FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
WOUNDS OF PASSION: A WRITING LIFE
by bell hooks,
Henry Holt, 260 pp.bell hooks doesn't play by the rules. She writes about race and gender without burying her point under layers of theoretical jargon, she doesn't give a damn who she offends, and (most shocking to traditional academics) she puts her own body with its color, sex and contradictions right in the center of every page, forcing you to recognize her physicality and your relation to it.
Her latest offering is even more personal in its tone than her typical work, being ostensibly more memoir than theory. Still, this is bell hooks, so theory is never far from even the most intimate revelation.
Wounds of Passion is filled with anger, accusation, self-exploration and determination, but the meditative style prevents it from being unrelenting in its tone. Rather than the chronological approach typical of memoir, there is a free-flow of ideas though the book, touching on hooks' experiences and views on racism, sexism, the effects of relationships on writing, religion, family and the connection between language and truth. The child's perceptions mix with the adult's, revealing a character both vulnerable and uncompromising, needy and independent.
Hooks writes in two voices throughout; the matter-of-fact and highly politicized voice of the public persona and an italicized voice that refers to hooks in the third person and often serves to introduce emotional disclosures that are then picked up by the public voice. It is almost as if the instance of the third person voice allows hooks to expose sides of her character - insecurities, inconsistencies, pain and fear - that her public voice might otherwise seek to protect.
This is a fascinating and revealing book, but hooks' occasional slip into the role of self-proclaimed martyr is somewhat surprising. Her general strength of character and conviction make the vague but insistent references to her mistreatment by family, lover and colleagues incongruent with the "straight-talk" of the rest of her story. Still, she has the ability to acknowledge the complexities and contradictions of her own life with the same honesty with which she approaches the issues that have shaped her.
Catherine Radimer
Back To Main Contents
Back To This Issue Table of Contents