Acclaimed author, activist, and Hopkinsville native bell hooks has died at the age of 69. Berea College, where hooks was a professor, announced her death Wednesday from an undisclosed illness.
Hooks, whose real name was Gloria Jean Watkins, grew up in Hopkinsville where her father was a janitor and her mother was a maid. She graduated from Hopkinsville High School and obtained a degree in English from Stanford University in 1973.
Hooks wrote under the pen name bell hooks after her great-grandmother Bell Blair Hooks. She wrote her name in lowercase letters to address systemic injustice and prejudice against Black people.
She was inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2018. She began writing at a young age and became a strong voice against racism and sexism, which she channeled into the books she wrote dealing with race, class, gender, and oppression.
later filtered into her dozens of books and essays on the intersections of race, gender, class, and systems of oppression and power.
Hooks dedicated her papers to Berea College in 2017, cementing a career that saw her teach at Yale and Oberlin College.
In a statement released Wednesday, Berea College said they will continue to celebrate her life and legacy through the bell hooks Center that opened on campus this year. The college said the bell hooks Institute will continue to be a valuable and informative beacon to her life’s work.
