# data[].attributes.body
Although bell hooks did not play a direct rule in the passage of Title IX, I believe she influenced it after inspiring a generation of people, particularly women and educators. The law forbids sex-based discrimination in education, and seeing as she advocated for both feminism and better education practices, there is no doubt she had an influence in inspiring the people who passed this law.

# data[].attributes.body
Generally, I find most people perceive bell hooks as the epitome of feminism and what it means to advocate for women of all types; however, some have critiques on her opinions on "bad feminists". Critics argue, in some ways, she is telling women what to think, believe, and feel, which completes goes against the entirety of the feminist movement. The comments on this video highlight this well.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
bell hooks and Laverne Cox Discuss "What is Feminism?" I The New School

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/news/a19232/bell-hooks-beyonce-terrorist/

Specifically, bell hooks has called out Beyonce during her "Lemonade" era, calling her an "anti-feminist—that is a terrorist, especially in terms of the impact on young girls".

# data[].attributes.body
Before this course, I had never heard of bell hooks. In school, we were taught of historical women such as Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, but rarely mentioned the women today who are still feminist advocates. I believe this is because they want us to feel everything is now "okay" and "equal", but in truth, there is still much to fight for.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Who Was: bell hooks | Encyclopaedia Britannica

# data[].attributes.body
bell hooks was born in 1952 in a KY town that was "race-neutral, neither pro- nor anti-slavery". She mostly attended racially segregated schools, which gave her an interesting perspective when she went on to write her first novel after graduating with her bachelor's and master's degrees. The novel, Ain't I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism, completely reshaped the way feminism is seen today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Get to Know bell hooks

Our center's namesake, bell hooks, transitioned early on Wednesday, December 15, 2021, at her Berea, KY home. bell, born Gloria Jean Watkins in Hopkinsville, grew up with love for books and writing. A globally renowned cultural critic, feminist, and intellectual dissident, her work imagined radical ways of being in the world. It encouraged love of self and community while calling us into liberatory practices that daringly reshape feminism as an embodied challenge to intersecting structures of oppression. As a distinguished professor in residence at Berea College, bell often spent time with and mentored students. She founded the bell hooks Institute to foster additional feminist programming in Berea and worked closely with Dr. M. Shadee Malaklou to establish the bell hooks center as a testament to her legacy. We mourn in beloved community and further commit to her work by daring to create lives of political and spiritual liberation through healing, radical joy, and redemptive love, which bell believed was our "true destiny." In redemptive love,
Your friendly feminists at the bell hooks center
bell and the world

bell hooks' impact stretches beyond her Kentucky roots. The little girl whose grandmother nicknamed 'Glory' is now heralded as one of the preeminent feminist voices of our time. In 1995, Utne Reader recognized her among its "100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life." TIME honored her in 2020 with its "100 Women of the Year," dubbing hooks a "rare rock star of a public intellectual."

With more than 30 books to her name and articles in magazines like Ms., Essence and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, hooks commands attention. Her writing blends social commentary and autobiography with feminist critique, and no matter the topic, she delivers scholarly rigor in everyday prose.

Before relocating to Berea, hooks taught at institutions such as Stanford, Yale and The City College of New York. She has held residencies in the United States and overseas, and in 2014, St. Norbert College hosted "A Year of bell hooks" in her honor.

Following the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020 and nationwide racial justice protests, hooks' All About Love: New Visions became sought-after reading. Readers continue to turn to hooks for a clear perspective on how we can move towards justice and love.

bell and Appalachia

bell hooks (née Gloria Jean Watkins) was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky in 1952-shortly before Brown v. Board of Education reached the U.S. Supreme Court. hooks grew up between the hills and a segregated town. Her early schooling presented Kentucky as race-neutral, neither pro- nor anti-slavery. But school children routinely visited Jefferson Davis's birthsite, a Confederate monument miles from her hometown.

