The Women

by Hilton Als

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374525293
• ISBN13: 9780374525293
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Provocative, Original, Important

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.

A Bold, Original Treasure

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.

Amazing

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.