With great homage to the brilliant bell hooks, I offer these thoughts on how we might actively refuse to be seduced by violence. They come from a speech I gave a few years ago at the campus where I teach and were inspired by my concern over the violent messages in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga that […]
bell hooks
bell hooks (1952-2021) was a prolific Black feminist writer, activist and academic of race, class and gender. She is well-known for her book Ain’t I A Woman? in which she wrote about intersections of race and gender in American society, as well as her concept of the “oppositional gaze” as a form of resistance against white supremacy.
10 Years of “Feminism is for Everybody”
At the dawn of this new millennium, bell hooks published Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, a slim, bright-yellow book with a powerful goal: to introduce feminist politics in an accessible format in order to reach the widest possible audience. She begins with a story of how proud she is to talk to everyone she […]
All About Love
bell hooks’ legacy is love. No black woman scholar has theorized love as seriously as hooks has. All About Love, Communion, Salvation and Wounds of Passion personally inspired me to explore the heartaches as well as the healing powers of love. In All About Love, hooks argues that everyone wants love, yet most of us are […]
Teaching to Transgress in High Schools
For over a decade, bell hooks has made an impact on my high school students. I’ll never forget when Rachel, an African American former student of mine, stopped me on the streets of New York while she was a college student and said, “I started taking classes on black feminist theory because of your course.” […]
Why I Miss bell hooks
A month ago, when that white Seattle cop punched a black girl in the face over a jaywalking incident, I thought of bell hooks. When, with assistance from the Urban League, the girl apologized days later in order to get a reduced sentence and I waited for the public outrage that never came, I realized I […]