Table of Biography
Early Life and Childhood
Bell Hooks was born Gloria Jean Watkins on September 25, 1952, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, U.S. She was 69 years old at the time of her death. She was one of the six kids of father Veodis Watkins and mother Rosa Bell Watkins. Likewise, her father was a housekeeper and her mother was a maid in the homes of white families.
She has six siblings named Angela, Valeria, Theresa, Kenneth, Gwenda, and Sarah. In her autobiography Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood (1996), Watkins discussed 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.” Likewise, she held American nationality and was of African-American ethnic background.
Education
Furthermore, Watkins, an avid reader who especially enjoys the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and William Wordsworth, was educated in racially segregated public schools before transferring to an integrated one in the late 1960s. Her book Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom reflects the significant impact this experience had on her perspective as an educator and the scholarship it inspired on educational practices.
After completing her high school education, she went on to earn her BA in English from Stanford University in 1973 and her MA in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976. Watkins was working on her book Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, which she started writing when she was 19 (roughly in 1971) and published (as bell hooks) in 1981.
After several years of writing and teaching, hooks earned her doctorate in English from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1983. Her dissertation, titled “Keeping a Hold on Life: Reading Toni Morrison’s Fiction,” focused on author Toni Morrison.
Influences
American abolitionist and feminist Sojourner Truth is one of Hooks’ influences. Hooks’ first significant book was inspired by Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?”. The book Teaching to Transgress by Bell Hooks also refers to the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. His views on education are presented in the first chapter, “Engaged pedagogy.” Other influences include African-American writer James Baldwin, Buddhist monk Thich Nht Hnh, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, and Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez.
Caption: Bell’s book
Source: Amazon.com
Teaching and Writing
She started her academic career in 1976 at the University of Southern California as an English professor and senior lecturer in ethnic studies. Her first piece of published work, a chapbook of poems titled And There We Wept (1978) published by the Los Angeles publisher Golemics during her three years there, was written under the pen name “bell hooks.” She added that she did so in honor of her great-grandmother and to emphasize that it is more crucial to concentrate on her writings than her personality: “the substance of books, not who [she is].”
Furthermore, she started working at Berea College in 2004 as an honorary professor in residence. She spoke with author Wendell Berry for her 2008 book, belonging: A Culture of Place, which also touches on her decision to return to Kentucky. She spent three terms as a student in residence at The New School, the last of which was in 2014. The Bell Hooks Institute was established at Berea College in 2014 as well. In 2017, she donated her papers there.
More…
Along with her professor Dr. M. Shadee Malaklou, Bell Hooks founded the Bell Hooks Center while she was a student at Berea College. The center was created to give underrepresented students at Berea College a safe space where they can grow their activist expression, education, and work, particularly black and brown, femme, queer, and Appalachian individuals. The center’s inspiration and guiding principles are drawn from Bell Hooks’ writings and her emphasis on the value of feminism and love.
Moreover, the center is still in operation today and offers activities and programming with a focus on anti-racist and radical feminist ideas. In 2018, she was admitted to the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame. Hooks’ writing on racism, feminism, and capitalism saw a revival in 2020 during the George Floyd protests. In the American political and social climate, her groundbreaking work is still relevant.
Personal Life
In terms of her sexual orientation, hooks identified as “queer-pas-gay.” She used the French word “pas,” which is equivalent to the English word “not.” In her own words, hooks say that being queer is “not about who you’re having sex with, but about being at odds with everything around it.”
In 2017, Hooks revealed that she was single to Abigail Bereola during a conversation about her love life. I don’t have a partner, hooks admitted to Bereola during the interview. I’ve been single for seventeen years. Although I would adore a partner, I do not believe my life would be any less significant without one.
Caption: Bell Hooks with her friend
Source: Lion’s Roar
Death
On December 15, 2021, she passed away at the age of 69. The American philosopher passed away in her Berea home in the presence of her loved ones after an extended battle with cancer and kidney failure.
Buddhism
In her early college years, hooks became interested in Beat poetry, and after meeting the poet and Buddhist Gary Snyder, she first learned about Buddhism. After her first encounters with Buddhism, hooks incorporated it into her Christian upbringing; this fusion of Christian and Buddhist thought had an ongoing impact on Hooks’ identity, activism, and writing.
She was drawn to Buddhism because of the intellectual and personal framework it provided for her to comprehend and react to both love and connection as well as suffering and discrimination. She claims that the Christian-Buddhist emphasis on routine practice meets her daily needs for grounding and centering. Hooks’ essays, books, and poetry frequently reference Buddhist ideas, particularly the writings of Thich Nht Hnh. Buddhist spirituality also contributed significantly to the development of the love ethic, which became a key theme in both her activism and written work.
Bell Hooks – Net Worth 2023
Bell had amassed a million-dollar fortune. She was able to successfully accumulate a sizeable amount of cash. Her estimated net worth at the time of her passing was $10 million. Similar to this, Bell’s long-term success as an American novelist, educator, feminist, and social activist allowed her to accumulate this sizeable sum of money. She had become well-known and well-liked as a result of her career.
Social Media
Moving into her social media presence, she was active on social media sites like Instagram and Twitter. However, her fan has created a Facebook page in her memory. As of now, her fan-created Facebook page “Bell Hooks” has gained more than 116K followers. Likewise, her Instagram account ‘@bellhooks_’ has more than 50.1K followers and has shared 5 posts. Similarly, she joined Twitter in November 2015, and her account ‘@bellhooksinst’ has more than 10.3K followers.
Bell Hooks – Body Measurements
However, there are no details about her physical stats like her height, weight, body size, dress size, shoe size, and so on. But looking at her pictures we can assume that she had a pair of black eyes with black colored hair.