Trailblazing author and activist bell hooks dies at 69

BEREA, Ky. — Acclaimed author, critic and feminist bell hooks died Wednesday at her home in Berea following an extended illness. She was 69.

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Officials with Berea College, where hooks was a distinguished professor in residence in Appalachian studies, confirmed her death in a statement.

Her niece, Ebony Motley, said in a statement obtained by the Lexington Herald-Leader and shared on social media that hooks died while surrounded by friends and family. Her sister, Gwenda Motley, told The Washington Post that she died of end-stage renal failure.

Born Gloria Jean Watkins on Sept. 25, 1952, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, hooks took her pen name from her maternal great-grandmother. In a 2013 visit to Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, hooks said she used her name in the lower case to emphasize the “substance of books, not who I am,” according to The Sandspur, the school’s student-run newspaper.

Growing up, hooks attended a segregated school, according to The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Stanford University in 1973 and three years later got a master’s degree in English from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. In 1983, hooks earned a doctorate in literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She taught at Yale University, Ohio’s Oberlin College and City College of New York before returning to Kentucky to teach at Berea College in 2004.

Over the course of her career, hooks -- who began writing poetry when she was 10 years old -- published dozens of books. She became well known for her work exploring gender roles, racism, classism, politics, love and the experience of Black women. She published her first widely-available book, “Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism,” in 1981. Her writings were credited with redefining the feminist movement, which had earlier been seen as predominantly focused on the issues of white middle- and upper-class women, according to the Post.

“I want my work to be about healing,” she told the Herald-Leader in 2018, after being inducted to the Kentucky Writers’ Hall of Fame. “I am a fortunate writer because every day of my life practically I get a letter, a phone call from someone who tells me how my work has transformed their life.”

Fans and friends took to social media Wednesday to remember hooks.

Actress Lynda Carter, best known for her starring role in the superhero TV series “Wonder Woman” from 1975 to 1979, urged people to read hooks’ 2000 book, “All About Live: New Visions,” saying it “will change your life.”

“It is gutting to hear that the visionary bell hooks has left us so soon,” she wrote.

Philosopher and activist Cornel West, who published “Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life” with hooks in 1991, mourned her in a Twitter post.

“She was an intellectual giant, spiritual genius (and) freest of persons!” he wrote. “We shall never forget her!”

“Bad Feminist” author and social commentator Roxane Gay said the loss of hooks “is incalculable.”

“Oh my heart,” she wrote on Twitter. “May she rest in power.”

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