Groundbreaking author and leader in modern feminist theory bell hooks died from an undisclosed illness on 15 Dec. [1] at 69. Per a press release shared with the Lexington Herald-Leader, hooks was at her home in Berea, KY, surrounded by friends and family, when it happened.
Hooks, née Gloria Jean Watkins, was born and raised in segregation-era Kentucky, in the small town of Hopkinsville. She studied english at Stanford University and went on to get a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She's been a National Book Award recipient, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and taught at a number of universities. She also founded the bell hooks Institute [2] at Berea College in 2014.
Through her writing — which spanned essays, cultural criticisms, and children's books — hooks explored themes of intersectional feminism, the decolonisation of the mind, and the oppression caused by white supremacist, capitalist, and patriarchal values. Her first book, Ain't I a Woman?, published in 1981, was also among her most famous, along with All About Love and Feminist Theory.
Her unique pen name was borrowed from her great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. The lowercase stylisation differentiated the pen name from its namesake, but it was also a symbolic gesture: hooks's method of not centreing her own identity as she wrote about society and community. "There is humility in the life that I lead," she told The New York Times [4] in 2015. "I'm not walking around in my daily life usually as bell hooks. I'm walking around in the dailiness of my life as just the ordinary Gloria Jean."