Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen name bell hooks, was an American author, professor, feminist, and social activist.
Gloria Jean Watkins borrowed the name “bell hooks” from her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks.
bell hooks was born on September 25, 1952 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky a small, segregated town in Kentucky, to a working-class African-American family.
bell hooks graduated from Hopkinsville High School before obtaining her BA in English from Stanford University in 1973, and her MA in English from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1976.
During this time, at 19, bell hooks was writing her book Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, which was published in 1981.
In 1983, after several years of teaching and writing, she completed her doctorate in literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a dissertation on author Toni Morrison.
Sadly, bell hooks passed away on December 15, 2021 at the age of 69.
