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The Women
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 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 a memorable work of self-investigation that creates a form of all its own.
145 pages, Paperback
First published May 31, 1996
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About the author
Hilton Als
93 books274 followersHilton Als is an American writer and theater critic who writes for The New Yorker magazine. Previously, he had been a staff writer for The Village Voice and editor-at-large at Vibe magazine.
His 1996 book The Women focuses on his mother, who raised him in Brooklyn, Dorothy Dean, and Owen Dodson, who was a mentor and lover of Als. In the book, Als explores his identification of the confluence of his ethnicity, gender and sexuality, moving from identifying as a "Negress" and then an "Auntie Man", a Barbadian term for homosexuals.
Als's 2013 book 'White Girls' continued to explore race, gender, identity in a series of essays about everything from the AIDS epidemic to Richard Pryor's life and work.
In 2000, Als received a Guggenheim fellowship for creative writing and the 2002–03 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. In 2004 he won the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin, which provided him half a year of free working and studying in Berlin.
Als has taught at Smith College, Wesleyan, and Yale University, and his work has also appeared in The Nation, The Believer, and the New York Review of Books.
His 1996 book The Women focuses on his mother, who raised him in Brooklyn, Dorothy Dean, and Owen Dodson, who was a mentor and lover of Als. In the book, Als explores his identification of the confluence of his ethnicity, gender and sexuality, moving from identifying as a "Negress" and then an "Auntie Man", a Barbadian term for homosexuals.
Als's 2013 book 'White Girls' continued to explore race, gender, identity in a series of essays about everything from the AIDS epidemic to Richard Pryor's life and work.
In 2000, Als received a Guggenheim fellowship for creative writing and the 2002–03 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. In 2004 he won the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin, which provided him half a year of free working and studying in Berlin.
Als has taught at Smith College, Wesleyan, and Yale University, and his work has also appeared in The Nation, The Believer, and the New York Review of Books.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
January 10, 2018
I don’t often stop and gasp when reading non-fiction. I don’t know if you can call The Women non-fiction; perhaps a better classification (if one is necessary) for this book is wisdom literature.
I first came across Mr. Als from a tweet, saying that he was receiving some award. I looked him up, came across a review he’d done of “2666: The Play” and found his insights interesting. He’d obviously read and apprehended the Bolaño book, so I wanted to see what else he’d done. I read an article in The New Yorker in which he referred to Beyoncé as “Knowles” and I thought, OK, this dude is on the level.
I wasn’t prepared for The Women. This is a book I deem absolutely essential to the contemporary conversation regarding race and politics. Mr. Als would probably cringe to read such a sentence, but I say this precisely because he operates from a level so unconcerned (but not aloof) to contemporary notions of “oppression”, “patriarchy”, “black”, “gay”. He writes for himself, and in this deep sense of subjectivity an entire new way of looking at such groups is available to us; through books like these we are taken closer to the point of seeing people (let alone peoples) as individuals. This subjectivity might not be what is en vogue right now on the right or the left, but it is the only mode that could ever hope to see another person on their own terms, which is to say, to try and see people as they see themselves. This may indeed be impossible—we can only view others through our own lens—but it is the closest thing to equality that exists.
An example of the wisdom held in this book:
“But ‘maleness’ is not a viable construct in colored life. Colored life is matriarchal; any matriarchal society can be defined as colored.”
These two sentences shatter what I thought I knew about the terms “male” “colored” “matriarchy” “patriarchy” and their meanings in contemporary America. But Als doesn’t speak of a matriarchy as if it is the antidote to patriarchy and all of its problems. Using his mother as the model Negress, he shows that matriarchy comes with its own problems that are extremely complex; it’s a mode steeped in self-sabotage and masochism, one that seeks furiously to define itself as a wholly separate entity from everything else, animate and inanimate, while simultaneously trying to hold together everything around it. Freud said religion was about a search for the Father. That search produced the God of the Hebrew Bible and Jesus, monumentally complex and problematic figures. The search for the Mother as Als describes it is no less fraught.
I found myself, as I always do, trying to relate to Als as a person. I find him intimidating—he is erudite, can be scathing, and the opposite of myself in every classification without having any of the hangups associated with those distinctions. The point isn’t to try and relate to him (I wonder how many doe-eyed white boys lavish him with praise and respect, and if he tries to sleep with them or not). Als knows that he is writing for himself, in order to try and understand himself through the analysis of the people he cares about most. In his deep quest for self-understanding, I’m content to be a fly on the wall, reading, trying to learn as much as I can.
I first came across Mr. Als from a tweet, saying that he was receiving some award. I looked him up, came across a review he’d done of “2666: The Play” and found his insights interesting. He’d obviously read and apprehended the Bolaño book, so I wanted to see what else he’d done. I read an article in The New Yorker in which he referred to Beyoncé as “Knowles” and I thought, OK, this dude is on the level.
I wasn’t prepared for The Women. This is a book I deem absolutely essential to the contemporary conversation regarding race and politics. Mr. Als would probably cringe to read such a sentence, but I say this precisely because he operates from a level so unconcerned (but not aloof) to contemporary notions of “oppression”, “patriarchy”, “black”, “gay”. He writes for himself, and in this deep sense of subjectivity an entire new way of looking at such groups is available to us; through books like these we are taken closer to the point of seeing people (let alone peoples) as individuals. This subjectivity might not be what is en vogue right now on the right or the left, but it is the only mode that could ever hope to see another person on their own terms, which is to say, to try and see people as they see themselves. This may indeed be impossible—we can only view others through our own lens—but it is the closest thing to equality that exists.
