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The Women

byHilton Als

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What are the forces that shape us? In The Women, Hilton Als explores—with breath taking originality—the role of sexual and racial identity in marginalized lives. With a blend of fact and fiction, Als brings to vivid life a number of extraordinary characters, including: his mother, a singular woman whose West Indian heritage and determination inspired her son to write; Malcolm X's mother, whose mixed-race background and eventual descent into madness contributed to her son's burgeoning misogyny and fear; brilliant, Harvard-educated Dorothy Dean, who deeply empathized with white gay men; and Owen Dodson, teacher and poet, who played an important role in the author's development as a gay man, and thinker.

Combining memoir, cultural history, social theory and storytelling, The Women is a profoundly innovative work which has inspired a generation of writers. Here, Als submits both racial and sexual stereotypes to scrutiny, showing ‘no mercy but every tenderness’. 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.

Inventive and daring

Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

About Hilton Als

Hilton Als is a Pulitzer prize-winning writer and staff writer at The New Yorker. He has received a number of awards, including a Guggenheim, a George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, and the Windham Campbell prize from Yale University. He is the author of three acclaimed books – The Women, White Girls, and My Pinup; White Girls was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and won the LAMBDA Literary Award. Als is a teaching professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9780141999753
  • Length: 160 pages
  • Price: £5.99
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