Black History Month 2015: Yearning

Yearning: race, gender and cultural politics bell hooks; 25 September 1952

Real name Gloria Jean Watkins, the pen name bell hooks derived from her maternal grandmother. The de-capitalisation of her pen name is duel-functioning as it distinguishes her from her grandmother, and it proposes the writing is more important than her name.
bell is an American feminist, social activist, author and was a Professor at Yale University. In her writings she confronts the binary definitions of what is it to be a black woman and the issues surrounding social class. In her writings she proposes arguments, debates and solutions and by large this acts as a way to liberate individuals from these definitions. She is a prolific writer who draws influences from Toni Morrison, American absolutionist Sojourner Truth, American playwright Lorraine Hansberry and American Civil Rights radical Malcolm X and American Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. During her childhood in Kentucky, hooks experienced racial segregation and sexism which are explored throughout her earlier writings. As she has grown older hooks has embraced Buddhism which now influences her writings and methodologies