bell hook dies at 69; Breakthrough Feminist Thinker Born Gloria Jean Watkins

In a statement released through William Morrow Publishers, the hooks family announced that she passed away Wednesday in Berea, Kentucky, where the bell hooks center at Berea College is located. Additional details are not immediately available.

“She’s a giant, no-nonsense, living by her own rules and speaking her own truth in a time when Negroes, and especially women, don’t feel empowered to do it,” Dr. Linda Strong-Leek, a close friend and former director of Berea College, wrote in an email to the Associated Press. “It was a privilege to know her, and the world is a lower place today because she is gone. There will never be another bell.”

Beginning in the 1970s, hooks published dozens of books that helped shape popular and scholarly discourse. Her notable works include “Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism”, “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center” and “All About Love: New Visions.” Among her most famous manifestations is her definition of feminism, which she calls “the movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression.”

hooks was born Gloria Jean Watkins and gave herself a pennant in honor of her maternal great-grandmother.