Author Guide · Feminist Theory & Cultural Criticism
Books Written by
Gloria Jean Watkins was born in 1952 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, one of seven children; her father worked as a janitor at the post office. She wrote as bell hooks, after her maternal great-grandmother Bell Blair Hooks, and kept the name in lowercase so that readers would look at the substance of the books rather than at her. Between 1981 and 2013 she published more than thirty of them, on feminism, race, class, film, teaching and love, while teaching at Yale, Oberlin, City College of New York and finally Berea College, a few hours from where she grew up. In 1992 Publishers Weekly named her first book one of the twenty most influential women’s books of the previous twenty years. This guide covers her 14 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 14 key books · 1981–2009 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
bell hooks published more than thirty books. Her best known are All About Love (2000), Ain’t I a Woman (1981), Teaching to Transgress (1994) and Feminism Is for Everybody (2000); Yearning (1990) won an American Book Award. Start with All About Love, the first book of her trilogy on love; the theory behind it is in the earlier books, which the list below sets out in order.
Where to Start with bell hooks
If you want her most-read book
→ All About Love (2000) — love as something you do, not something you feel.
If you want a short introduction to feminism
→ Feminism Is for Everybody (2000) — written for readers who have never read feminist theory.
If you teach, or want to
→ Teaching to Transgress (1994) — education as the practice of freedom.
If you want where it all started
→ Ain’t I a Woman (1981) — her first book, on Black women and feminism.
14 bell hooks Books, in Order
Ain’t I a Woman
Her first book of prose, named after the speech attributed to Sojourner Truth, looks at how racism and sexism together shaped the lives of Black women, from slavery onward, and argues that both the women’s movement and the Black liberation movement had left them out. In 1992 Publishers Weekly named it one of the twenty most influential women’s books of the previous twenty years.
Feminist Theory
A critique of mainstream American feminism from the position of the women it had pushed to the edge: Black, poor and working-class women. Among its targets is Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, which she argued spoke almost only for white, middle-class, married women.
Talking Back
Short essays that mix theory with her own life: growing up in the segregated South, where “talking back” to an elder was punished, and finding her voice as a writer and teacher.
Yearning
Essays on race, gender and culture, from postmodern theory to film, architecture and the idea of home. It won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation in 1991.
Black Looks
Essays on how Black people are shown in film, television, advertising and pop music, and on how Black viewers look back. It includes “Eating the Other” and “The Oppositional Gaze”, two of her most cited essays.
Teaching to Transgress
Essays on teaching, drawing on the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire and on her own schooling, from segregated Black schools in Kentucky to Stanford. She argues that a classroom should be a place of excitement and freedom, where students and teacher both take part, rather than a place where knowledge is handed down.
Killing Rage
Essays on racism in everyday American life. She writes about Black rage as a reasonable response to racism, and about what an end to racism would need from both Black and white Americans.
Bone Black
A memoir of her childhood in Kentucky in short, vivid fragments: her family, church, school and the rules for girls, and the reading and writing that let her imagine another life. Wounds of Passion (1997) continues the story into her years as a young writer.
All About Love
Her most widely read book. Borrowing M. Scott Peck’s definition of love as the will to extend oneself to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth, she argues that love is a practice of care, commitment, knowledge, respect, responsibility and trust, and that it cannot exist alongside abuse. It is the first book of her love trilogy.
Feminism Is for Everybody
A short book written for readers who know feminism only from the media. In brief chapters she covers sexism, reproductive rights, work, class, race, beauty, violence, parenting and love, and makes the case that feminism is a movement against sexism, not against men.
Salvation
The second book of the love trilogy looks at love in Black life, from family and romance to self-love, and at how racism, the media and consumer culture have damaged it. It was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in 2002.
Communion
The final book of the trilogy is about women and love: what feminism changed for them, and how they can find it in friendship, community and themselves as well as in partners.
The Will to Change
A book about men, written with sympathy for them: she argues that patriarchy harms men too, by teaching boys to cut themselves off from their feelings, and that men cannot love or be loved until that changes. It appeared the same year as We Real Cool, her book on Black men.
