The Women

De: Hilton Als

Brought to you by Penguin.

What are the forces that shape us? Hilton Als’s brilliant, now-classic meditation on gender, race and personal identity in America

In The Women, Hilton Als explores—with breath taking originality—the role of sexual and racial identity in marginalized lives. With a blend of fact and fiction, Als brings to vivid life a number of extraordinary characters, including: his mother, a singular woman whose West Indian heritage and determination inspired her son to write; Malcolm X's mother, whose mixed-race background and eventual descent into madness contributed to her son's burgeoning misogyny and fear; brilliant, Harvard-educated Dorothy Dean, who deeply empathized with white gay men; and Owen Dodson, teacher and poet, who played an important role in the author's development as a gay man, and thinker.

Combining memoir, cultural history, social theory and storytelling, The Women is a profoundly innovative work which has inspired a generation of writers. Here, Als submits both racial and sexual stereotypes to scrutiny, showing ‘no mercy but every tenderness’. The results are exhilarating. The Women is that rarest of books: a memorable work of self-investigation that creates a form of all its own.

‘Magical … truly original … Writing of people who limited themselves and died of it, Als has overcome limits’ The New York Times Book Review

© Hilton Als 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

Reseñas de la Crítica

Inventive and daring (Richard Bernstein)

One of those happy anomalies of literature, a highly concentrated mixture of memoir, literary criticism and musings on politics and psychology … refreshing … magical … truly original (Andrea Lee)

At once eclectic and focused, dense and loose, intimate and sharp, Als’s writing is absorbing and ingeniously provoking (Windham Campbell Prizes)