Black feminist author, groundbreaking thinker bell hooks dies at 69
Hooks died at home, surrounded by family and friends, they said. She was 69
Black feminist author and intellectual bell hooks, whose pioneering work took on new urgency amid the racial justice protests that swept the United States in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, died Wednesday at her home in Berea, Kentucky, her sisters said.
Hooks was the pen name of Gloria Jean Watkins, who used the lower case moniker to honor her grandmother.
"The family of Gloria Jean Watkins is deeply saddened at the passing of our beloved sister," sisters Gwenda Motley and Valeria Watkins said in a statement posted on Twitter.
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Hooks died at home, surrounded by family and friends, they said. She was 69.
The fourth of seven siblings, hooks was born in 1952 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
She published her first book of poems in 1978, and by the end of her life had written 40 books that have been translated into 15 languages, her sisters said.
After studying and teaching at several universities, she returned to Kentucky, teaching at Berea College, which established the bell hooks center as an inclusive space for historically under-represented students.