An example of the wisdom held in this book:
“But ‘maleness’ is not a viable construct in colored life. Colored life is matriarchal; any matriarchal society can be defined as colored.”
These two sentences shatter what I thought I knew about the terms “male” “colored” “matriarchy” “patriarchy” and their meanings in contemporary America. But Als doesn’t speak of a matriarchy as if it is the antidote to patriarchy and all of its problems. Using his mother as the model Negress, he shows that matriarchy comes with its own problems that are extremely complex; it’s a mode steeped in self-sabotage and masochism, one that seeks furiously to define itself as a wholly separate entity from everything else, animate and inanimate, while simultaneously trying to hold together everything around it. Freud said religion was about a search for the Father. That search produced the God of the Hebrew Bible and Jesus, monumentally complex and problematic figures. The search for the Mother as Als describes it is no less fraught.
I found myself, as I always do, trying to relate to Als as a person. I find him intimidating—he is erudite, can be scathing, and the opposite of myself in every classification without having any of the hangups associated with those distinctions. The point isn’t to try and relate to him (I wonder how many doe-eyed white boys lavish him with praise and respect, and if he tries to sleep with them or not). Als knows that he is writing for himself, in order to try and understand himself through the analysis of the people he cares about most. In his deep quest for self-understanding, I’m content to be a fly on the wall, reading, trying to learn as much as I can.
June 8, 2012
An uneven performance. The section about the author's mother is searing and memorable the rest of the book is rather mannered and precious. There's intelligence and talent here but this author needs to restrain his pretentious impulses.
March 8, 2016
The only part worth reading is Als' first section about his mother and Malcolm X's mother. Beyond that, he gets high and mighty imagining what a woman's life must be like and trails on for too long about Dorothy Dean, dehumanizing her in his attempts to make her visible.
January 3, 2016
Sometimes brilliant, sometimes aggravating, The Women revolves around Als' life as a self-identified "Negress," a term he uses to refer to (mostly) women (mostly) African American who adopt a pose of selflessness, or self-abnegation, as a defense against a world that usually renders them voiceless. Als organizes the book around the stories of the women in his own family, Malcolm X's mother, legendary fag hag Dorothy Dean, and the African American writer Owen Dodson. But the center is Als' own story, his attempt to find a language capable of expressing the precision of his experience; he frequently reiterates his admiration of those who approach language carefully, as a path to deeper perception and meaning. And there are times when he comes close to accomplishing that goal.
But for all its virtues, and they're real, I found myself increasingly distant from the voice as the book unfolded. Part to that is an extreme, and I think inaccurate, set of judgements on the work of most African American writers, especially those associated with the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement. I agree with his assessment of the rhetorical and ideological quality of Sonia Sanchez and Nikki Giovanni's work, and there's no question that some of the Harlem Renaissance writers (including Dodson) indulged in various forms of racial romanticism. But his rejections of Toni Cade Bambara and Ed Bullins, presented ex cathedra, ring false, exactly the kind of rhetorical flourishes Als ridicules.
In addition, the final two sections--on Dean and Dodson--frequently descend into a gossipy tone (that may reflect the demimonde he's describing) that left me cold. I understand that the sections about the sexual relationship with Dodson that lasted from the time Als was 15 until he broke it off at 19, while contributing something important to Als self-reflections. But they felt half-processed and I wound up feeling a bit like a voyeur. Maybe that's what Als was shooting for, but if so, I think he should have found a way to tie that in, or at least refract it off of, the material about the Negress sensibility that make the first part of the book so compelling.
The three stars reflect a serious argument with a book that, in its best passages, is close to five.
But for all its virtues, and they're real, I found myself increasingly distant from the voice as the book unfolded. Part to that is an extreme, and I think inaccurate, set of judgements on the work of most African American writers, especially those associated with the Harlem Renaissance and Black Arts Movement. I agree with his assessment of the rhetorical and ideological quality of Sonia Sanchez and Nikki Giovanni's work, and there's no question that some of the Harlem Renaissance writers (including Dodson) indulged in various forms of racial romanticism. But his rejections of Toni Cade Bambara and Ed Bullins, presented ex cathedra, ring false, exactly the kind of rhetorical flourishes Als ridicules.
In addition, the final two sections--on Dean and Dodson--frequently descend into a gossipy tone (that may reflect the demimonde he's describing) that left me cold. I understand that the sections about the sexual relationship with Dodson that lasted from the time Als was 15 until he broke it off at 19, while contributing something important to Als self-reflections. But they felt half-processed and I wound up feeling a bit like a voyeur. Maybe that's what Als was shooting for, but if so, I think he should have found a way to tie that in, or at least refract it off of, the material about the Negress sensibility that make the first part of the book so compelling.
The three stars reflect a serious argument with a book that, in its best passages, is close to five.
April 23, 2013
It is beautiful and uncomfortable, vivid and dusty, much like memory.
