The Women

Name: The Women
Brand: Penguin Books Ltd
Price: 27.99 AUD
Availability: PreOrder

Author: Hilton Als

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Format
Digital Audiobook

Available: 16th October 2025

Digital Audiobook

$27.99

or 4 interest-free payments of $7.00 with

Available: 16th October 2025

Preorder. Download available after release.

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What are the forces that shape us? 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.