bell hooks

bell hooks, "Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education"

bell hooks (1952- ) was born under the name Gloria Watkins in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. She earned a B.A. in 1973 from Stanford University, an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1976, and a Ph.D. in 1983 at the University of California, Santa Cruz. hooks has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, the City College of New York, and Yale University. She chose her pen name in honor of her great-grandmother, and often writes about feminist, class, and black women's issues. Her books include Feminist Theory: from margin to center (1984), Talking Back: thinking feminist, thinking black (1988), and Wounds of Passion: a writing life (1997). Her work also appears in periodicals such as Postmodern Culture, Shambhala Sun, and Callaloo. "Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education" illustrates her inclusive, non-academic style, and is an excerpt from Talking Back.

CONTENT

1. How does hooks characterize life in a small town?
2. What do the author and her mother talk about before the bus arrives? How is their conversation interrupted?
3. According to the author, how did most people treat class differences at Stanford?
4. How does the author's colleague from Yale react when hooks addresses black people on the street she doesn't know?
5. Describe the reaction of the "white female academics" to the talk hooks gave at Northwestern. How did hooks react to their reaction?
6. How did hooks's parents feel about her acceptance to Stanford? Why did she want to go there and not to a local college?
7. According to hooks, what is the central difference between black and white notions of private property?

STRATEGY AND STYLE

1. What is hooks's argument here? Outline her main points and types of support for each in as much detail as you can.
2. Study the spot in paragraph six where the author compares herself to a Mormon student. What's the nature of the comparison? How can you tie it in with the author's feelings about her belief system?
3. Go through the essay and make note of the author's use of the word folks. How would the essay change if she used a synonym for this word? What synonym do you have in mind? How can you relate this usage with the author's ideas about class and community?
4. Most of the dialogue in this essay is in the voice of people from the author's birthplace, Kentucky. What does this decision reveal about hooks's ideas about class and language?

1. How class conscious are you? Do you confront class barriers when you encounter them, or do you prefer to overlook them? What did you think about in this regard when you read this piece?
2. Recall a time someone made an assumption about you based upon your cultural background. How did it make you feel? What did you do about it? How can you relate your feelings and your reaction to your reading?

SUGGESTIONS FOR SUSTAINED WRITING

1. The author "raises the issue of whether or not the academic setting is a place where one can be truly radical or subversive." Drawing upon your reading and your own experiences in college, address this issue. What are some of academia's limiting forces upon radical and subversive behavior?
2. hooks closes this piece by calling for educators to expand their "definitions of home and community." Paying close attention to the introduction, explain how hooks has expanded her definition of home and community throughout this essay.

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

Based upon your readings and one further source by each author, discuss the author's differences with Richard Rodriguez's view about maintaining family and cultural ties. What role does language play here?

WEB CONNECTION

Read this book review for Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. What did you learn about the book from reading the review? What points mentioned in the reviews would you have to consult the book itself to find out?

LINKS

Biographical

This is a very good general start page at the Voices From the Gaps site. There, you'll find photos of hooks and book covers, a biography, a bibliography, and related links.

Here's a brief biography, photo, some links, and a bibliography. What are a few of the major differences between this page and the one above?

This page, prepared by the organizers of a talk she gave, contains a portrait of hooks and some other biographical information.

Bibliographical

The author discusses the politics of literacy in this interview conducted for the journal JAC in 1994.

Ready for some more work by hooks? Like to use etext? Here's an essay called "Postmodern Blackness" which originally appeared in Postmodern Culture.

Interested in pursuing the author's views about capitalism and patriarchy? Check out this interview in which hooks discusses these issues at some length.

Cultural

Would you like to put hooks's work into a broader cultural and political context? Study this page of suggested readings for black feminists and you'll be on your way.

You probably know that bell hooks is a pen name. Curious about some other famous ones? Click over to this list and see how many you recognize.

This page contains a review and some other information about bell hooks onVideo: Cultural Criticism & Transformation. Can you tell if your library has a copy using the computer you're working on now?