Born Gloria Jean Watkins in segregated Kentucky, she took her great grandmother's name and wrote it in lowercase to keep attention on her ideas. She taught at Yale, Oberlin and City College of New York and wrote more than thirty books on race, gender, class, teaching and love. Influenced by Paulo Freire and by Buddhism, she saw love as a practice that could heal communities.
Core ideas
Race, gender and class work together and must be fought together
Love is not a feeling but a practice of care, respect and responsibility
Teaching should be a practice of freedom, not passive transfer of facts
The tradition: Black feminist
Black feminism insists that the experience of Black women reveals how racism, sexism and class oppression intertwine. hooks is one of its most accessible voices, joining critique with an ethic of love.
