bell hooks: A Biographical Sketch


bell hooks is an highly acclaimed and internationally recognized African American feminist writer, academic and cultural critic known for her candid race, class, and gender analysis of systems of domination, and cultural products.  She has over 20 books in print, not to mention an avalanche of periodical articles and a number of performances.  Her works address a range of topics including education, art, film, literature, music, history, self-help, autobiography, feminism, homophobia, racism, and sexism.

Hook's 1981 publication of Ain't I a Woman and her 1984 publication of Feminist Theory From Margin to Center changed the direction of feminist theory forever and helped establish the emerging field of black women's studies.   Her criticisms of mainstream feminist theory's and the women's movement's exclusion of black women's experience's and her insistence that feminism acknowledge differences among women and that feminism isn't the purview of white middle class women only have become central tenets of feminist scholarship and feminist movement.  Black culture's oppression of women within its movements, community, and academy has also been an ongoing theme in Hook's work that has helped to transform the discourse, praxis and everyday lives of the many worldwide who have read and related to her teachings.

A graduate of Stanford, (B.A. English), the University of Wisconsin Madison (M.A. English), and the University of California, Santa Cruz (Ph.D. English), hooks has been on the faculty of Yale University, Oberlin College and currently teaches at the City University of New York, where in 1994 she was appointed to the Distinguished Lecturer of English Literature post.
 

Major Publications by bell hooks

1. And There We Wept: Poems.  Los Angeles: Golemics, 1978.
2. Ain't I a Woman?  Black Women and Feminism.  Boston: South End Press, 1981.
3. Feminist Theory From Margin to Center.  Boston: South End Press, 1984
4. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black.  Boston: South End Press, 1989
5. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics.  Boston: South End press, 1990
6. And Cornel West.  Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life.  Boston: South End Press, 1991
7. Black Looks: Race and Representation.  Boston: South End Press, 1992
8. Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery.  Boston: South End Press, 1993
9. A Woman's Mourning Song.  New York: Harlem River Press, 1993
10. Changing the Subject: Paintings and Prints, 1992-1994.  New York: Art in General, Inc., 1994.
11. Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations.  New York: Routledge, 1994
12. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom.  New York: Routledge, 1994
13. Art on my Mind: Visual Politics.  New York: New Press, 1995
14. Killing Rage: Ending Racism.  New York: Henry Holt, 1996
15. Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood.  New York: Henry Holt, 1996
16. Reel to Real: Race Sex and Class in the Movies.  New York: Routledge, 1996.
17. Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life.  New York: Henry Holt, 1996a.
18. Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work.  New York: Henry Holt, 1999
19. All About Love.  New York: William Morrow, 2000
20. Happy to Be Nappy.  New York: Hyperion, 1999 (children's book; illustrated by Chris Raschka)
21. A Woman's Mourning Song.  New York: Writers and Readers, May 2000. (reprint?)
22. Homemade Love.  2001