bell hooks

Gloria Watkins/bell hooks Presente! Here we go again. Another passing of an intellectual giant, a Black revolutionary love warrior and fugitive from an academy that doesn't love us. After nearly two years of relentless premature deaths, we lose four comrades in six or seven days (Julius Scott, Greg Tate, Tyler Stovall, and now bell hooks), all in their 60s. Too much. I discovered bell hooks in 1981, when I read Ain't I a Woman in college and realized that we can't claim to be radical without being feminists, and as Barbara Smith told us, feminism is not white-owned. bell refused to be disciplined by the academy, living life on her terms and writing for a much larger audience when it wasn't in vogue.