bell hooks

Dr. hooks was born Gloria Jean Watkins and used “bell hooks” as a pseudonym, adopting the name of a maternal great-grandmother and styling it lowercase. She said she wanted to focus attention on her work, not on herself, while also paying homage to a relative with whom she shared an independent cast of mind.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2021/12/15/bell-hooks-dead/

“I was a young girl buying bubble gum at the corner store when I first really heard the full name bell hooks,” she wrote in her 1989 book “Talking Back.” “I had just ‘talked back’ to a grown person. Even now I can recall the surprised look, the mocking tones that informed me I must be kin to bell hooks — a sharp-tongued woman, a woman who spoke her mind, a woman who was not afraid to talk back. I claimed this legacy of defiance, of will, of courage, affirming my link to female ancestors who were bold and daring in their speech.”

- bell hooks