October 14, 2008
Although I need to read this book again before I can make any claims on understanding, I can say now that I admire Als' memoir. While his take on race and gender are sweeping and problematic, his characterizations are incredible and many of the difficult truths he tells about being a marginalized person are undeniable even in their ugliness. The section on fag hags was particularly cutting. It is hard to imagine Als writing a genuinely likeable person, but that is the charm of the story -- the characters are unpleasant and opinionated and refuse your pity if not your judgment, Als himself included.
October 17, 2024
It is difficult to summarize The Women. That is part of the text’s intent; there is no guiding light, let alone a holding hand for the reader. If you don’t find your footing in the text from the jump, Hilton Als is content to leave you lying in the dust. That he is attracted to “self-expression filtered through an elliptical thought process” did not have to be said for us to know it. It is said anyway, to inform us that his mother was attracted to such modes of expression, too. That, with every other incisive comparison he offers between his mother and him, is the closest the book has to a central conceit: can Als “...catapult [himself] past [his] mother’s emotional existence?” I’d tell you “yes” or “no,” if only this book were not written by a critic. Of course, it’s both “yes” and “no;” of course, he expands the category of “woman” at the same time as he attempts to break free from it; of course, he and his subjects are people molded by and into the role of “Negress” as much as they are the manifold processes of overcoming it having been ascribed to and forced onto them. In order to understand the “Negress,” Als has written his life in the margins of hers; witness me, he says, as I try in vain to no longer do so.
In other words, The Women reads as an attempt to claim parts of the lives it describes for himself. In the hazily Bildungsroman-like section on Owen Dodson, Als imagines what Dodson might have said after one of their romantic encounters: “... And after this beloved, another and another. But he did not say that; I am imagining that for him now, since this is my own story, finally, or rather a story I fight to own, since it is not independent of any and all people I have known...” That is, as any worthwhile writing, The Women is motion toward transcendence, through the vehicle of language: of knowing that the self is shaped profoundly in relation to others, attempting to wrestle free a sense of who you are separate from them, and failing, in Als’s words, to become something other than yourself. He knows he succeeds at coming to this inevitable failure in the text. Language is, after all, only the springboard for the transformational leap that might happen in one's life, away from others' prying eyes. But another aspect of the question Als poses is this: what would it mean to succeed? Is it, in any way, possible to become anything other than yourself "in this common world?"
There is love and care in his examination of the question for all his subjects; an un-elliptical thought process compels me to focus only on Als’s own self. For him, coming anywhere close to defying the layered confines of the self constitutes a betrayal, ostensibly of Owen Dodson. It is Dodson’s mentorship, his life’s story, the dust floating around his parlor, the sex they have – the entirety of the relationship they cultivated – that lets Als consider another aspect of who he is, one not in complete accordance with the women he had previously uniformly identified with, as a real possibility. “It is only now that I attempt to slip past the identity [women in my own family] have established for me, as their younger sister, and into a narrative that, even as I write, rejects my intellection, my control, because I betrayed its central character so long ago: Owen. Back then, I did not say:... I am not a woman. I am not you, but myself...” Since leaving Dodson at nineteen, in large part due to pressure from the women of his family, Als has superseded Dodson’s writing ability, fame, and professional accomplishments; he has also written and lived a life on his own terms, free from the constraints placed on his student-self by Dodson’s figure of the teacher-pedant. Apparently, Als thinks he has
betrayed Dodson in doing the above, in having not become Owen in some sense, or maybe in not having placed Owen at the center of one of his narratives. We don’t know what Dodson thought about this, only what is ascribed to him by the author, because Als seems never to have asked.
It’s tragic; it’s also hardly a betrayal. The literary conceit computes but doesn’t land. A few pages prior, Als describes concedes that sort of break between teacher and student as practically inevitable. The much older Dodson dying before Als was practically inevitable too; was his death a betrayal? Maybe the betrayal lies in Als having left without a goodbye, after having achieved some personal end, and in having never contacted Dodson again. Who knows? Als admits the narrative slips past his control, however controlled a slip it is. And it is at least partly controlled: Als clearly despises categorization of him or his work by others, especially by an audience. His text laughs in the face of the presumptuousness of our attempts to name it, its front tooth flashing gold.
A betrayal I long to know more about is left unmentioned, though I imagine accusations of it have been leveled at him for decades. In The Women, Als more or less consigns the practice of collective politics to the historical dustbin. The class ascendance aspirations of the petty Black bourgeoisie, the Black Power movement, the numerous political descendants of both, all of it. To him, the practice of something like a collective struggle for Black liberation seems necessarily at odds with the aim of discovering, creating, and transcending the role assigned to you by the world. Though his tone in talking about Black Power is dismissive, it betrays a keen understanding of the one model of a revolutionary organization that has worked, ie, survived imperial onlslaughts and succeeded in (some of) its goals: a Leninist one, famously subordinating any and all considerations, explorations of the self included, to the aims and needs of the organization. (One understands how someone like Als would be at odds with even a Black Panther Party that succeeded in bringing about a revolution, too.) That said, Als thinks there is no way to live a fulfilling life within the confines of broader mass movements for political change, either, as even these always develop hierarchies eventually, which get in the way of knowing oneself just as much as the rest of society’s; it is not worth it to sacrifice any part of himself for the abstraction of revolution. The Women is ample evidence of an equally contentious truth: that the abstraction of a true self, at the sacrifice of any role he might have played in collective struggle, offers him greater comfort.
