The Women

This memoir is a meditation on what it means to be black, gay, and female in U.S. culture. Als, a gay man, writes about his mother; his sisters; Malcolm X's mother; and Dorothy Dean, an African-American woman who was at the center of New York's gay male circles. But his real subject is--as he puts it--what it means to be a "Negress" in white culture. Examining how race and gender shape all of our attitudes toward what it means to be a "woman," "man" or "homosexual," Als gets at the root of self-definition in a world that constructs very limited options. The Women is elegantly written and moves us through a variety of ideas and emotions with a fluidity that is both graceful and startling; it is unique in contemporary writings about race, sexuality, and gender.