Queer Black Feminist Author bell hooks Dies Aged 69
Ain’t I a Woman?, The Will to Change, and Feminism is for Everybody.Born Gloria Jean Watkins, she wrote under the pen name, bell hooks, which was her maternal great grandmother’s name.She explained this in an interview, saying, “Many of us took the names of our female ancestors—bell hooks is my maternal great grandmother—to honor them and debunk the notion that we were these unique, exceptional women. We wanted to say, actually, we were the products of the women who’d gone before us.”hooks wrote her name in lowercase letters in order to keep the focus on her ideas.Dr Karla Elliott, Lecturer in Sociology at Monash University, tweeted, “bell hooks is so central to my work, thinking, and the way I live my life.