“Writing about writing is one way to grasp, hold, and give added meaning to a process that remains one of life’s great mysteries,” writes the late bell hooks in the preface to this seminal collection of essays on the joys of reading and writing, and the power of the written word. In her essays “Writing Without Labels,” “Writing Autobiography,” and “Class and the Politics of Writing,” the trailblazing author, cultural critic, and professor offers a response to those that “find my (a Black woman writer) passion for the written word suspect.” The collection also includes deep readings of the works of writers such as Emily Dickinson, Lorraine Hansberry, Toni Morrison, and Zora Neale Hurston, women writers who influenced and shaped the author’s own voice by going against the grain. Through moving reflections and sharp language, this essay collection is ideal for any writer seeking a model for what the life of a working writer can look like and the ways in which writing can go beyond an expression of oneself. As hooks writes: “I have not yet found words to truly convey the intensity of this remembered rapture—that moment of exquisite joy when necessary words come together and the work is complete, finished, ready to be read.”
