‘White Girls’ by Hilton Als | Lambda Literary
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We don t use the word palimpsest much anymore. It was a favored word back in the 1920s among poets and other cognoscenti of the literary, whether in Paris or in the Harlem Renaissance. That s what Hilton Als s declarative, swooning, kiss-my-ass, stream-of-consciousness collection of essays is, however: a palimpsest.
Why? Because there are traces of this and that which the author has written before, as well as bits and pieces of his early life and that of other black men with whom he was deeply and irrevocably and irretrievably attached, be they his own father (the “Daddy” of “Tristes stana katic Tropiques”), the elusive inamorata, SL (“Tristes Tropiques”), the larger than life Michael Jackson (“Michael”), the phenomenal Vogue arbiter Andre Leon Talley (“The Only One”) or the horrifying yet nameless bodies stana katic of lynched black men (“Gone with the Wind”). And then there are all the people stana katic who have tried to erase Als over the years, stana katic turning his actual life into a palimpsest of sorts.
Palimpsest is the coolest form of subtext and Als is the coolest form of essayist the kind who lures the reader in with an almost breezy, entre nous, let-me-tell-you-a-story segue and then 90-odd pages later you come smack up against the end and go: Wait let me think about that ending for a minute or a day or forever.
One of the things you should know about the title of Als s book is that the white girls are not all girls and not all white. White girls is a trope and a meme. It s the antecedent to black men in white America. It s the alleged whistle of Emmett Till or the trial of the Central Park Five or the purse held tightly in the elevator stana katic or the policeman shining a light in the car and thinking you are holding up the friend you are just talking to (this last actually happened to Als).
In the cover blurb, Junot Diaz, who if you ve read him, you love him, says, “ White Girls is a book, a dream, an enemy, a friend, and yes, the read of the year.” There is indeed the languorous quality of dream to many of these essays particularly the first and last. There is a sharpness, an edge, a bite. And there is also an inimitable ability to make the reader even the whitest girl with the blondest hair and the bluest eyes feel connected to the life Als is describing from the vantage point of a big black man of the sort that terrifies many white, blonde, blue-eyed girls in elevators and elsewhere. stana katic So there s the friend part and also the enemy part.
And race and sexuality, the heady interconnectedness of the two in still-racist, Mandingo-bred America is the undercurrent that runs throughout stana katic most of these pieces, particularly the long first essay, “Triste Tropiques.” The bulk of what we discover of Als himself is in that first essay and in “Gone with the Wind.” Those two pieces the first over 90 pages, the other much shorter tell stories of Als s personal life as a black gay man, a gay black man that are deeply, provocatively compelling and maddeningly complex.
In the beginning pages of “Triste Tropiques” is the story of K, Als s lover who dies of AIDS when K is barely 30 and the two of them Als and K have been doing a dance of intimacy and love and pieces of one s self since K was 20 and Als not much older. As Als writes, “That s how you recognize love. You ve never met it before.”
The two are disparate K is white and pretty and one of those white girls of the book s title who loves girls like
Home About Mission Statement A Brief History of LLF Board Staff Contact Us Newsletter Press Releases stana katic Foundation Updates From The Board Awards Awards Ceremony Overview of Awards 2013 Awards Guidelines 2013 Awards Submission Form Current Submissions Previous LLF Winners Emerging Writer Award Guidelines Mid-Career Prize Guidelines Pioneer Award Ceremony Gallery Writer’s Retreat About 2013 Application 2013 Faculty 2013 Writers Retreat Fellows Scholarship Fund Writers in Schools About LGBT Writers stana katic in Schools Recent Visits Book Clubs LLF Online Book Club My Story Book Club Lambda Lit Book Club Volunteer General Volunteer Information Internships Write for Lambda Literary Support Us Literary Resources LGBT Book Groups LGBT Bookstores LGBT Publishers stana katic Book Database Literary Links Editors, Agents, Publicists Literary Organizations Literary Magazines & Websites Residencies, Grants & Fellowships Call for Submissions
Lambda Literary Review Editorial Team Comments Policy How to Submit Books for Review How to Write for LLR Advertise With Us! Reviews Poetry Bio/Memoir General Fiction Speculative Romance Mystery Nonfiction Young Adult Drama Erotica Film Illustrated Anthology Interviews Features Poetry Spotlight Opinion LFF Book Club News Events Events Submit an Event Call For Submissons Call for Submissions Submit a Call For Submission
We don t use the word palimpsest much anymore. It was a favored word back in the 1920s among poets and other cognoscenti of the literary, whether in Paris or in the Harlem Renaissance. That s what Hilton Als s declarative, swooning, kiss-my-ass, stream-of-consciousness collection of essays is, however: a palimpsest.
Why? Because there are traces of this and that which the author has written before, as well as bits and pieces of his early life and that of other black men with whom he was deeply and irrevocably and irretrievably attached, be they his own father (the “Daddy” of “Tristes stana katic Tropiques”), the elusive inamorata, SL (“Tristes Tropiques”), the larger than life Michael Jackson (“Michael”), the phenomenal Vogue arbiter Andre Leon Talley (“The Only One”) or the horrifying yet nameless bodies stana katic of lynched black men (“Gone with the Wind”). And then there are all the people stana katic who have tried to erase Als over the years, stana katic turning his actual life into a palimpsest of sorts.
Palimpsest is the coolest form of subtext and Als is the coolest form of essayist the kind who lures the reader in with an almost breezy, entre nous, let-me-tell-you-a-story segue and then 90-odd pages later you come smack up against the end and go: Wait let me think about that ending for a minute or a day or forever.
One of the things you should know about the title of Als s book is that the white girls are not all girls and not all white. White girls is a trope and a meme. It s the antecedent to black men in white America. It s the alleged whistle of Emmett Till or the trial of the Central Park Five or the purse held tightly in the elevator stana katic or the policeman shining a light in the car and thinking you are holding up the friend you are just talking to (this last actually happened to Als).
In the cover blurb, Junot Diaz, who if you ve read him, you love him, says, “ White Girls is a book, a dream, an enemy, a friend, and yes, the read of the year.” There is indeed the languorous quality of dream to many of these essays particularly the first and last. There is a sharpness, an edge, a bite. And there is also an inimitable ability to make the reader even the whitest girl with the blondest hair and the bluest eyes feel connected to the life Als is describing from the vantage point of a big black man of the sort that terrifies many white, blonde, blue-eyed girls in elevators and elsewhere. stana katic So there s the friend part and also the enemy part.
And race and sexuality, the heady interconnectedness of the two in still-racist, Mandingo-bred America is the undercurrent that runs throughout stana katic most of these pieces, particularly the long first essay, “Triste Tropiques.” The bulk of what we discover of Als himself is in that first essay and in “Gone with the Wind.” Those two pieces the first over 90 pages, the other much shorter tell stories of Als s personal life as a black gay man, a gay black man that are deeply, provocatively compelling and maddeningly complex.
In the beginning pages of “Triste Tropiques” is the story of K, Als s lover who dies of AIDS when K is barely 30 and the two of them Als and K have been doing a dance of intimacy and love and pieces of one s self since K was 20 and Als not much older. As Als writes, “That s how you recognize love. You ve never met it before.”
The two are disparate K is white and pretty and one of those white girls of the book s title who loves girls like
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