EBook for Equity: Teaching to Transgress by Bell Hooks

For this week’s Ebook for Equity, we are highlighting Bell Hooks’ Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom in honor and memory of this important and beloved writer.  Bell Hooks passed away earlier this week on December 15, 2021.

“Teaching to Transgress is a collection of essays on how multicultural classrooms can be more inclusive. Gloria Jean Watkins, who writes under her pen name bell hooks, has written over 30 books that examine American culture and race relations. She was born in 1952 and grew up in Kentucky. She earned degrees from Stanford University (BA) and Duke University (MA). Teaching to Transgress was published by Routledge in 1994.

In this book, the author focuses on education and how it can be used to bridge gaps. She uses her personal experiences as a student and teacher to explain how students can be marginalized in schools. The author grew up in the South, where she saw black men have power while women were oppressed. In her segregated school, however, she found hope because of her teachers who nurtured and loved her but also pushed her to think critically about society. They showed that classrooms could become transgressive spaces for change.”