The Women [Paperback]

Hilton Als (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 31, 1998

A New York Times Notable Book

Daring and fiercely original, The Women is at once a memoir, a psychological study, a sociopolitical manifesto, and an incisive adventure in literary criticism. It is conceived as a series of portraits analyzing the role that sexual and racial identity played in the lives and work of the writer's subjects: his mother, a self-described "Negress," who would not be defined by the limitations of race and gender; the mother of Malcolm X, whose mixed-race background and eventual descent into madness contributed to her son's misogyny and racism; brilliant, Harvard-educated Dorothy Dean, who rarely identified with other blacks or women, but deeply empathized with white gay men; and the late Owen Dodson, a poet and dramatist who was female-identified and who played an important role in the author's own social and intellectual formation.

Hilton Als submits both racial and sexual stereotypes to his inimitable scrutiny with relentless humor and sympathy. The results are exhilarating. The Women is that rarest of books: a memorable work of self-investigation that creates a form of all its own.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This memoir is a meditation on what it means to be black, gay, and female in U.S. culture. Als, a gay man, writes about his mother; his sisters; Malcolm X's mother; and Dorothy Dean, an African-American woman who was at the center of New York's gay male circles. But his real subject is--as he puts it--what it means to be a "Negress" in white culture. Examining how race and gender shape all of our attitudes toward what it means to be a "woman," "man" or "homosexual," Als gets at the root of self-definition in a world that constructs very limited options. The Women is elegantly written and moves us through a variety of ideas and emotions with a fluidity that is both graceful and startling; it is unique in contemporary writings about race, sexuality, and gender. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

"I knew I was a Negress... [when] I saw myself in my mother's eyes; the reflection showed a teenage girl, insecure, frightened and vengeful." Thus does Als, a black man, introduce the story of his mother's life and his intense identification with it, which, he feels, affected the direction of his sexuality. It is the first of three powerful essays on race and sexual identity in the black community. The other two essays explore the life of a legendary black "fag hag" and the culture of what Als dubs the gay "nigerati." Als, a staff writer for the New Yorker, does a highwire act, perched between an anguished portrait of his mother and himself and a dispassionate examination of a segment of black urban culture whose males feel they have two role models?"bad niggers" or victimized mothers. Both postures often coalesce in an ambivalent mix of pride and humiliation. Although he deals with familiar themes of black attitudes toward color, white values and perceptions, his vision is both original and wrenching. Altogether, this is a provocative, engrossing vision of both homosexuality and black culture.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (January 31, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374525293
• ISBN-13: 978-0374525293
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #111,818 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provocative, Original, Important, July 8, 2005

By 

L. Hillsbery "Thorn Kief Hillsbery" (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Women (Paperback)

This book makes demands: close reading, hard thinking, and immediate re-reading.

One of its great strengths is that many of those who constitute its "natural" audience will find it offensive in more ways than one. The Women transcends cant and politcal correctness to get to the heart of what matters most about personal identity in the hall of warped mirrors that constitutes our "society of the spectacle." Few works this important are written as clearly, as gracefully, as passionately. Essential reading.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Bold, Original Treasure, October 10, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Women (Paperback)

Hilton Als discovers himself--strangely, a brilliant negress in negro-boy body--in this small but large masterpiece. Ignore the truly self-serving, hypersensitive comments of the Dodson advocate above whose comments "trash" Mr. Als. If you care about beauty, art, the psychology of negritude, the complexity of gender, honesty as it relates to revelation--then read this devastating book, which is a thrilling, one-of-a-kind experience.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, January 20, 2000

By 

Jeane Smith (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Women (Paperback)

This book is very hard to get through and understand. It isn't until you read it for the second time that it all comes together. Als talks about the women he's known and himself and ties all the lives and minds together.