Remembering bell hooks: Scholar, Activist, and Beloved Friend

When M. Shadee Malaklou became the new chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies department at Berea College in Kentucky, she was invited to lunch by bell hooks. Hooks greeted her with candid honesty, saying, “‘I was against your hire.'” Rather than being put off, Malaklou embraced Hooks’s witty irreverence, a quality that shone through in her writing. Hooks had assumed Malaklou, a woman of Iranian descent from Southern California, wouldn’t last in Berea’s rural environment. But Hooks wrote a glowing commendation for Malaklou’s tenure three years later.

Malaklou, now the inaugural director of the Bell Hooks Center at Berea, reflects on their friendship with deep gratitude. While the world saw Bell Hooks as an academic and public figure, Malaklou was privileged to witness her private side. The two grew close over the last three years of Hooks’s life, sharing ordinary moments like enjoying McDonald’s cheeseburgers and ordering Juicy Fruit gum in bulk.

While many people know Hooks through her famous works such as FeminisFeminism Everybody, Teaching to Transgress, and All About Love, the personal stories shared by her friends and colleagues provide a fuller picture of her life and the impact she had beyond her scholarship.

A Legacy of Radical Thought and Compassion

Since Hooks’s passing on December 15, 2021, tributes have poured in, highlighting her contributions to feminism and social justice. Hooks was celebrated for her accessible writing style, bringing complex ideas to life through personal stories, making her work approachable. Her ability to merge theory with lived experience resonated deeply with readers.

Rachel Chapman, a professor of anthropology at the University of Washington, first encountered Hooks as her undergraduate thesis advisor at Yale in the 1980s. Hooks’s teachings, Chapman recalls, focused on the pain of being young, Black, and angry—a theme that emerged in works like All About Love. Chapman vividly remembers Hooks’s advice during the Los Angeles riots 1992: “I don’t do social justice work with anyone who’s not in a movement with me for a lifetime. That reduces the number of people I’m willing to interact with on that level.” For Chapman, this insight became a guiding principle, teaching her to prioritize what gives strength and to disengage from draining interactions.

Hooks was equally influential in education. Jody Greene, founder of the Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning at UC Santa Cruz, where Hooks earned her doctorate, notes that Hooks believed education was about cultivating human beings, not just creating good employees. Her ideas on teaching, particularly in Teaching to Transgress, have become foundational for educators who view the classroom as a space for radical change.

A Lifelong Commitment to Learning and Evolving

Even in her later years, hooks continued to grow and learn. In 2014, Shelby Chestnut, director of policy and programs at the Transgender Law Center, introduced Hooks to Laverne Cox for a conversation at the New School. Chestnut remembers Hooks’s kindness and openness, especially toward the trans community, which she was actively working to understand and include in her vision of feminism when it wasn’t widely accepted.

Hooks’s foundational works, such as Ain’t I a Woman, were critical of white feminism. Feminism laid the groundwork for discussions of intersectionality before the term was even coined. As Chestnut reflects, hooks was unapologetic in prioritizing Black women while expanding her understanding of feminisFeminismompass broader struggles for justice and equality’s dedication extended beyond adult audiences—she cared deeply about young people. Linda Strong-Leek, former professor at Berea College, reHooks’sooks’s concern about the lack of representation for Black boys in literaturechildren’sdren’s books, such as Be Boy Buzz, aimed to foster literacy and provide positive representation for children of color.

Grounded in Kentucky, Connected to the Community

Despite her global influence, Bell Hooks remained deeply connected to her roots in Kentucky. She returned to Berea in her final years, embracing her identity as an Appalachian scholar. In her book Belonging: A Culture of Place, hooks reflects on the importance of geography and community, contrasting rural life with the city. Her love for the community was both political and personal. As Strong-Leek notes, hooks were dedicated to the people around her, often going unnoticed in Berea by thoweren’tweren’t connected to academia or feminist tHooks’sHooks’s friends want the world to remember that she”loved “regular “eople.” She believed in the power of ordinary moments and connections, and this love for humanity informed her groundbreaking scholarship, activism, and relationships.

As we remember bell hooks, we honor her as not only a trailblazing feminist scholar but also a deeply compassionate individual who left an indelible mark on everyone she encountered—whether through her writing, teaching, or simple gestures of kindness.