Belonging
Essays and conversations about returning to Kentucky after decades away, written after she moved to Berea in 2004. She writes about land, farming, Appalachia, race and class, and about what it means to belong to a place.
In What Order to Read bell hooks
Her books do not depend on each other, so you can read by subject. The one sequence is the love trilogy: All About Love, Salvation and Communion, best read in that order, with The Will to Change as a companion about men.
Publication order shows how her work moved: from feminist theory in the 1980s, to cultural criticism and teaching in the 1990s, to love, masculinity and home after 2000. Readers who are new to her usually start with one of the short books from 2000 and go back to Ain’t I a Woman and Feminist Theory once they know her ideas.
A reading path
1. All About Love (2000)
2. Feminism Is for Everybody (2000)
3. Ain’t I a Woman (1981)
4. Teaching to Transgress (1994)
5. The Will to Change (2004)
Everything Else bell hooks Published
Beyond the 14 key books: 20 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Poetry
3
3 books · 1978–2012
- 1978And There We Wepther first published book
- 2011When Angels Speak of Lovepoems on love
- 2012Appalachian Elegypoems about Kentucky and place
Children’s books
4
4 books · 1999–2004
- 1999Happy to Be Nappyillustrated by Chris Raschka; NAACP Image Award nominee
- 2002Homemade LoveBank Street College Children’s Book of the Year
- 2002Be Boy Buzza picture book about Black boyhood
- 2004Skin Againa picture book about race and identity
Essays, memoir and conversations
13
13 books · 1991–2013
- 1991Breaking Breadconversations with Cornel West
- 1993Sisters of the YamBlack women and self-recovery
- 1994Outlaw Cultureessays on popular culture
- 1995Art on My Mindessays on visual art
- 1996Reel to Realessays and interviews on film
- 1997Wounds of Passionthe sequel to Bone Black
- 1999Remembered Raptureon the writing life
- 2000Where We Standon class
- 2003Rock My SoulBlack people and self-esteem
- 2003Teaching Communitythe second book on teaching
- 2004We Real CoolBlack men and masculinity
- 2010Teaching Critical Thinkingthe third book on teaching
- 2013Writing Beyond Raceessays on race and theory
The years · 1952–2021
Quick facts about bell hooks
- Known for
- Writing feminist and cultural theory in plain language, from Ain’t I a Woman (1981) on Black women and feminism to All About Love (2000), her most widely read book
- 1952
- Born Gloria Jean Watkins in Hopkinsville, Kentucky
- 1981
- Ain’t I a Woman
- 2000
- All About Love
- 2004
- Joins Berea College in Kentucky
- 2021
- Dies at home in Berea, aged 69
- Born
- Gloria Jean Watkins, 25 September 1952, Hopkinsville, Kentucky
- Died
- 15 December 2021, Berea, Kentucky, of kidney failure
- Pen name
- After her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks; written in lowercase
- Education
- Stanford (BA, 1973), University of Wisconsin–Madison (MA, 1976), UC Santa Cruz (PhD, 1983, on Toni Morrison)
- Taught
- Yale, Oberlin, City College of New York; from 2004 Berea College, home of the bell hooks Institute (2014)
- Honours
- American Book Award (1991) for Yearning; Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame (2018)
The red mark is 2000: All About Love, the first book of her love trilogy and her most widely read.
How bell hooks Writes: Theory in Plain Language
She wrote for readers outside universities on purpose. Her books avoid academic jargon, and many are short; Feminism Is for Everybody was meant for people who had only met feminism through the media. She returned to the same handful of ideas across decades, often in one long phrase, “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”, to insist that race, sex and class work together and cannot be taken apart.
Her own life is part of the argument. Stories from her childhood in segregated Kentucky, her family, her classrooms and her relationships sit next to the theory, and two books, Bone Black and Wounds of Passion, are memoir. She was also a sharp critic of popular culture: in Black Looks, Outlaw Culture and Reel to Real she wrote about films, music and advertising with the same seriousness as about politics.