In other words, The Women reads as an attempt to claim parts of the lives it describes for himself. In the hazily Bildungsroman-like section on Owen Dodson, Als imagines what Dodson might have said after one of their romantic encounters: “... And after this beloved, another and another. But he did not say that; I am imagining that for him now, since this is my own story, finally, or rather a story I fight to own, since it is not independent of any and all people I have known...” That is, as any worthwhile writing, The Women is motion toward transcendence, through the vehicle of language: of knowing that the self is shaped profoundly in relation to others, attempting to wrestle free a sense of who you are separate from them, and failing, in Als’s words, to become something other than yourself. He knows he succeeds at coming to this inevitable failure in the text. Language is, after all, only the springboard for the transformational leap that might happen in one's life, away from others' prying eyes. But another aspect of the question Als poses is this: what would it mean to succeed? Is it, in any way, possible to become anything other than yourself "in this common world?"
There is love and care in his examination of the question for all his subjects; an un-elliptical thought process compels me to focus only on Als’s own self. For him, coming anywhere close to defying the layered confines of the self constitutes a betrayal, ostensibly of Owen Dodson. It is Dodson’s mentorship, his life’s story, the dust floating around his parlor, the sex they have – the entirety of the relationship they cultivated – that lets Als consider another aspect of who he is, one not in complete accordance with the women he had previously uniformly identified with, as a real possibility. “It is only now that I attempt to slip past the identity [women in my own family] have established for me, as their younger sister, and into a narrative that, even as I write, rejects my intellection, my control, because I betrayed its central character so long ago: Owen. Back then, I did not say:... I am not a woman. I am not you, but myself...” Since leaving Dodson at nineteen, in large part due to pressure from the women of his family, Als has superseded Dodson’s writing ability, fame, and professional accomplishments; he has also written and lived a life on his own terms, free from the constraints placed on his student-self by Dodson’s figure of the teacher-pedant. Apparently, Als thinks he has
betrayed Dodson in doing the above, in having not become Owen in some sense, or maybe in not having placed Owen at the center of one of his narratives. We don’t know what Dodson thought about this, only what is ascribed to him by the author, because Als seems never to have asked.
It’s tragic; it’s also hardly a betrayal. The literary conceit computes but doesn’t land. A few pages prior, Als describes concedes that sort of break between teacher and student as practically inevitable. The much older Dodson dying before Als was practically inevitable too; was his death a betrayal? Maybe the betrayal lies in Als having left without a goodbye, after having achieved some personal end, and in having never contacted Dodson again. Who knows? Als admits the narrative slips past his control, however controlled a slip it is. And it is at least partly controlled: Als clearly despises categorization of him or his work by others, especially by an audience. His text laughs in the face of the presumptuousness of our attempts to name it, its front tooth flashing gold.
A betrayal I long to know more about is left unmentioned, though I imagine accusations of it have been leveled at him for decades. In The Women, Als more or less consigns the practice of collective politics to the historical dustbin. The class ascendance aspirations of the petty Black bourgeoisie, the Black Power movement, the numerous political descendants of both, all of it. To him, the practice of something like a collective struggle for Black liberation seems necessarily at odds with the aim of discovering, creating, and transcending the role assigned to you by the world. Though his tone in talking about Black Power is dismissive, it betrays a keen understanding of the one model of a revolutionary organization that has worked, ie, survived imperial onlslaughts and succeeded in (some of) its goals: a Leninist one, famously subordinating any and all considerations, explorations of the self included, to the aims and needs of the organization. (One understands how someone like Als would be at odds with even a Black Panther Party that succeeded in bringing about a revolution, too.) That said, Als thinks there is no way to live a fulfilling life within the confines of broader mass movements for political change, either, as even these always develop hierarchies eventually, which get in the way of knowing oneself just as much as the rest of society’s; it is not worth it to sacrifice any part of himself for the abstraction of revolution. The Women is ample evidence of an equally contentious truth: that the abstraction of a true self, at the sacrifice of any role he might have played in collective struggle, offers him greater comfort.
June 28, 2020
Absolutely stunning. I have less than firm footing in the world of Dorothy Dean and her milieu, and though Als' attempt to shepherd readers through that world does suffer from a lack of first-hand experience with its personalities, it makes up ground with his appreciable critical acumen. While his physical absence is clear in the second piece, I could appreciate the role those well-rendered character sketches play in the larger network of Negressity he maps across these essays. The bookend pieces are fearless, incisive, and masterfully blend the forms of biography, memoir, literary criticism, and social history: must-read.
January 15, 2008
Quote I like, " For years I could not face my own complicity with the man in the blue cotton shirt and blue cotton pants. I could not face the way in which I had wanted him to make me a Negress, or the fact that I wanted to be consumed by him so that I could be a part of a narrative as compelling to me as my mother's was, a narrative in which I too would be involved with a bad man, resulting in heartached that would eventually lead to depression, an endless suicide, and the attention that can be garnered from all that. I was dwarfed by my mother's spectacular sense of narrative and disaster: she could have been a great writer..."
Makes me think about how our greatest pain as humans are all part of our narrative, the story we tell ourselves to define ourselves. But not all that often are we willing to take responsiblity for that role we play. We create it.
