Introduction

Th e above epigraph speaks to bell hooks’s ethical stance, pedagogical vision, political sensibilities around the importance of transgression, philosophical anthropology informed by an antiessentialist framework, passion to help to create a world where multiple sites of oppression and dehumanization are challenged and overthrown, and belief in a collective movement toward spiritual and existential enrichment. Indeed, the above epigraph by Paulo Freire speaks to the young bell hooks within her lived context of challenging silences, of becoming within the facticity of lived social and familial spaces, and of naming as an act of empowerment.