bell hooks: A Woman Inspiring a Movement for Change

by Cindy Vasquez
posted 7/31/2018

​Throughout the years, many women have come and gone and made history in the feminist movement. They have made changes for the betterment of society and have also inspired many women to call themselves feminists. One of those women is bell hooks. Bell hooks is most famously known for being an author, feminist, and social activist. She was born in 1952 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Although she goes by the pseudonym “bell hooks,” her birth name is actually Gloria Jean Watkins. She was one of six children; she had four other sisters and one younger brother. While growing up, her father worked as a janitor at their local post office and her mother was a homemaker for white families. Her hometown, Hopkinsville, was a very simple town where the people made a living with the smallest amount of resources. She described her neighborhood as a “world where folks were content to get on a little, where Baba, mama’s mother, made soap, dug fishing worms, set traps for rabbits, made butter and wine, sewed quilts and wrung the necks of chickens.”[1] Hopkinsville was very old fashioned, and because of this, hooks had to grow up in a segregated community. The neighborhood where she lived was African-American only, and hooks also attended segregated schools. Because of the segregation in the community, hooks endured many encounters with discrimination while growing up. Despite this, hooks took the hardships of segregation and turned them into a source of strength.[2] Her struggles and conflicts also became a source of inspiration for her to pursue her dreams and become the woman she is today.

Hooks first made a name for herself with her writing. Writing was a passion of hers that she wanted to share with those around her. At the age of ten, she began her journey as a writer with a series of poems she wrote while she was still in school, which she would later publish. She began writing her first book, Ain’t I a Woman, at the age of nineteen after she graduated high school. She used her writing to combat segregation. She wanted readers to take her writing as a form of activism and wanted to do something to make a change in the community. Speaking out against segregation became her inspiration for Ain’t I a Woman. Hooks would go on to write six different drafts of the book before she felt it was ready for publication.[3]

She opted to use the pen name “bell hooks” in honor of her great-grandmother on her mother’s side, Bell Blair Hooks. In all of her writing and different forms of activism, hooks does not capitalize her name. She chose to do this because she wanted people to focus on her work and what she had to offer the world rather than who she was as a person.[4] She wanted her ideas to be spread around and not her name because fame was never her goal. Her goal was to spread her word and bring about the change she wanted to see in the community.

After Ain’t I a Woman made its debut, hooks continued to write. Over the course of her career she has written over three dozen book and is still writing today. Some of her titles, like Feminism is for Everybody and Talking Back, have also helped make readers more aware of what feminism is and what it means for black women.

After graduating from Hopkinsville High School, hooks chose to continue her education and decided to go to college. She accepted a scholarship to Stanford University in 1973. After attaining her BA at Stanford, she pursued an MA at the University of Wisconsin in 1976, and in 1983 she received a PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Education was also a great passion of hers, and she believed that everyone should invest in educating themselves. Part of this comes from having gone to a segregated school where her teachers had a message to get across: “They were committed to nurturing intellect so that their pupils could become scholars, thinkers or cultural workers.”[5] Hooks believed that in the face of extreme racial oppression and discrimination, education was especially important. While she was attending school herself, she said, “Home was the place where I was forced to conform to someone else’s image of who and what I should be. School was the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas, reinvent myself.”[6]

Over the years of her career, hooks has been a part of many organizations and has also contributed to many different causes that support her ideas. She has spoken about her passions and aspirations at many conferences and has also made contributions to several different organizations that support her beliefs. She has participated in several different projects as well. One of those major projects is the bell hooks Institute. It was founded in 2014 and is located in Kentucky. It is a place that commemorates the work that hooks has done. As the official website for the Institute states, “The bell hooks Institute documents the life and work of acclaimed intellectual, feminist theorist, cultural critic, artist and writer bell hooks. The Institute strives to promote the cause of ending domination through understanding the systems of exploitation and oppression intersect through critical thinking, teachings, events and conversation.”[7] Although the Institute was founded in her honor, it was not created just for her. Other artists, activists, authors, and people like hooks can go and share their work and ideas with others like themselves.

Bell hooks is a woman with great influence. She is a woman who has inspired those around her to follow her and make a difference. She is also a woman who has much to offer to the world. She has used her influence to make her ideas and opinions heard and to make a better change in society. A true feminist is hard to come by in the world, but it is women like bell hooks that make the word feminism mean something. hooks has made a name for herself in the black feminist community. Even though she is now 65 years old, and her age has not slowed her down in the slightest. She continues to contribute to the feminist movement with her books, conferences, and several other works. She is an author, artist, social activist, a feminist, and I believe we can all take something positive from what she has put into the community.
Cindy Vasquez is the first person in her family to go to college. She plans on making her future career in the medical field. She has several different hobbies, some of which include: reading, listening to music, and watching Empire on Hulu. She is the oldest of three, with two younger siblings: a brother and a sister. It is very important to her that she make something of herself and is successful in life, that way her siblings will have a good role model to look up to and so her parents will be proud.
[1] “Bell Hooks Biography.” Notable Biographies, 2018, www.notablebiographies.com/He-Ho/Hooks-Bell.
​[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Burke, Barry. “bell hooks on education.” Infed, 2004. infed,infed.org/mobi/bell-hooks-on-education/.
[6] “Bell Hooks Biography.”
[7] “About.” bell hooks Institute, n.d. www.bellhooksinstitute.com

Image: bell hooks, circa 2009. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
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