bell hooks
bell hooks
American author, feminist, and social activist whose real name is Gloria Jean Watkins. She wrote "Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism".
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth25 September 1952
CityHopkinsville, KY
CountryUnited States of America
strong children struggle
If Black women stand strong and our commitment is to ending domination I know that I'm supporting Black males, Black children male and female Black elderly because the bottom line is the struggle to end domination in all its forms.
children thinking way
When I began to think deeply about the metaphysics of love I talked with everyone around me about it. I talked to large audiences and even had wee one-on-one conversations with children about the way they think about love. I talked about love in every state. I talked about love everywhere I traveled.
girl children independent
Often girls feel deeply cared about as small children but then find as we develop willpower and independent thought that the world stops affirming us, that we are seen as unlovable.
children self giving
If we give our children sound self-love, they will be able to deal with whatever life puts before them.
children able needs
I thought about how we need to make children feel that there are times in their lives when they need to be alone and quiet and to be able to accept their aloneness.
children names silence
This rule of silence is upheld when the culture refuses everyone easy access even to the word “patriarchy.” Most children do not learn what to call this system of institutionaliz ed gender roles, so rarely do we name it in everyday speech. This silence promotes denial. And how can we organize to challenge and change a system that cannot be named?
children thinking knows
Only grown-ups think that the things children say come out of nowhere. We know they come from the deepest parts of ourselves.
forget admire critique
Readers forget that one can critique yet still admire.
writing reality thinking
One difference with the political writings, whether about feminism or class, is that the intent is to change how people think of a certain political reality; whereas with cultural criticism, the goal is to illuminate something that is already there.
love-is practice feelings
Love is first and foremost exemplified by action - by practice - not solely by feeling.
love-is thinking self
I think this is often misunderstood in the West, where people feel that there can be no justice unless everything is the same. This is part of why I feel we have to relearn how we think about love, because we think about love so much in terms of the self.
kings silly love-you
I think this is what people misunderstand about Martin Luther King saying to love your enemies. They think he was just using this silly little phrase, but what he meant was that as Black Americans we need to let our anger go, because holding on to it we hold ourselves down. We oppress ourselves by holding on to anger.
class white black
The fact is that it was bourgeois white feminism that I was reacting against when I stood in my first women's studies classes and said, "Black women have always worked."
thinking feminist way
To me, a woman can't be a feminist just because she is a woman. She is a feminist because she begins to divest herself of sexist ways of thinking and revolutionizes her consciousness.