Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life (Wounds of Passion)

Rating:
Summary: hook's will never lie to you...
Review: As a black woman poet/writer, I was able to connect with hook's experiences and frustrations. There were deeply moving passages that explored the pain in loving and the satisfaction of pain articulated. "Language is a body of suffering and when you take up language you take up suffering too." At times, though, I felt that hooks could have been more succinct; the book could have been half its size. All in all, it is an interesting exploration into the heart of a writer and is an honest read.

Rating:
Summary: Marvelous
Review: What a treat for her fans and admirers. This is a glimpse into a brilliant mind and a radiant soul. It's also a precious companion for many black women struggling with the double loneliness and struggle of life in america and the writing life anywhere. How gracious of her to share more of her personal history with us.

Her observations are wise. Her grasp of history is absolute. Her ideas stimulate intelligent and loving thought, conversation, and action. Read this book.

Rating:
Summary: bell hooks rocks
Review: Wounds of Passion by bell hooks is an autobiography that explains the struggles of a very independent-nonconforming-feminist-black-woman-writer from the South struggling through a difficult childhood then later trying to adapt to the "foreignness" of the academic world of California. Just like hooks, this book is not easily placed into a clearly defined category. It could be at home among works of women's studies, feminism, African-American studies, cultural criticism, or autobiographies, just to name a few. This book is not merely a memoir of bell hooks' writing life. It presents several strong statements about American society and how difficult it is (even down to the family level) to be independent and to challenge the status quo. She calls the reader to bear witness to her pain and struggles throughout her life as a black female writer.

Two intertwining voices throughout the book make it a very interesting and unique narrative. As one voice is telling the story through time as the events are happening, another voice is looking back at these events as a third person in the here-and-now. This gives a reader more than the normal single-perspective and brings the reader a little closer to the story she's telling.

One of the many statements hooks makes with Wounds of Passion is blackness does not have a universal truth. This is exemplified by the following quote explaining the fundamental differences between her and her boyfriend Mack (who was born and raised in California) throughout their long, rocky relationship. Hooks explains, "He does not feel the pain of Jim Crow. Shared black skin does not draw them closer. Her kinda blackness is strange to him. His kinda blackness I've heard about but find it hard to believe" (52).

Many social issues surface in Wounds of Passion such as domestic violence, conflicting feminist views among black and white women, racial issues of the South, stereotypes, issues of social class, and several others. But hooks does not preach or prescribe any concrete "solutions" to these problems. She seems to merely want people to recognize these problems exist, and with that acknowledgment, be taking the first step in the overall solution.

She speaks many times about how poetry and words are a place for her to escape from the harsh reality of everyday life and how she moves beyond the boundaries of race and class through books (105). "Poetry is a place of transcendence" (109). Poetry is often a place where gender and race is not usually evident or important in the words and their meanings.

Although there's never any doubt that bell hooks is a feminist black woman, she says in the following quote about two good friends of her and Mack: "Their gayness is both significant and not solely defining. This is how she wants to feel about blackness, that it can always be significant without being the only aspect of her identity that matters. The same is true of being a woman" (237-238). This outlook will hopefully be the "norm" someday. Wounds of Passion will definitely help get us there.