According to hooks’s biography on the Berea College website, where bell hooks is a Distinguished Professor in Residence in Appalachian Studies, hooks was born Gloria Jean Watkins in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Her pen name of bell hooks is “based on the names of her mother and grandmother,” and she chooses to spell it in the lower case, bell hooks, in order “to emphasize the importance of the substance of her writing as opposed to who she is.”

hooks is the author of over 30 books, and the bell hooks institute website at Berea College identifies her as “an acclaimed intellectual, feminist theorist, cultural critic, artist, and writer” who has written poetry and children’s books as well as writings about gender, race, class and spirituality.

In Feminism is for Everybody, hooks presents the reader with a clear guide to feminism written in the first person. Usually, hooks employs the plural first person “we” in order to emphasize the collective nature of her arguments and to invite readers to participate in feminist thinking alongside hooks, but her occasional use of the singular first person, “I,” allows the reader a glimpse into hooks’s personal history and private life. These glimpses humanize the theoretical and political themes of the book, while giving the reader an idea of what it might feel like to have a conversation with hooks in person about these important topics.