bell hooks

Scribing and writing under the pen name bell hooks, this author, feminist and social activist has more than thirty books published. Her focused is on interlinking race, gender, and class in relation to oppression and domination. I like to consider her the female Cornel West, willing to expand minds, break limits and barriers, creating her own commitment to developing the African American psyche and agenda. Her pen name is adopted from the names of her mother and grandmother. She feels the lowercasing signifies that the substance of the book should be the importance.

Her teaching started in 1976, and since then she has taught as a variety of college and universities including: University of California, Santa Cruz , San Francisco State University, Yale University, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and American Literature at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and as Distinguished Lecturer of English Literature at the City College of New York.

I truly can’t remember the first bell hooks book I got my hands on. Since then, it has been a cycle of her works. Some of my favorites and most valuable reads have been: All About Love, Bone Black, Communion, Killing Rage, Remembered Rapture & Wounds of Passion (for the writer in me!), Rock My Soul, and Killing Rage.

Favorite Quotes:

I thought about how we need to make children feel that there are times in their lives when they need to be alone and quiet and to be able to accept their aloneness.

I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.

When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.

It's in the act of having to do things that you don't want to that you learn something about moving past the self. Past the ego.

Websites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_hooks
http://www.southendpress.org/authors/46
http://books.google.com/books?as_auth=Bell+Hooks&source=an&ei=QAmES6bGEo-xlAfPq-SBAg&sa=X&oi=book_group&ct=title&cad=author-navigational&resnum=4&ved=0CBoQsAMwAw