Nia Thomas
On 15 December 2021, legendary Black feminist author and activist, bell hooks, sadly passed away from kidney failure, aged 69.
hooks’ niece, Ebony Motley, tweeted: “The family of bell hooks is sad to announce the passing of our sister, aunt, great aunt and great great aunt. The professor, critic and feminist made her transition early this am from her home, surrounded by family and friends.” Motley followed this with a longer statement from her family.
Born Gloria Jean Watkins in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, hooks’ pen name is in honour of her great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks, and stylised in lower case. This stylistic decision was made by hooks who hoped her writing would be the focus, not her name.
“When the feminist movement was at its zenith in the late 60’s and early 70’s, 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. Many of us took the names of our female ancestors—bell hooks is my maternal great grandmother—to honour them and debunk the notion that we were these unique, exceptional women. We wanted to say, actually, we were the products of the women who’d gone before us.” – hooks, 2018
Obviously a highly educated woman, hooks achieved her BA in English from Stanford University before attaining her MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, during which time she began writing her seminal text Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism which was published in 1981. Two years later, she studied for her PhD at University of California, Santa Cruz after having taught there for several years.
Ain’t I a Woman became just one of hooks’ defining pieces of literature, voted one of the most influential women’s books in the last 20 years in 1992. The title was inspired by Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech of the same name. The book demonstrates Black women’s double subjugation under both racism and sexism and also outlines their exclusion by prominent white, middle-class feminists in the second-wave movement.
hooks went on to write more than 30 influential books, looking at feminism, race, capitalism and intersectionality as well as children’s books. hooks also frequently wrote on the topic of love, especially self-love and friendship, where some of my favourite quotes of hers originate.
“Deep, abiding friendship are the place where many women know lasting love.”
“The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin. – Communion: The Search for Female Love
“The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we being to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.” – Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations
As an extremely influential feminist, the announcement bell hooks’ death prompted an outpouring of admiration for her on Twitter and in the media.
Feminist writer, Roxanne Gay tweeted: “Oh my heart. bell hooks. May she rest in power. Her loss is incalculable.”
Author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood, told the Guardian: “bell hooks embodied amazing courage and deeply felt intelligence. In finding her own words and power, she inspired countless others to do the same. Her dedication to the cause of ending ‘sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression’ was exemplary.”
Paying tribute, author Candice Carty-Williams: “bell hooks was a writer whose scope of sensibilities taught me, nourished me, engaged me. But it was her writing on love that changed my life after a friend forced me to read All About Love, a book that I knew would contain so much power and truth that I was afraid of its contents.”
bell hooks will be extremely missed, though I find comfort in knowing that her work and contributions to feminist theory will outlive us all.
Featured image courtesy of Eric E Castro via Flickr. Image license found here. No changes were made to the image.
Nia Thomas
Nia is a Gender Studies Masters student at the University of Sussex. Having recently graduated with a degree in Political Science, she is keenly interested in current affairs and stories concerning equality and diversity. Away from writing, she is an avid reader and lover of reality TV.