Customer Reviews

Dark Designs and Visual Culture

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I read this collection of essays last summer, and I'm impressed with Wallace's balanced analyses of popular culture and cinema past and present. Wallace is an astute critic and scholar, but what astounded me were the early chapters that centered on her life. She should publish a memoir, as she has an acute ability to draw the reader into her personal life.
However, I do have one criticism. I do not like the way she handled bell hooks, and I'm not talking about Wallace's essays on the self-proclaimed diva of Black Feminism. In the early chapters, Wallace apologizes for writing the pieces on hooks, which undermines the excellent essays. The tone of Wallace's apology comes across as forced and insincere. bell hooks trashes everybody, and she has NEVER apologized or regretted a word she has put on paper. Just as Postcolonial critic Sara Suleri did a decade ago when she chastised hooks, Wallace should have stuck to her guns...Nonetheless, the essays on hooks are provocative, valid, and downright juicy.