Environmental Justice Heros: bell hooks

This week’s environmental justice hero is dedicated in loving memory to bell hooks, an author, professor, feminist, and social activist. Gloria Jean Watkins–more commonly known for her pen name, bell hooks–was a prolific writer, radical thinker, and consummate educator who authored more than thirty books and numerous essays.

Over hooks’ lifetime, she wrote books centered on the intersectionality of race, capitalism, gender, and the environment. Watkins wrote essays discussing her cultural connections to nature, such as “Touching the Earth” in her novel, Belonging. One of hooks’ most famous writtings is Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, which she wrote during her time obtaining her master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and published before obtaining her doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

bell hooks recently passed away on December 15, 2021, but will forever be remembered in the hearts of many. VAIPL honors bell hooks’ legacy by remembering her everlasting wisdom on Creation care:

“To live in communion with the earth, fully acknowledging nature’s power with humility and grace, is a practice of spiritual mindfulness that heals and restores.”

— bell hooks