num_pages: 88
description: Author activist feminist teacher and artist bell hooks is celebrated as one of the nation's leading intellectuals. Born in Hopkinsville Kentucky hooks drew her unique pseudonym from the name of her grandmother an intelligent and strong-willed African American woman who inspired her to stand up against a dominating and repressive society. Her poetry novels memoirs and children's books reflect her Appalachian upbringing and feature her struggles with racially integrated schools and unwelcome authority figures. One of Utne Reader 's 100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life hooks has won wide acclaim from critics and readers alike.In Appalachian Elegy  bell hooks continues her work as an imagist of life's harsh realities in a collection of poems inspired by her childhood in the isolated hills and hidden hollows of Kentucky. At once meditative confessional and political this poignant volume draws the reader deep into the experience of living in Appalachia. Touching on such topics as the marginalization of its people and the environmental degradation it has suffered over the years hooks's poetry quietly elegizes the slow loss of an identity while also celebrating that which is constant firmly rooted in a place that is no longer whole.
language: English
title: Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place
publisher: University Press of Kentucky