You are here
Back to topremembered rapture: the writer at work (Paperback)
Description
“Even though writing is a solitary act, when I sit with words that I trust will be read by someone, I know that I can never be truly alone.” —bell hooks, “women who write too much”
In this timeless essay collection on the writing life, award-winning author and renowned thinker bell hooks shares the secrets gleaned from years of facing the blank page, pen in hand.
At a time when the death of the book has been proclaimed, hooks’s Remembered Rapture beats with a pulsing passion for words, reminding us of literacy’s potency and the vital joys of reading and writing. In contemplative essays infused with her personal experience, hooks reveals her wide-ranging intellectual scope. With insight and vision, hooks untangles the complex personae of women writers, especially those whose work goes against the grain.
This inspiring collection from a treasured American author is for everyone who believes in the power of the written word.
“For anyone who writes, or seeks to understand the writing process, or wants to know more about the erudite and passionate mind of bell hooks, this is the book to read.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
About the Author
bell hooks, born Gloria Jean Watkins in 1952, was an American author who used lowercase as both an homage to her maternal great-grandmother and an attempt to keep readers’ focus where it belonged: on her work. When she died in 2021, hooks left behind a lifetime of thought that was decades ahead of its time. In the heyday of feminism, when the movement claimed to represent all women equally, hooks revealed in Ain’t I a Woman—written when she was only nineteen—how the specific life experiences of Black women were being marginalized.
She never lost this pioneering spirit, bringing it to bear on more than thirty books of literary criticism, children’s fiction, poetry, and autobiography, including Killing Rage: Ending Racism, Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood, Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life, Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, Where We Stand: Class Matters, Communion: The Female Search for Love and the New York Times bestseller All About Love: New Visions.
A professor of English, African and Afro-American studies, American literature, and women’s studies, hooks taught at USC, Yale, among other institutions, including Berea College in her home state of Kentucky, where the bell hooks center was established to honor her work. Winner of the American Book Award in 1991 for Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, a 2000 nominee for the NAACP’s Image Award, a 2018 inductee into Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame, and one of Time’s 100 Women of the Year in 2020, hooks left her mark in every field she entered.
Praise For…
“bell hooks reveals the heart of her writing life and the process through which she has come to be known as a 'visionary feminist.'” —Essence
“Each offering from bell hooks is a major event, as she has so much to give us.” —Maya Angelou
“hooks infuses the best of these essays with a personal tone that sheds warm light on this particular writer's life.” —Publishers Weekly