I also liked, " She had the gift of language, but she couldn't use it. Her drinking brought forth the sense that language had turned to waste in her twilight mind, which lived in the past while she went on utterring the old, old female story: her inability to forgive life for what it had not allowed her to claim: herself."
This reminded me of my mom, and her sisters. And make me think about the distance between their experience and my own.
Makes me think about how our greatest pain as humans are all part of our narrative, the story we tell ourselves to define ourselves. But not all that often are we willing to take responsiblity for that role we play. We create it.
I also liked, " She had the gift of language, but she couldn't use it. Her drinking brought forth the sense that language had turned to waste in her twilight mind, which lived in the past while she went on utterring the old, old female story: her inability to forgive life for what it had not allowed her to claim: herself."
This reminded me of my mom, and her sisters. And make me think about the distance between their experience and my own.
July 22, 2015
The first essay, on Als' mother, is one of the best American essays of the 20th century. It might be better than anything James Baldwin ever wrote. The second, on fag hags/flame dames in general and Dorothy Dean in particular, is tremendous. The third, which covers Als' affair with the African-American playwright Owen Dodson, is a bit underdeveloped in comparison. What was the sex between the two actually like? Als continues to maintain a weird distance from Dodson that surely existed due to the age gap, but now, maintained in retrospect, appears to conceal more than it reveals.
But man, those first two pieces. A++.
But man, those first two pieces. A++.
September 16, 2017
Hilton Als me desbarata. "White Girls" es una obra maestra, pero su primer libro, "The Women", se acerca. La combinación de memoria, ensayo, crítica y ficción es inusual y poderosa, lo cual significa que también toma riesgos que no logra sortear. El libro gira en torno al concepto de "the Negress", que le sirve a Als para identificarse, a su mamá, a Dorothy Dean, a la mamá de Malcolm X y al poeta Owen Dodson. Cruzando de uno y otro, el libro se aventura a hacer mucho daño. Es espeso y cruel.
July 30, 2020
3.5 stars - overall edifying, educational, thought provoking and beautifully spun. I am with previous reviewers who have stated the superiority of the first half to the second, though.
November 21, 2023
Hilton Als examines his own sexuality through his regarding of others, including his own parents but also famous figures as well as his mentors. Owen Dodson, his mentor in his teens, was an important figure to see himself away his own upbringing.
Of him he writes: like most great teachers, he opened up the world for me. Like most people, he resented it when I left him to find what I could in it.
Of him he writes: like most great teachers, he opened up the world for me. Like most people, he resented it when I left him to find what I could in it.
June 25, 2017
Just finished tearing through Hilton Als’ TheWomen in practically a single sitting, my jaw collapsed on my chest the entire time! Infuriatingly contrary—but oh so frequently right—Als is a cold, superior fish of the West Indian variety, blithely unconcerned about offending African-Americans on their home turf.
Here Als speaks of himself and his sister:
“…Unlike our mother, we affected an interest in people who, because they had the same skin color as our own, presumed we were interested in the race and its struggle. We were not interested in the race and its struggle. We were not interested in strident abstractions, being so emotionally abstract ourselves. We were West Indians living in New York; we were smug in our sense of displacement; we took freely from both cultures in order to be unselfconsciously interesting. The furor and energy that our black American contemporaries focused on dream and hopes, we found ridiculous. Their ideology was totalitarianism made simple: economic independence from “the man”, an entirely black-run government, and so on. We were especially amused by the movement’s xenophobia. Xenophobes first, members of the Black Power movement referred to West Indians, and their ambitious progeny, as black Jews.”
“…It is not outrageous of me to say that my sister and I probably considered American blacks disgusting on some level, even though we didn’t admit this to ourselves…”
“…I believe we probably thought American blacks were awful because they weren’t us.”
“
And of militant black female poets:
“…the poetesses my sister and I listened to commanded the respect of their male “comrades” because they were inventing them as officers of war. As those women poets spoke in their conspiratorial, syncopated voices, another tone expressive of something other than the self-congratulatory broke in. The tone expressed their need for Daddy to shut them up. As those women spoke, it became clear to me that their language was not the product of reflection or the desire to reflect; if they thought before they spoke, they’d be forced to realize that what they were screaming about was their need to be silenced.”
I had always suspected the majority of West Indians I encountered in New York of holding the American Negro, myself included, in contempt. Als is my first encounter with a West Indian willing to flat out admit it.
And here, though speaking of a social coterie the average middle class gay can only aspire to, he puts his finger on the very reason for my aversion to the homosexual milieu in general:
“…they were homosexual. They were also like Dorothy (Dean) in that they were essentially provincial-minded people made socially interesting because they were repressed.” (italics mine)
This isn't meant to be a book review--just an off-the-cuff reaction. I haven't even mentioned Als' tale of his teenage affair with an elderly and ailing Langston Hughes, in which he candidly admits to the opportunism--both financial and artistic--motivating his half of the relationship.
Highly recommended.
