Introduction: To bell with a Loving Embrace from Far and Wide

In 2021, Gloria Jean Watson, more famously known as bell hooks, departed from the living world. Her passing left in its wake an outpouring of love, gratitude, and grief from many corners of the social world. Educators, scholars, activists, and artists alike expressed love and admiration for all the many philosophical and literary gifts she offered. bell hooks was a prolific scholar whose work influenced such disciplines as education, sociology, women’s studies, African American studies, and more. She is widely read and cited for her philosophy about love, place, race, class, gender, and education for liberation. As noted by Kimberle Crenshaw (2021), bell hooks was a trailblazer who provided women, especially women of color, with a language to express what it meant to simultaneously live at the intersections of raced, classed and gendered oppressions. Some of bell’s most recognizable works include Teaching to Transgress, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, and the Love trilogy. bell hooks’ work has been featured in Publishers Weekly, and she even published a series of children’s books that received critical acclaim. As a scholar and author, her reach and impact has been both wide and deep, spanning across nations, regions, disciplines, and generations. Her work is nothing short of timeless and her legacy of taking on the inequities of patriarchal capitalism and racial oppression is profound. It would not be an exaggeration to say that her work has touched the lives of millions, and her work has even further relevance today as far-right ideology fueled by racism and misogyny is resurging globally.