At Stanford, Mackey began dating Gloria Jean Watkins, who later wrote as bell hooks. After finishing his Ph.D., Mackey taught briefly at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Southern California before taking a job in the literature department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1979. During this time, Watkins pursued graduate work and worked on what would become her first book, “Ain’t I a Woman?” They broke up in the mid-eighties. (hooks has alluded to their relationship in her own writing, in which she describes a “quiet and still” lover she met at Stanford.)
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