The far western Kentucky community of Hopkinsville came together Friday to celebrate the legacy of the late bell hooks, a Black intellectual, poet and author from the city who went on to become one of the most celebrated in the modern feminist canon.
Born Gloria Jean Watkins in Hopkinsville, bell hooks authored dozens of books on subjects like race, sex, gender and film.
Some of hooks’ poetry, essays and books helped to lay the path for intersectional feminism, which recognizes that “all the aspects of identity enrich women's lived experiences and compound and complicate the various oppressions and marginalizations women face.”
Her uniquely styled all-lowercase pen name is an homage to her maternal great grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. That tribute now graces bell hooks way, formerly Eighth Street between South Virginia and Clay streets in downtown Hopkinsville.
Gwenda Motley, Watkins’ sister, said the street that now bears Watkins’ pen name played an important role in her intellectual growth. Motley said the former Carnegie library building that stands on the corner of the street is where her sister fell in love with learning.
“It's overwhelming, but it's a good overwhelming. It's an exciting overwhelming. It's a heartwarming overwhelming. It just brings it all full circle,” Motley said. “That place and the books it held stretched our imagination and our intellect.”
The Pennyroyal Area Museum also dedicated the bell hooks Legacy Room Friday, placing furniture, books and art from the writer’s personal collection on display in its community room.
Though she left Hopkinsville to pursue her education and career in academia, hooks returned to Kentucky and joined the faculty of Berea College – which now houses the bell hooks center – east of Lexington in 2004. She lived in Berea – where a campus street was also dedicated to her memory – until her death in 2021 from kidney failure.
“She liked to sometimes refer to herself as a hometown girl. She never lost where she came from,” Motley said. “She always remembered, ‘I came from a little small, segregated town’ … but it was a beloved community. So she never forgot that, and she took that pretty much with her everywhere she went.”
With gray skies and rain clouds threatening, the celebration of hooks was moved indoors at the Pennyroyal Area Museum, where more than 100 community members and officials gathered to honor the author’s legacy “on the heels of Black History Month and the dawning of Women’s History Month.”
Francine Gilmer with the bell hooks Legacy Group, a community organization dedicated to preserving the author’s works and history, led the proceedings.
“Remembering our sister Gloria Jean Watkins – bell hooks to the world – is significant because, in bell’s words, ‘Love empowers us to live fully and die well. Death becomes then not an end to life, but a part of living,’” Gilmer said, quoting hooks’ “All About Love: New Visions.” “[Her] passing has provided pathways for her legacy to live on and on and on.”
Jada Poindexter read a poem she wrote last year called “Belonging as a Black Woman” – which placed second in the 18-and-older division of the bell hooks Writing Contest in 2023. In her writing, Poindexter drew on themes of Watkins’ work, particularly Black womanhood.
“I feel like, diving into more of her work, it's definitely made me become more open-minded,” the 19-year-old writer said afterward. “It makes me want to be a better person.”
Other local and state officials also paid tribute to the writer. Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman’s deputy chief of staff, Heather Dearing, read an acclamation from the governor’s office celebrating the author’s impact.
Hopkinsville Mayor J.R. Knight said the celebrated feminist writer – who styled her pen name to highlight her work and not her identity – is more than deserving of the dedication.
“She did not want us to focus on her but [on] her message, but today I'm honored to recognize her and her impact on our community,” he said. “The least we could do is rename Eighth Street in her honor, and today we've done it.”
For Motley, marking her late sister’s legacy in her hometown was a special experience.
“We did not really realize the total impact that she made on the world until her passing. She touched people just everywhere. People sent condolences from Africa, from Rome, from France, from Germany. It was just overwhelmingly wonderful and amazing to know that our own sister, that we just referred to as Gloria Jean, had touched the world in the way that she did,” Motley said. “To make people think is always what she wanted to do … to make people think about their lives.”