Here Als speaks of himself and his sister:
“…Unlike our mother, we affected an interest in people who, because they had the same skin color as our own, presumed we were interested in the race and its struggle. We were not interested in the race and its struggle. We were not interested in strident abstractions, being so emotionally abstract ourselves. We were West Indians living in New York; we were smug in our sense of displacement; we took freely from both cultures in order to be unselfconsciously interesting. The furor and energy that our black American contemporaries focused on dream and hopes, we found ridiculous. Their ideology was totalitarianism made simple: economic independence from “the man”, an entirely black-run government, and so on. We were especially amused by the movement’s xenophobia. Xenophobes first, members of the Black Power movement referred to West Indians, and their ambitious progeny, as black Jews.”
“…It is not outrageous of me to say that my sister and I probably considered American blacks disgusting on some level, even though we didn’t admit this to ourselves…”
“…I believe we probably thought American blacks were awful because they weren’t us.”
“
And of militant black female poets:
“…the poetesses my sister and I listened to commanded the respect of their male “comrades” because they were inventing them as officers of war. As those women poets spoke in their conspiratorial, syncopated voices, another tone expressive of something other than the self-congratulatory broke in. The tone expressed their need for Daddy to shut them up. As those women spoke, it became clear to me that their language was not the product of reflection or the desire to reflect; if they thought before they spoke, they’d be forced to realize that what they were screaming about was their need to be silenced.”
I had always suspected the majority of West Indians I encountered in New York of holding the American Negro, myself included, in contempt. Als is my first encounter with a West Indian willing to flat out admit it.
And here, though speaking of a social coterie the average middle class gay can only aspire to, he puts his finger on the very reason for my aversion to the homosexual milieu in general:
“…they were homosexual. They were also like Dorothy (Dean) in that they were essentially provincial-minded people made socially interesting because they were repressed.” (italics mine)
This isn't meant to be a book review--just an off-the-cuff reaction. I haven't even mentioned Als' tale of his teenage affair with an elderly and ailing Langston Hughes, in which he candidly admits to the opportunism--both financial and artistic--motivating his half of the relationship.
Highly recommended.
January 28, 2018
I started reading this book sometime last year when I was floundering in poetry workshop. I was looking for a voice that was distinctly mine yet I was really worried if I was responding to my blackness. At the time this book came as a revelation. Here is a queer writer who wasn't afraid of speaking down on the black identity poets that came to prominence in the 70s. I guess I always felt like since they were on the ass end of history due to their skin color they were of some worth. Specifically Nikki Giovanni. Well ol' Als really destroyed her.
But for whatever reason, all the fervor I had for this book waned and I never read the last essay until a week or so ago. I devoured it. I picked it up really just starring at the words but all of a sudden I was sucked deeply into the dust and decay he described. I will be coming back to this book again. I am sure there are some jewels I haven't savored. Might read White Girls sometime later this year. In some sense Als seems like he desperately wants to Baldwin and I can't blame him either. These essays sit on the border of essay and fiction at some points.
But for whatever reason, all the fervor I had for this book waned and I never read the last essay until a week or so ago. I devoured it. I picked it up really just starring at the words but all of a sudden I was sucked deeply into the dust and decay he described. I will be coming back to this book again. I am sure there are some jewels I haven't savored. Might read White Girls sometime later this year. In some sense Als seems like he desperately wants to Baldwin and I can't blame him either. These essays sit on the border of essay and fiction at some points.
Read
March 24, 2021A short but difficult book. I wanted to like Hilton Als--the little I had read from him in the New Yorker interested me--but I just can't get over how his ego, and his relationship with his mother, has lead him to believe the shit he peddles is in any way reflective of an actual black woman-- sorry, the “Negress”. Conveniently, every black woman he encounters is a Negress, a creature he is apparently able to ensnare so perfectly by his definition that not one Negress, or black woman, is able to escape from it.
Maybe I just don’t get it? Maybe that’s the point: the Negress is, by nature, a constricting definition. But… why? Because Als says so? Because he is unable to view these women on their own terms, not in contrast to him?
At the beginning of the book, he says women are not able to have friends. Obviously false. In an old review of a Beyoncé album, he dismisses the Destiny’s Child song “Survivor” and calls it a break-up song--wrong again, Als! So quick to relate black women to male romantic partners. Why is that your first instinct?
Ugh, whatever.
Maybe I just don’t get it? Maybe that’s the point: the Negress is, by nature, a constricting definition. But… why? Because Als says so? Because he is unable to view these women on their own terms, not in contrast to him?
At the beginning of the book, he says women are not able to have friends. Obviously false. In an old review of a Beyoncé album, he dismisses the Destiny’s Child song “Survivor” and calls it a break-up song--wrong again, Als! So quick to relate black women to male romantic partners. Why is that your first instinct?
Ugh, whatever.
January 31, 2019
So my reading resolution for 2019 was to read at least 1 book that I own but have not yet read each month and The Women was my first choice. I usually love to read Als' writing, but I think maybe this particular set of essays was a little early on in his career and I could not connect with it as well. Some of the assumptions he seems to make about women did not seem accurate to me. For example, he comments on how it is difficult for women to be friends with other women. Something that I have never personally found to be true. There were also other comments on women putting up with behavior from men because women are somehow biologically or socially trained to do so. I just don't think that is a universal truth. Otherwise, I did enjoy his prose and found the subject matter intriguing.
