Bell hooks, born Gloria Jean Watkins, was an innovative author, activist, and educator; focusing on the ways in which race, gender, economics and politics were interrelated.
Hooks rejected the isolation derived from the separation of civil rights, economics, and feminism into individual fields; believing in the critical community and connectivity for which economic inequity, sexism, and racism reinforced one another.
Hooks began a fruitful career in the 1970’s, being vastly impacted by the works of Sojourner Truth, James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr. She has compiled and written a plethora of books that have guided academic and popular discourse alike. Most notable from Hooks is 1999’s All about Love: New Visions.
“Our hearts connect with lots of folks in a lifetime but most of us will go to our graves with no experience of true love,” she wrote in All about Love: New Visions.
Fun fact! Bell Hooks derived her pen name from her maternal great-grandmother; an ode for the ages.