And Then We Wept – an Academic Obituary of Bell Hooks 1952–2021

Abstract

The brilliant and radiant scholar, bell hooks, transitioned on 15 December 2021. bell hooks’ scholarly work spans over four decades, during which she authored around 40 books. Her work has been part of my life since my early twenties, when her books introduced me to black feminism and activism. I am writing to honour hooks’ memory by focusing on her academic work and her love of liberation and justice. Before she was bell hooks, she was Gloria Jean Watkins, born on 25 September 1952 in the small rural town of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. She came from a working-class African American family and went to racially segregated schools as a child. From an early age, she was drawn to reading and poetry and was accepted by Stanford University, where she received her BA in English Literature in 1973. This was followed by an MA in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976. She received her PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1983, with a dissertation on Toni Morrison’s novels. During the mid-1970s, hooks taught English and ethnic studies at the University of Southern California and during the 1980s she taught African and Afro-American studies at Yale University. During the 1990s and 2000s, hooks taught women’s studies at Oberlin College and English at the City College of New York. In 2004, hooks became Distinguished Professor in Residence in Appalachian Studies at Berea College, Kentucky, where she later founded the bell hooks Institute in 2014. hooks published her first poetry chapbook And There We Wept in 1978 under the pseudonym bell hooks as a way of honouring her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Hooks, who was known to be a “sharp-tongued woman”. Thus, she affirmed the link with her “female ancestors who were bold and daring in their speech”. Watkins spelled her name in lowercase letters to emphasize that she wished to focus on her ideas, rather than on her personality. bell hooks became Watkins’ constructed “writeridentity”, who challenged and overcame “all impulses” that would lead her away from “speech into silence”. bell hooks will be remembered as a trailblazing feminist scholar, cultural critique, public intellectual, activist, and teacher. Her scholarship explores subjects such as psychology, masculinity, spirituality, love, art, poetry, history, sexuality, pedagogy, and healing. Love has always been present in hooks’ work, and her devotion to the subject is made clear in her trilogy of books on love from its social, ethnic, religious, and sexual perspectives. As a black feminist scholar, I celebrate hooks’ great impact on and critical contribution to feminist theory and epistemologies, which caused an epistemic shift in intersectionality and black feminism. hooks coined the phrase “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” as a useful