June 16, 2014
Hilton Als is one of our best essayists and critics and one of our best writers, full-stop. These portraits of those who shaped him have nothing and everything to do with the familiar story of thwarted lives. Als' keen and compassionate eye traces what happens ambition and desire go unfulfilled - they do not die or explode but curdle into neurosis and eccentricity. Als is among a handful of male writers who have the interest and ability to imagine what women's lives look like from the inside out - his meditation on his identification with the women in his life does not necessarily answer why or how, but the evidence of this rare craft is on every page.
April 1, 2010
Somehow I came across this inventive memoir from New Yorker theater columnist Hilton Als. It's a really creative mash-up portrait of his husbandless immigrant mother and sister interspersed with cultural commentary on the archetype of the Negress, specifically that of Malcolm X's mother, the before-her-time "fag hag" intellectual Dorothy Dean and of Owen Dodson, Als's erstwhile, older, female-identified lover.
June 17, 2021
I question whether using women in the abstract or in the specific is a worthwhile pursuit for Als in this account of 'Negresses,' as the only thing that struck me by the end was his lack of regard for women (hate is too strong a word, but maybe passing misogyny works). The essay on his mother is lovely and tragic, yet by the final essay I was surprised by how little credit he leaves the women in his life.
October 3, 2022
Als' first book is, in many ways, a dry run for the stunning and overpowering genius of "White Girls," probably one of the best works of nonfiction (or mostly nonfiction) prose that has ever been published. Yes, yes, a lot of badly written hyperbole. But holy shit can Als write.
The Women is a slim volume with three loosely connected longform essays. Throughout, Als blends memoir, literary criticism, biography, and commentary on sexual and racial identity in his trademark style.
Chapter I (I suppose I will use that label; there are not proper titles for each of three sections) is a stunner which is stylistically reminiscent of Tristes Tropiques, the opener to White Girls. Als starts out writing something of a "conventional" memoir about his mother, a West Indian immigrant who is a dominant figure in his early life. Als then uses her life as a jumping off point to explore his own racial, sexual, and gender identity; to tell us a little bit about being a young gay man in the wild 1970s; to explore the concept of the "Negress" in African-American literature; and, in the most awe-inspiring turn of all, to take a critical look at Malcolm X and his relationship with his mother. These data points don't seem connected from this capsule summary, but they form a dense web of associations that Als bravely explores throughout the lengthy, and always surprising essay.
Chapter II pivots and becomes a different kind of book, albeit one that is still interested in gender, race, NY, and everything in between. Als offers us a warts and all portrait of Dorothy Dean, "an African-American socialite" according to the wikipedia article I ended up perusing, a legendary figure in certain NY gay circles but probably unknown to readers outside that orbit. Dean was one of the original "Fag Hags" (his word); he sketches her as a brilliantly flawed and possibly self-hating but fascinating character. Along the way, Als explores pre-liberation gay NY life and the divisions within postwar African-American society.
Chapter III finds us returning to autobiography, this time an exploration of Als' brief tutelage--and romantic relationship--with Owen Dodson, a minor figure in the Harlem Renaissance. When Als is 15, and Dodson already a has-been alcoholic who is nonetheless a fixture within the NY upper crust African American scene, Als becomes his lover. Als intercuts his probing examination of their relationship with a merciless autobiographical sketch of a man whose self-imposed limitations stopped him from ever becoming truly great. We also get a good deal of criticism of the Harlem Renaissance and the writers involved.
All in all, a brilliantly discursive and digressive work that could only be written by Als. I was blown away, to use a cliché.
The Women is a slim volume with three loosely connected longform essays. Throughout, Als blends memoir, literary criticism, biography, and commentary on sexual and racial identity in his trademark style.
Chapter I (I suppose I will use that label; there are not proper titles for each of three sections) is a stunner which is stylistically reminiscent of Tristes Tropiques, the opener to White Girls. Als starts out writing something of a "conventional" memoir about his mother, a West Indian immigrant who is a dominant figure in his early life. Als then uses her life as a jumping off point to explore his own racial, sexual, and gender identity; to tell us a little bit about being a young gay man in the wild 1970s; to explore the concept of the "Negress" in African-American literature; and, in the most awe-inspiring turn of all, to take a critical look at Malcolm X and his relationship with his mother. These data points don't seem connected from this capsule summary, but they form a dense web of associations that Als bravely explores throughout the lengthy, and always surprising essay.
Chapter II pivots and becomes a different kind of book, albeit one that is still interested in gender, race, NY, and everything in between. Als offers us a warts and all portrait of Dorothy Dean, "an African-American socialite" according to the wikipedia article I ended up perusing, a legendary figure in certain NY gay circles but probably unknown to readers outside that orbit. Dean was one of the original "Fag Hags" (his word); he sketches her as a brilliantly flawed and possibly self-hating but fascinating character. Along the way, Als explores pre-liberation gay NY life and the divisions within postwar African-American society.
Chapter III finds us returning to autobiography, this time an exploration of Als' brief tutelage--and romantic relationship--with Owen Dodson, a minor figure in the Harlem Renaissance. When Als is 15, and Dodson already a has-been alcoholic who is nonetheless a fixture within the NY upper crust African American scene, Als becomes his lover. Als intercuts his probing examination of their relationship with a merciless autobiographical sketch of a man whose self-imposed limitations stopped him from ever becoming truly great. We also get a good deal of criticism of the Harlem Renaissance and the writers involved.
All in all, a brilliantly discursive and digressive work that could only be written by Als. I was blown away, to use a cliché.
