bell hooks, born Gloria Jean Watkins in 1952, was an American author who used lowercase as both an homage to her maternal great-grandmother and an attempt to keep readers' focus where it belonged: on her work. When she died in 2021, hooks left behind a lifetime of thought that was decades ahead of its time. In the heyday of feminism, when the movement claimed to represent all women equally, hooks revealed in Ain't I a Woman-written when she was only nineteen-how the specific life experiences of Black women were being marginalized.

She never lost this pioneering spirit, bringing it to bear on more than thirty books of literary criticism, children's fiction, poetry, and autobiography, including Killing Rage: Ending Racism, Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood, Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life, Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, Where We Stand: Class Matters, Communion: The Female Search for Love and the New York Times bestseller All About Love: New Visions.

A professor of English, African and Afro-American studies, American literature, and women's studies, hooks taught at USC, Yale, among other institutions, including Berea College in her home state of Kentucky, where the bell hooks center was established to honor her work. Winner of the American Book Award in 1991 for Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, a 2000 nominee for the NAACP's Image Award, a 2018 inductee into Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame, and one of Time's 100 Women of the Year in 2020, hooks left her mark in every field she entered.

preface: rapture from the deep

writing from the darkness

women who write too much

a body of work: women labor with words

remembered rapture: dancing with words

writing without labels

writing to confess

telling all: the politics of confession

writing autobiography

from public to private: writing bone black

class and the politics of writing

a life in the spirit: faith, writing, and intellectual work

divine inspiration: writing and spirituality

intellectual life: in and beyond the academy

catalyst and connection: writers and readers

the writer's true home

black women writing: creating more space

zora neale hurston: a subversive reading

emily dickinson: the power of influence

the legacy of ann petry

hansberry: the deep one

writing with grace: the magic of morrison

writer to writer: remembering toni cade bambara