Margaret Hooks (1945–2021) was an Irish-born author and journalist, best known for her books and writing about women, art and photography, including a celebrated biography of the Italian-born photographer Tina Modotti, and books and articles about Surrealism and artists related to the Surrealist movement.
Early life
Hooks was born at Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital, the eldest of six children. She attended Princess Gardens School (now Hunterhouse College) as a day scholarship student.
Activism
In Sydney, Hooks became active in leftwing and feminist circles. She was hired in 1974 by the Sydney-based anti-war campaign organization AICD (the Association for International Cooperation & Disarmament, now known as the People for Nuclear Disarmament NSW) to direct its Latin America section, lobbying Australian Senators and Members of Parliament to enable resettlement of political asylum seekers fleeing repression from military regimes in South American countries, particularly Chile. She also served as Treasurer and Events Coordinator of the Chile Solidarity Committee in Sydney from 1974 to 1977 and on behalf of AICD organized visits to Australia by peace delegations from Latin America and Asia. A co-founder of Women In Solidarity for Peace, she also organized the participation of a delegation of Vietnamese women peace activists to the demonstration/celebration of International Women's Day in Sydney on March 8, 1975.
Hooks co-authored and published “Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Power”, a booklet critical of doctors and administrators at two P.S.I. clinics in Sydney.
Journalism
Hooks began a career in journalism upon relocating to Mexico in 1979, writing freelance articles about conditions for women in Mexico and Guatemala for international feminist publications, including the UK's Spare Rib magazine and Off Our Backs in the United States, while also doing volunteer work on human rights in Central America for non-governmental activist organizations based in London and Mexico City.
In 1984, she was given press credentials by British journalist Duncan Campbell, then with the London-based City Limits magazine, to travel to the Guatemalan highlands in order to report on rights violations and atrocities being committed against that country's indigenous population by the Guatemalan military in its counterinsurgency war against leftist guerrillas. Her reporting from that trip was published in The National Times of Australia and specialist journals, including Cultural Survival Quarterly and others, launching Hooks into a full-time journalism career.
By late-1984, she had become Mexico Correspondent for The Sunday Tribune of Dublin, Ireland, while working as Managing Editor of the Encuentro bi-weekly political supplement of Mexico's sole English-language newspaper, The Mexico City News.
In the immediate aftermath of the September 1985 Mexico City earthquake, she was named as Mexico-based correspondent for Ireland's leading newspaper, The Irish Times. Hooks covered breaking news and wrote feature articles for the paper from 1985 to 1991, filing stories from Mexico and Central America, with a focus on the region's armed conflicts and counterinsurgency campaigns and their impact on civilian populations, particularly in Guatemala.
Her by-lined stories from the region also appeared in a number of U.S. and British news publications, including The Guardian and The Observer newspapers in the UK, San Francisco-based Pacific News Service, The San Francisco Examiner, The San Diego Union, The Houston Chronicle, The Miami Herald, and others.
After a break from journalism to focus on book-writing, in 1996 Hooks became Mexico Correspondent for New York-based ARTnews and on relocating to Miami, Florida, in 1998 she was named a Contributing Editor of the magazine. Her writing on the visual arts and culture also appeared in a variety of other publications, including Grand Street, AfterImage, Aperture, Vogue, Elle, The Observer Magazine, The Daily Beast and BOMB magazine.
Books
In her lifetime, Hooks published eight books of non-fiction, mainly focused on topics or subjects involving women, artists and the Surrealist movement. She also translated into English the Spanish-language autobiography of Austrian-born psychoanalyst Marie Langer, From Vienna to Managua: Journey of a Psychoanalyst, published in 1989 by Free Association Books (London).
Guatemalan Women Speak, chronicling women impacted by the military repression and genocide against indigenous peoples in Guatemala during the 1980s, was published in 1991 in London by CIIR. The book was released in a second edition in 1993, published in Washington, D.C. by EPICA.