Wounds of Passion- A Writing Life by bell.hooks.
a VERY short synopsis of the text:
bell hooks, know mostly for her social and cultural critiques exposes herself in this vividly written memoir. The text transitions over several specific aspects of her life, her childhood clothed in loneliness and isolation, her college years, her long relationship to a man named Mack (also a writer), and her struggle through writing in the world of professionalism.
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I want to first start off by saying, that I love the way this book is written. Most people who are familiar with bell hooks' writing style find her (like most social critiques) matter-of-fact. That is not the case in this text. The imagery is beautiful. Captivating. Vigorous, and stimulating. She does a fun and flighty writing technique of separating the narrative, by having it in regular font, from the commentary/thoughts of her own emotions and feelings in italicized text. It is easy to read, and allows the succession of the story to be effortless.
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Some of the themes brought up in this story are:
1.regionalism (her life in the south compared to life in California)
2.isolation (being a reader, being smart, being black, and being a woman)
3. Black Feminism ( which incorporates secondary motifs like, professionalism and creativity being challenged)
4.Relationships (which takes up most of the attention of the book)
All of these themes overlap.
However, the memoir itself I find to be undoubtfully pretentious.
But why?
I don't feel that there is any element of accountability from bell hooks. It is a bare-all manuscript, but it lacks any sense of resolution. I found myself reaching the end of it with the prying question, "well, bell hooks, what did you learn?" I imagined her subdued personality answering "nothing", with a taunting grin.
Out of the above themes listed, my problems were mostly centered around the last two:
Black Feminism
The insistent attitude of a lot of black feminist writers is that the black is always the villain. Never shed in a light of kindness, goodness, strength, or being at all admirable, beyond idolization, is and always has been for me excruciatingly boring.
In fact it puts in perspective a lot of bell hooks opinions in her other social texts like "We Real Cool" were it seems as though she has a general discontent for the black man.
In fact, the only men that seem to have any positive impact on bell hooks' life are liberal white men, that participate or patron some kind of aesthetic lifestyle. (in the story: two gay men named Jess and Duncan, and another man to whom she lost her virginity, who seemed to have effeminate characteristics).
Relationships:
Hooks discontent for men seems to come from her admiration of her grandmother and grandfather awkward separatist marriage and her mother and fathers relationship, which to me did not seem that bad.
Hooks harps on discontent for her fathers one abusive moment with her mother. This altercation was based on his accusations of the mother's infidelity. Although, I am not making excuses for any man threatening or beating a woman, I found it alarming that hooks expectations of relationships are unrealistic.
In love, in relationships when peoples feelings are involved there will be moments of limited self-control. Any rational person realizes that. Jealously, rage, passion, all these things are words to describe human emotions. Hooks sums up her discontent for her father and her relationship and attitude towards men from one incident. It seems exstreme, and leads me to believe that a lot of her pain throughout the story is self-inflicted.
For example, she demands an open relationship with a man, and once he finally agrees to it she is wounded and writes herself as a victim due to the pain of him holding true to HER request. It's nonsense.
Not the fact that she is full of human contradictions ( as we all our, even on our best days), but she has no integrity as to acknowledge her fallacies.
I am not looking for an apology in the text, just some element of insight. She makes a big deal about how she's so good at the southern art of knowing things about people, and makes all these rash assumptions about other peoples lives, but can not have in depth insight to her own actions. It makes me not trust the author, as a reader.
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Final Thoughts:
As an aspiring writer, I am struggling to form my own basis and need for Black Feminist literature in this world and my place in it.
I am also struggling to understand the detrimental and the positive in regards to relationships between black men and women. It perplexes me that hooks does not acknowledge that black love can in some way be a healthy, monogamous union if so desired.
She makes it seem impossible that black love can even function or exist. Elements of this book in regards to those notions actually depressed me.
Even the title "Wounds of Passion" although very poetic, seems odd to me. Which really goes back to my belief that hooks has hypebolized her pain to some kind of exaggerated feminist martyrdom. It's self righteous and unnecessary. Even the reference she uses to explain the title in the text made me roll my eyes in displeasure (check out your bibles!).
This is not at all one of my favorite books, and does not putting bell hooks (at this point) as one of my favorite writers. But I will make it my duty to read more of her work and finalize this opinion to gain more evidence for or against her ideas and thoughts.
The thing I liked most about the book (apart from the actual style) was her open and self-sacrificing passion for writing. That in itself is a love story, and it brought me to an obsessive state of page turning as I engulfed myself in the text, and the rollercoaster of emotions it was driving me through. It only seems fair that I acknowledge it, in my critical review of this text.
I hope to someday possess a passionate luster for anything the way bell hooks feels about her literary existence. It's inspiring.
- m.m.t
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