Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood - Softcover

Hooks, Bell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805055126 ISBN 13: 9780805055122

Publisher: Holt McDougal, 1997

Synopsis

A memoir of ideas and perceptions, Bone Back shows the unfolding of female creativity and one strong-spirited child's journey toward becoming a writer. She learns early on the roles women and men play in society, as well as the impotence of children, especially black female children. She sheds new light on a society that beholds the joys of marriage for men and condemns anything more than silence for women. In this world, too, black is a woman's color - worn when earned - daughters and daddy are strangers under the same roof, and crying children are often given something to cry about. In school, hooks sees that integration most resembles corralling, with black children herded, prodded, and pushed like cattle. And the learning agenda is to teach these children to forget their history and the injustices done to them and to embrace the ways of white folk. hooks finds comfort in solitude, good company in books. She also discovers, in the motionless body of misunderstanding, that writing is the most vital breath. She is taught by an elder that quilting is the way a woman learns patience. And hooks's patience, coupled with the insight and bravery that readers have come to expect from her, is rewarded with the strength to keep in touch with the wounded parts of herself and to grow beyond the scars by stretching the confines of history, tradition, and family to encompass her expansive spirit.

About this title

Review:

"Bone Black is a lucid, challenging, and entrancing read." --The Washington Post Book World

"With the emotion of poetry, the narrative of a novel, and the truth of experience, Bell Hooks weaves a girlhood memoir you won't be able to put down--or forget. Bone Black takes us into the cave of self-creation." --Gloria Steinem

"A canvas of vividly impressionistic splashes of growing up young, gifted, black, and female." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

About the Author:

bell hooks is the author of several books, including Killing Rage, Bone Black, and Wounds of Passion. She is Distinguished Professor of English at City College in New York and lives in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Holt McDougal
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0805055126
• ISBN 13: 9780805055122
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208