The dialectis of belonging in bell hooks' Bone Black : Memories Of Girlhood

Authors

  • Susana Vega González University of Oviedo

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.79

Abstract

Bone Black represents bell hooks' lifestory of survival amidst a harsh racist and sexist environment in the South of the United States in the 1950s. Her childhood is clearly dominated by a feeling of estrangement and loneliness together with the pain of being the different one, the problematic child, the rebel. Out of the vignettes that compose her autobiography, those related to her maternal grandparents enclose the author's most cherished memories, steeped in the magic of storytelling, quilting and the life-giving communion with the earth and the natural elements. It is in the nurturing wisdom of the old and in the embracing welcome of books that hooks will eventually find what she was most yearning for, a way to belong

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Anderson, L. 2001. Autobiography. London and New York: Routledge.

Anzaldúa, G. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.

Bambara, T. C. 1992 (1980). The Salt Eaters. New York: Vintage.

Braxton, J. M. 1989. Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition Within a Tradition. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Brooks DeVita, A. 2000. Mtythatypes: Signatures and Signs of African/Diaspora and Black Goddesses. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood.

De Hernandez, J. B. 1998. “Mothering the Self: Writing through the Lesbian Sublime in Audre Lorde’s Zami and Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera”. Other Sisterhoods: Literary Theory and U.S. Women of Color. Ed. S. K. Stanley. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 244-62.

Eliade, M. 1994 (1958). Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth. Dallas: Spring Publications.

Gagnier, R. 1991. Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hooks, B. 1989. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston, Mass.: South End Press.

Hooks, B. 1991. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. London: Turnaround.

Hooks, B. 1993. Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-recovery. Boston, Mass.: South End Press.

Hooks, B. 1996. Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Hooks, B. 2000. Where We Stand: Class Matters. New York and London: Routledge.

Kelley, M. A. 1994. “Sisters’ Choices: Quilting Aesthetics in Contemporary African American Women’s Fiction”. Quilt Culture: Tracing the Pattern. Eds. C. B. Torsney and J. Elsley. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press.

Kenyon, G. M., and W. L. Randall. 1997. Restorying Our Lives: Personal Growth Through Autobiographical Reflection. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.

Lorde, A. 1982. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press.

Lorde, A. 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, New York: Crossing Press.

Thompson, R. F. 1983. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy. New York: Vintage.

Walker, A. 1982. The Color Purple. New York: Pocket Books.

Downloads

Published

29-05-2002

How to Cite

Vega González, S. (2002). The dialectis of belonging in bell hooks’ Bone Black : Memories Of Girlhood. Journal of English Studies, 3, 237–248. https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.79

Issue

Section

Articles