BIBLIOGRAPHY
McKay, Claude. Home to Harlem. New York: Harper
& Bros., 1928. Rpt. Boston: Northeastern Univer-
sity Press, 1987.
J. A. Zumoff
hooks, bell (1952– )
bell hooks (née Gloria Jean Watkins) was born
in 1952 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, the daughter
of Rosa Bell and Veodis Watkins. She went to all-
black public schools before attending Stanford
to earn a bachelor’s degree. [h]ooks went on to
earn a master’s degree from the University of
Wisconsin and a doctorate from the University
of California, Santa Cruz. Although she had ex-
tensive schooling, hooks began writing one of her
major works, Ain’t I a Woman? when she was only
19 years old. She went on to teach as an associ-
ate professor in the Yale African-American stud-
ies department. She has also taught in the English
and women’s studies department at Oberlin Col-
lege, the African studies program at City College
of New York, and women’s and African-American
studies in the English department at City College
of New York. hooks, who changed her name when
she published her first book, uses a pseudonym to
pay tribute to her mother and grandmother. She
avoids capital letters as a way to direct the reader’s
attention to the contents of her work rather than
to her as the author.
hooks has authored numerous books and schol-
arly articles in addition to being an accomplished
and popular public speaker. Her first work, Ain’t I
a Woman?, appeared in 1981. She has also written
Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black
(1989), Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual
Life (1991) with Cornel West, Black Looks: Race
and Representation (1992), Sisters of the Yam: Black
Women and Self-Recovery (1993), Outlaw Culture:
Resisting Representations (1994), Killing Rage: End-
ing Racism (1995), Art on My Mind: Visual Poli-
tics (1995), Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the
Movies (1996), Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood
(1996), Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work
(1999), Happy to Be Nappy (1999), Feminist The-
ory: From Margin to Center (2000), Feminism Is
for Everybody: Passionate Politics (2000), All about
Love: New Visions (2000), Salvation: Black People
and Love (2001), Homemade Love (2002), Com-
munion: The Female Search for Love (2002), Be Boy
Buzz (2002), and Rock My Soul: Black People and
Self-Esteem (2003), We Real Cool (2003), and The
Will to Change (2004).
hooks’s writings are concerned, as the various
titles reveal, with the issues of race, gender, and
class as they intersect on black women’s bodies.
She seeks an end to the exploitation and oppres-
sion of black women in society as a way to undo
white supremacy. hooks is also concerned with the
apathy apparent in learning situations due to sys-
tematic racist, sexist, and classist attitudes in edu-
cation. To counter apathy and reenergize learning
environments, hooks’s “engaged pedagogy” aims
to rethink the “knowledge base,” empowering
students to participate in more meaningful edu-
cation. As her career has developed, hooks has
moved to cultural and social critique. She entered
the political arena to present innovative challenges
that are normally found only in elite scholarly set-
tings. hooks “demonstrates [individuals’] complic-
ity in structures that oppress” because of choices
informed by personal beliefs. Another facet of
dealing with race, gender, and class issues is the
extreme loneliness of marginalization. Several of
her works are infused with a sense of painful iso-
lation. Even though there is a sense of loneliness,
hooks refuses to “settle down” and be “politically
correct.” Her voice is frank and confrontational;
she is unafraid to critique rather than court social,
political, or economic groups. Nonetheless, she
maintains humanist and spiritual ideals with an
interest in self-renewal, community, love, forgive-
ness, and care. These ideals form the centerpiece
of her most recent works: Salvation, Communion,
and All about Love.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Florence, Namulundah. bell hooks’ Engaged Pedagogy:
A Transgressive Education for Critical Conscious-
ness. Westport, Conn.: Bergin and Garvey, 1998.hooks, bell 251