February 20, 2021
Combining the techniques of memoir and cultural studies writing, Hilton Als has crafted the most unique and affecting store of how women of color, specifically a category he defines in the book as the Negress, and the gay men who society perceives in the same way, helped him forge an identity as a gay man of color. This short book slowly teaches you how to read it, as it takes some time to get used to the way Als weaves together personal stories (his own, his mother’s, the mother of Malcolm X, the intellectual society climber Dorothy Dean, and finally, his first lover, Owen Dodson) with what their histories tell us about how American culture represses femininity and the complicated ways this interacts with how it represses people of color and gay men. But this powerful approach allows him to cull deeply felt observations about how these forces impact the ideas of maleness in the African American community, the complex power dynamics between the genders when it comes to sex and intimacy (and the further complications queerness adds to this dynamic), and ultimately the deleterious effects this has on the creative, socio-economic and intellectual ambitions of all who identity or are identified this way. It is a slow burn of a book, and through most of its first two sections, unlike most memoirs, the reader is kept at a distance from the author, which can be off-putting at first, but because Als does dip swiftly and deeply into how these people shape him in brief but identifiable moments, the reader feels it all building towards something. And ultimately the reader realizes in the devastating last few pages that the distance was the result of the oppression Als has felt his whole life, trying to find his place in a world that constantly wanted to squeeze him out of public life, and the ways repression is passed from generation to generation. It’s a beautiful ending and one that made we want to read this again with this in mind, which I hope to do someday, as his story resonated very loud and personally for me, the way the best memoirs do.
March 17, 2021
Most interested in Als' thoughts on performance as it is shaped by gender and class. The final chapter was my favorite and the first my least, at least in sofar as I think it has some of the more dated and limited takes on women's imaginations. I was particularly prickled by his almost whimsical imagination of the assault of Louise Little's mother.
(I also have a half formed thought about how part of people's recommendation for the book feels connected to an interest in the "hot take" aspects of the book. I would also be curious about how Black feminists, specifically, took his characterizations of major Black women figures in the '60s and '70s.)
(I also have a half formed thought about how part of people's recommendation for the book feels connected to an interest in the "hot take" aspects of the book. I would also be curious about how Black feminists, specifically, took his characterizations of major Black women figures in the '60s and '70s.)
October 31, 2024
The Women is a moving memoir, and Als shares how the lives of women of color and marginalized gay men have shaped his identity. It was a hard read with lots of stories and characters intertwined together. I felt like this unique structure created a distance initially that can feel off-putting, but Als ties it in perfectly into the depth of systemic repression of femininity, race, and queerness intersecting in his life. The Women speaks to the broader struggles of marginalized communities and is one of those reads that really lingers with you after you’ve finished it.
April 13, 2025
This was really so beautiful. It allows you to get to know Hilton and the way he processes love but also identifies as a woman in part to his love for his mother and female culture. I really admire his love with Owen. ultimately, the relationship ended because of his lies, from what I gathered, but I really loved this. so much. much. beautiful. I loved how he compared Dean and Malcolm and his mother to their relationships with the opposite sex, and how they really felt inside and the complexities of how their mind works.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 27, 2017
Hilton Als is a tough read. He's a tough read but a great read. I had to read this book for my gender and sexuality class.
This book is broken into three parts. The first part Als writes about his mother and his sisters and how they helped shape him.
The middle part deals with NYC socialite and proclaimed "fruit fly", Dorothy Dean. She's my new hero. Google her now. She's the bomb.
The last part deals with Als and his intergenerational love affair with the Harlem Renaissance writer, Owen Dodson.
"The Women" was a rough read because of the way it's written. But, if you can get into it, the journey is unforgettable.
This book is broken into three parts. The first part Als writes about his mother and his sisters and how they helped shape him.
The middle part deals with NYC socialite and proclaimed "fruit fly", Dorothy Dean. She's my new hero. Google her now. She's the bomb.
The last part deals with Als and his intergenerational love affair with the Harlem Renaissance writer, Owen Dodson.
"The Women" was a rough read because of the way it's written. But, if you can get into it, the journey is unforgettable.
July 5, 2020
Journaliste pour le New Yorker, Hilton Als signe un remarquable essai autobiographique sous forme de triptyque, autour des 3 figures qui ont influencé sa construction personnelle.
Une réflexion intense sur les questions de race et de genre qui donne toute sa puissance à ce manifeste pour la subversion et l'insoumission.
Une réflexion intense sur les questions de race et de genre qui donne toute sa puissance à ce manifeste pour la subversion et l'insoumission.
May 21, 2023
The first essay in this collection is really well done, but I thought the rest of it lacked cohesion and was almost a little gossipy--which would be fine if I knew any of these people, but I obviously don't. Some of his arguments are a little opaque too, so I'm sure if I read it again I'd get a little more out of it.
November 2, 2018
a compelling, sometimes twisting scrutiny of sexuality, gender, Blackness, never on its own and always together. I understand how the style can be discomfiting for some, but I think the prose is not challenging out of a desire to be abstruse, only to bear the weight of Als' thinking.
November 10, 2018
Three essays looking at gender race and ide at gender, race and identity told in both memoir and literary criticism. Tough going and dense at times but ultimately shimmering, redemptive and worth it.
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