This history led hooks to call Kentucky a "racial apartheid." Still, the self-professed country girl credits her commitment to self-determination and dissident speech to "the cultural ethos of the Kentucky backwoods, of the hillbilly country folk who were my ancestors and kin."

hooks writes about Kentucky in belonging: a culture of place and challenges notions of its inherent whiteness in Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place. As the keynote for Berea's Appalachian Writers Symposium in 2015, hooks asserted, "I always take the motto, like the queer motto, 'We're here.' I feel that about myself as a Black person in the hills of Kentucky. I am here, and there's nothing but love within me for the world around me."

In 2018, the Carnegie Center inducted hooks into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame, recognizing her lifelong contributions to literature and justice.

bell hooks signs books following her induction into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2018. Photo by Tom Eblen/Lexington Herald-Leader.

bell and Berea

In 1999, the Women's Studies program sponsored bell hooks' "Love and Spirituality" convocation address. Drawn to Berea's anti-racist beginnings and wishing to return to her Kentucky homeplace, hooks joined the faculty in 2004. "I felt very much that I wanted to give back to the world I came from," she says. "I grew up in the hills of Kentucky, and I wanted these students to see you can be a cosmopolitan person of the world but still be connected positively to your home roots."

She also chose Berea as the site for the bell hooks Institute, which preserves hooks' legacy through art and artifacts from her life. The Institute's inaugural event, held September 7, 2015, featured trans actress activist Laverne Cox, credited with adding "cis" and "heteronormative" to hooks' call to dismantle "imperialist-white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy." Since then, the Institute has hosted prominent visitors, including Cornel West, Gloria Steinem and Imani Perry. These intimate talks, open to campus and community members, reflect hooks' belief that truth telling can transform consciousness and communities.

In 2015, hooks donated her papers to the College. This monumental gift of letters, manuscripts and memorabilia gives students and researchers insight into one of America's sharpest feminist minds.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
bell hooks' impact stretches beyond her Kentucky roots. The little girl whose grandmother was nicknamed "Glory" is now heralded as one of the preeminent feminist voices of our time.

# data[].attributes.headline
Brown v. Board of Education & Women's Rights Movement

# data[].attributes.subject
Brown v. Board of Education & Women's Rights Movement

# data[].attributes.body
Despite the 1954 ruling of the Supreme Court in Brown vs. Board of Education that public school segregation is illegal, hooks did not attend an integrated school until the late 1960s.

Feminism in the 1950s was also considered to be in a "dormant" state as the women were expected to stay home. hooks' mother also fed into this narrative and discouraged her from doing otherwise.

# data[].attributes.body
To rebel against the judgement of her family and the South, hooks channeled her ancestors' "defian[ce] in their need to achieve speech" by adopting her great grandmother's name as a pen name.

# data[].attributes.body
bell hooks "chose to use lowercase letters to get away from the ego associated with names. She has provided commentary on a wide range of topics from popular culture and writing to self-esteem and teaching."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Subject and Course Guides: bell hooks: Home

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Remembering the legacy of bell hooks 1952-2022

# data[].attributes.body
bell hooks' ideas of white women using feminism to further their own personal agendas relate to the ideas of post-modern epistemology.

Post-modern epistemology: totalizes theories of women as attempts to dominate rather than attempts to liberate

When white middle-class women pursue their own interests in the name of "feminism", it is hurtful to the cause. Feminism is not personal, and should not be treated as such. It is a political movement that not only combats sexual oppression, but racial and classist oppression as well.

# data[].attributes.body
Performative feminism also compromises the true activism for non-white, non-middle class women who have a more difficult time finding a platform to advocate with. It is normal, and useful, for women to use their own experiences to inspire motivation, but it should not be the motivation. They should not be fighting for equity and equal opportunity in their own life to achieve their own goals, for they should be fighting for the advancement of all women everywhere beyond the oppression of class, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, age, etc. Women should be seeking the experiences of other women to dillute their cultural and society beliefs formed by the norms in their own lives. Per postmodern epistemology, they must seek the interpretations of other women as everything we know is subject to the influence of power around us.