hooks helps us see that the classroom is a community, and in order to experience mutual understandings for one another we need to truly teach and learn from a place of love and respect. In these classrooms, dialogue and action among teachers and students is uplifting, compassionate, responsible and honest. She has inspired generations of educators to build non-hierarchical classrooms in collaboration with their diverse student bodies. As a writer, intersectional feminist scholar, activist and educator, the words and actions that hooks expressed have fostered environments of hope, transformation, love and trust.

She has inspired people of all backgrounds to discover profound and effective ways of liberating themselves from negative social, cultural and emotional forces (see the reading list at the end of the post for just a few of the many examples). Hooks’ death has understandably shocked and shaken the global community. The quote, which is from her 1994 book, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge), reads: “As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence.” Adam Zucker, bell hooks (from the series The Educators), 2019, watercolor and ink on paper.Ībove is a portrait of bell hooks that I painted for my ongoing series, The Educators.

Bell hooks teaching