Wednesday Reads

 Obituary:  Noted feminist and author Gloria Jean Watkins, known by her pen name of "bell hooks" (always lower case letters), died of kidney failure at her home in Kentucky.  She was 69 years old, a mere three years older than I am, but she had been a writer for decades.

Snip:

Born Gloria Jean Watkins in Hopkinsville, Kentucky she went on to pen many literary works under the pseudonym bell hooks, a tribute to her great-grandmother that she chose to write using lowercase letters to focus attention on her words rather than herself. After receiving a Bachelors' degree from Stanford University, a Master's from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her doctorate a the University of California - Santa Cruz. 

Hooks went on to teach at many institutions while harnessing a career in literature and penning more than 30 books. She educated minds at Yale University, Oberlin College and City College of New York. She joined the Berea College faculty in 2004 and a decade later founded the center named for her, where “many and varied expressions of difference can thrive.”

Starting in the 1970s, hooks published books that helped shape popular and academic discourse. Rejecting the isolation of feminism, civil rights and economics into separate fields, she was a believer in community and connectivity and how racism, sexism and economic disparity reinforced each other.

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The parents of the women athletes affected by the cheater Will "Lia" Thomas at the University of Pennsylvania have voiced their outrage over the scandal. I think pressure put on the alumni association and the threat of lost money would have a bigger effect.

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