DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

White Girls

Hilton Als author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd

Published:1st Mar '18

Should be back in stock very soon

White Girls cover

A landmark work on race, sex, love and selfhood, from one of America's most iconic writers and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism 2017.

'I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged' John Jeremiah Sullivan
'Als has a serious claim to be regarded as the next James Baldwin' Observer

'I see how we are all the same, that none of us are white women or black men; rather, we're a series of mouths, and that every mouth needs filling: with something wet or dry, like love, or unfamiliar and savory, like love'

White Girls is about, among other things, blackness, queerness, movies, Brooklyn, love (and the loss of love), AIDS, fashion, Basquiat, Capote, philosophy, porn, Louise Brooks and Michael Jackson. Freewheeling and dazzling, tender and true, it is one of the most highly acclaimed essay collections in years.

'A voice that's new, that comes as if from a different room. I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged' John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead

'Effortless, honest and fearless' Rich Benjamin, The New York Times

'Als is one of the most consistently unpredictable and surprising essayists out there, an author who confounds our expectations virtually every time he writes' David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times

'A comprehensive and utterly lovely collection of one of the best writers around' Eugenia Williamson, Boston Globe

A rhapsodic and provocative collection of essays on race, class, sexuality and identity in America * Financial Times *
Als has a serious claim to be regarded as the next James Baldwin * Observer *
Effortless, fearless and honest * New York Times *
The first time you read Hilton Als, it's a revelation ... you wonder where this guy has been all your life ... He is both a startlingly insightful intellectual and a friendly, open and generous-spirited companion. It is the authenticity of his voice which makes him so compelling. That and the sheer dazzling brilliance of his writing, visceral and poetic, big-hearted, hot-headed and fierce' * Big Issue *
Enlightening... a book you should read now * VICE *
The variations he plays on the themes of identity, intimacy and race achieve a fugue-like complexity and power * Washington Post *
Beautiful and deeply intelligent * New Statesman *
A stunning analysis of contemporary culture ... undoubtedly one of the most important books of our times * DAZED *
Pioneering ... a mosaic of thoughts and observations, taking in the landscape of a New York ravaged by AIDS and his private grief for his lost lover, imagining silent film star Louise Brookes' drawling inner life, and examining his own complicated relationship with his sexuality and blackness * AnOther Magazine *
Magnificent * Los Angeles Times *
Stunning * Kirkus Reviews *
Exhilarating ... Audacious * San Francisco Chronicle *
Brilliant * Boston Globe *
Mesmerising * Los Angeles Review of Books *
This will be debated for years * Entertainment Weekly *
This book will change you * Chicago Tribune *
I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged -- John Jeremiah Sullivan
An intersectional masterpiece of race and sexuality, fact and fiction, memoir and polemic. The book that allowed a generation to make radicalism full of beauty and emotion * I-D Magazine *

ISBN: 9780141987293

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 20mm

Weight: 258g

352 pages