Love and Rage: A Roundtable on bell hooks
November
“The author of more than three dozen books addressing the deep intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, and geographic place, bell hooks was born Gloria Jean Watkins as the fourth of seven children in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, on September 25, 1952. Her pen name was a tribute to her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. She attended segregated schools in her native Christian County, Kentucky, before earning her BA at Stanford University, a MA at the University of Wisconsin, and a PhD in literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She taught at Stanford University, Yale University, Oberlin College, and the City College of New York before returning to Kentucky to teach at Berea College, which now houses the bell hooks center. On December 15, 2021, hooks passed away after a long illness. For this roundtable, November editors Dawn Chan, Ricky Ruihong Li, and Emmanuel Olunkwa sat down with artists Lyle Ashton Harris, Parissah Lin, and Aliza Shvarts and philosopher Darla Migan to discuss hooks’ decisive impact.”