From the late 1990s she wrote more and more about love, which she treated as a political question, not only a private one: if people learn to love, she argued, they move away from domination. For writers who work in the same tradition, from Audre Lorde to James Baldwin, see Authors like bell hooks.
Watch
bell hooks in conversation with Cornel West
bell hooks and Cornel West, who wrote Breaking Bread together in 1991, in a public dialogue at The New School in New York in October 2014, during one of her residencies there.
Frequently asked questions about bell hooks’s books
How many books has bell hooks written?
More than thirty, counting poetry and children’s books. Fourteen are the key books on this page, from Ain’t I a Woman (1981) to Belonging (2009); nineteen more, including three books of poems and four for children, are listed under “Everything else”.
What are bell hooks’s books in order?
Ain’t I a Woman (1981), Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), Talking Back (1989), Yearning (1990), Black Looks (1992), Teaching to Transgress (1994), Killing Rage (1995), Bone Black (1996), All About Love (2000), Feminism Is for Everybody (2000), Salvation (2001), Communion (2002), The Will to Change (2004) and Belonging (2009).
What order should I read bell hooks’s books in?
There is no required order. Most readers start with All About Love or Feminism Is for Everybody, both short, then go on to the earlier, denser theory in Ain’t I a Woman and Feminist Theory. The love trilogy reads best in order: All About Love, Salvation, Communion.
Where should I start with bell hooks?
With All About Love (2000), her most widely read book. If you want her feminism first, start with Feminism Is for Everybody (2000), a short introduction written for readers new to feminist theory.
What is bell hooks’s most famous book?
All About Love: New Visions (2000), the first book of her love trilogy. In feminist theory, Ain’t I a Woman (1981) is her landmark: Publishers Weekly named it one of the twenty most influential women’s books of the previous twenty years in 1992.
Why does bell hooks write her name in lowercase?
She took the name of her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks, and wrote it in lowercase so that attention would go to the substance of her books rather than to who she was. Her legal name was Gloria Jean Watkins.
Is Feminism Is for Everybody a good introduction to bell hooks?
Yes. It is short, divided into brief chapters, and was written for readers who know feminism only from the media. It covers the ideas she develops at more length in Ain’t I a Woman and Feminist Theory.
What is bell hooks’s love trilogy?
All About Love: New Visions (2000), Salvation: Black People and Love (2001) and Communion: The Female Search for Love (2002). The Will to Change (2004), about men and love, is often read alongside them but is not part of the trilogy.
Did bell hooks win any awards?
Yearning won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation in 1991. Salvation was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and she was inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2018.
Was bell hooks controversial?
She was often a sharp critic, and some of her views were publicly debated. She criticised Spike Lee’s film Malcolm X for encouraging a passive response, and the documentary Paris Is Burning for presenting the balls as a spectacle for white audiences. At a 2002 commencement speech at Southwestern University in Texas, in which she criticised government-sanctioned violence, part of the audience booed.
Is bell hooks still alive?
No. She died of kidney failure at her home in Berea, Kentucky, on 15 December 2021, aged 69. She had taught at Berea College since 2004, and it holds her papers and the bell hooks Institute.
Where did bell hooks teach?
After starting at the University of Southern California in 1976, she taught at Yale (1985–1988), Oberlin College (1988–1994) and City College of New York (from 1994), and from 2004 at Berea College in Kentucky.
What was bell hooks’s real name?
Gloria Jean Watkins. She took the name of her great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks, and wrote it in lower case to keep the attention on her ideas rather than on herself. More writers who did the same are on my list of authors who wrote under pseudonyms.
Footnotes
- bell hooks — Wikipedia
- bell hooks — Encyclopædia Britannica
- bell hooks — Academy of American Poets
- bell hooks/Gloria Jean Watkins (1952–2021) — BlackPast
- Love Trilogy (bell hooks) — Wikipedia
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Poetry sustains life. Of this I am certain.”
— bell hooks, as quoted by the Academy of American Poets
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