Instead, she introduced the idea that different types of oppression are interlocking and power is relational depending upon where you’re located on the matrix of class, sex, race and gender – which is not unlike the ideas underpinning the currently popular intersectional feminism. With notable titles including Talking Back, Ain’t I a Woman? and From Margin to Centre, her work scrutinises and challenges the ways in which media, culture and society uphold dominant oppressive structures.Ī popular version of second wave feminism posited that all systems of oppression stemmed from patriarchy. Hooks would become a prolific author and commentator. She decapitalised the initials in order for others to focus on the substance of her ideas, rather than herself as a person. An adult had dismissed her with a comparison to Bell Hooks, her maternal grandmother, in whose bold tongue and defiant attitude she found inspiration. It was when she first spoke back in public that she initially identified with her self-claimed moniker.

This refusal to be complicit in perpetuating her own oppression would define her life and career as a leader in black feminist thought. Growing up in a segregated community of the south-central US state Kentucky, she fought against the ways in which her family and society sought to relegate her into a docile, black female identity. An outspoken professor, author, activist and cultural critic, bell hooks (1952-2021) drew attention to how feminism privileges white women’s struggles, while advocating for a more holistic way of understanding oppression.īorn Gloria Jean Watkins, bell hooks was a child who spoke back.

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