to life in the stories J. M. Barrie told to five brothers three of whom were named Peter, John, and Michael. Peter Pan is considered one of t...
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Sister to Sister
Patricia FosterSister to Sister includes essays and stories by:Meena AlexanderRobin BehnLouise DeSalvoErika DuncanMaria FlookPatricia FosterBonnie FriedmanDonna GordonLucy GrealyJoy HarjoBell Hoo...
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Critical Perspectives on bell hooks
Maria del Guadalupe Davidson & George YancyAlthough bell hooks has long challenged the dominant paradigms of race, class, and gender, there has never been a comprehensive book critically reflecting upon this seminal scholar...
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True Peace Work
Parallax Press & Thích Nhất HạnhThich Nhat Hanh, His Holiness The Dalai Lama, bell hooks, Bill McKibben, Gary Snyder, Maha Ghosananda, Charles Johnson, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Matthieu Ricard, and many others are featured...
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Remembered rapture
bell hooksIn Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work, awardwinning author and renowned academic “bell hooks reveals the heart of her writing life and the process through which she has come to...
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What Would de Beauvoir Do
Tabi Jackson Gee & Freya RoseEver thought about what Tinder advice Naomi Wolf would give you?Ever wondered what Andrea Dworkin would think about your Brazilian wax? Or what Mary Wollstonecraft would think abou...
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Kraftwerk
Tim BarrThe future of modern music began in Dusseldorf in 1970, when an avantgarde German band, the Organisation reinvented themselves as Kraftwerk and set in motion a train of events whic...
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Herland
Charlotte Perkins GilmanHerland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of women who reproduce via parthenogene...
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A History of Masculinity
Ivan Jablonka & Nathan Bracher'Exhilarating . . . a work of scholarship, but also inspiration. . . Go and read Jablonka and change the world' Christina Patterson, Sunday Times'An unexpected bestseller in Franc...
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Peter Pan
James M. BarriePeter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up or Peter and Wendy is J. M. Barrie's most famous work, in the form of a 1904 play and a 1911 novel, respectively. Both versions tell the...
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James Matthew Barrie, Peter Pan
James Matthew BarrieEr wird niemals erwachsen, und er kann fliegen – Peter Pan!Die Stücke und Geschichten aus der Feder des Schotten James M. Barrie machten ihn unsterblich, zahlreiche Verfilmungen tr...
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Peter Pan
James Matthew Barrie, Francis Donkin Bedford & Arthur Rackham“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.” J. M. Barrie, Peter PanJoin Peter, Wendy, Tinker Bell, and a cast of other familiar characters o...
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Bullets into Bells
Brian Clements, Colum McCann, Alexandra Teague & Dean RaderA powerful call to end American gun violence from celebrated poets and those most impactedFocused intensively on the crisis of gun violence in America, this volume brings together ...
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Todo sobre el amor
bell hooksTodo sobre el amor ofrece nuevas formas radicales de pensar sobre el amor al mostrar su interconexión en nuestra vida privada y pública. En once capítulos concisos, hooks explica c...
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The Principles of Education We Lack In
John DeweyJohn Dewey examines the goals, forms, methods, and meaning of education in his work. Throughout his works readers will be able to find out how to develop a winning philosophy of ed...
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Tenderheaded
Juliette HarrisIn this “outstanding volume” (Boston Herald) that “ought to be at the top of everyone’s mustread list” (Essence), Black women and men evocatively explore what could make a smart wo...
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Britons Through Negro Spectacles
ABC Merriman-Labor'We shall therefore confine our walk to Central London where people meet on business during the day, and to West London where they meet for pleasure at night. If you will walk abou...
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Crying in H Mart
Michelle Zauner#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean America...
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Happiness
Patrick WhitesideThoughtful, warm, instructive, simple and wise, are all adjectives that can be applied to Patrick Whiteside's new book. As the bestselling author of The Little Books of Happiness ...
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Rough
Rachel ThompsonAS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4'S WOMEN'S HOURRough is a revolutionary nonfiction work exploring the narratives of sexual violence that we don't talk about.A bad sexual experience.A grey a...
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Lifting as They Climb
Toni Pressley-SanonThe lives and writings of six leading Black Buddhist womenJan Willis, bell hooks, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, angel Kyodo williams, Spring Washam, and Faith Adielereveal new expressions...
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Taking Up Space
Chelsea Kwakye & Ore Ogunbiyi'Brilliant' CANDICE CARTYWILLIAMS, author of QUEENIE'Essential' BERNARDINE EVARISTO, author of GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER'Hugely important' PAULA AKPANAs a minority in a predominantly whit...
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How To Pull Girls
Julia BruniFor many men, changes in society have made it harder to get to know women and pulling has become more difficult than it's ever been. The result is that many capable and otherwi...