bell hooks is known primarily as a feminist author and academic, with her work concentrating on how race, capitalism, and other oppressive systems intersect on Black bodies and women. Her first book, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981), is broadly considered one of the most authoritative sources on Black identity and gender. Her work on men, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004), analyzes the position of men in oppressive systems and is unique among feminist works for declaring a love for men.

In the context of Killing Rage: Ending Racism, hooks quotes her prior work on the development of a Black female identity and the intersectional nature of oppressive systems. The use of these quotes in the essay collection provides a groundwork for feminist and liberatory theory in which hooks develops plans for building and protecting communities. hooks also employs this groundwork to describe how academia and Black nationalist movements have assimilated white supremacist techniques and ideas, despite their apparently liberatory promise.

As activists and fiction authors, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker provide both media presentations of Blackness as well as public speeches about the nature of white supremacy in America.