By Sheri Swayne ’26

Major: English; Minor: Creative Writing

Contributor Biography: Sheri Swayne is a senior from Baltimore, MD, majoring in English with a creative writing minor. She is obsessed with Toni Morrison and writing critical pieces on racial topics. She’s the editor in chief of Collegian, president of Intervarsity, and enjoys reading, R&B, and action movies. If you ever need to have a productive conversation with her, don’t mention chai lattes, Kali Uchis, or Kill Bill.  

Brief Description: This essay analyzes bell hooks’ memoir, Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood as a reimagining of the autobiography genre through its fragmented structure, third-person narration, and memory-driven form. Drawing on the theoretical framework of Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, this essay argues that hooks presents Black girlhood as non-linear and resistant to a simplifying, singular narrative, instead constructed through a collection of complex, culturally situated memories. Ultimately, the essay shows how hooks reclaims both Black girlhood and the autobiographical form itself by reshaping how memory, identity, and self-representation are written, especially in terms of identity and the upbringings that shape it. 

The following was written for ENG 394: African American Autobiography  

bell hooks’ memoir Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood holds a unique position within the autobiography genre. hooks reinterprets the genre’s usual chronological tradition into an intimate recollection of her experiences as a black girl. The basis of this uniqueness is hooks’ structure of this recollection, which is reminiscent of the way memory is actively retrieved: fragmented and yet deeply felt. A technique that hooks uses to remember her girlhood is the third-person point of view, exemplified in chapters five and thirty-seven, in which she examines how her self-perception was both formed and threatened, contributing to an argument for black girlhood that states it cannot be condensed into a single experience and instead relies on a collection of individual memories like hooks’ memoir. Memory theorists Smith and Watson offer key theoretical tools for understanding hooks’ ideas in the second chapter of their thought-provoking work Reading Autobiography, dedicated to analyzing the different memory forms. The self-examination hooks conducts while remembering is complex and is most seen in the grammatical variation of her chapters.  

Regarding her use of third-person point of view, chapter five stands as one of the most prominent employments of this formal technique, in which hooks makes distinctions between remembering as an autonomous individual and remembering within the collective of her siblings. These distinctions are made through hooks’ memory of hiding with her siblings from Sister Ray’s wrath in her father’s car, in which hooks and her siblings react differently to their fear. The third-person pronoun “they” only occurs in moments when the collective of her and her siblings’ fears are aligned. hooks writes how “Defiant, determined, they refused to budge even though they were beginning to feel afraid” and how “the longer they remained in the car, the more intense the punishment” (hooks 15). She even describes their positions in the car like that of a “terrified animal” (hooks 13). The common denominator of the “they” pronoun within hooks and her siblings’ collective fear highlights a defining pattern of her memoir: her ability to creatively distinguish her unique experience from that of a collective, whether familial or otherwise.  

Unlike her siblings, hooks is not paralyzed in fear during the entirety of the chapter; her individualization from her siblings’ fear is exercised in moments of defiance, characterized in the transition of “they” into “she” pronouns, accomplished in a mere two sentences. She writes, “They wanted to relent but the particular little one, the one who was not her favorite, couldn’t resist a last rebellious display. She spit—right in the direction of that stern face” (hooks 15). hooks positions herself in her memory as set apart from the consciousness of her siblings’ collective, and this is arguably the quintessential trend of her memoir. She is “the particular little one” operating within a larger, highly nuanced experience. The grammatical detail that hooks employs in this memory alone argues that the black girlhood experience is not singular. hooks does not think monolithically about black girlhood; by remembering her experience through such an experimental form as third-person, she argues that there is no common identity in black girlhood.  

This demonstrates Smith and Watson’s assertion that when remembering “we inevitably organize or form fragments of memory into complex constructions that become the changing stories of our lives” (Smith and Watson 40). The techniques of remembering that hooks uses creates meaning behind the “complex constructions” of black girlhood in that they are not uniform. In fact, the journey of hooks’ memoir is not linear, and the techniques she uses, whether third-person or other experimental forms, are not used in any recognizable pattern. The inconstancy of hooks’ techniques and the fragmentation of her memory contribute to the “changing stories” of her memoir and its themes. The nature of black girlhood as both a theme and hooks’ cultural situation, like the process of her remembering, is fragmented. Smith and Watson offer a deeper analysis of this idea in their claim that “autobiographical narratives invite situated readings that reference larger cultural issues and activate archives of long-forgotten knowledge” (Smith and Watson 43). hooks’ autobiographical memory is not a simple retelling. It is a reframing of memory that draws meaning from the “larger cultural issues” of black girlhood. hooks employs the third-person narrative to execute this reframing, expanding memory beyond retrieval and into construction, one that layers hooks’ voice, cultural critique, and the remembered experience simultaneously. 

Additional layers of how hooks employs the third-person to remember her own experience and argues for the incredible nuance of black girlhood are found in chapter thirty-seven. While in chapter five hooks uses third-person pronouns to make distinctions between remembering as an individual and remembering as a collective, hooks uses the pronouns of chapter thirty-seven to distinguish between her negative self-perception and her siblings’ reaction to it. The dominating pronoun in the chapter is “she” and is only attached to statements in which hooks criticizes herself. There are several moments where hooks states how “She is the one who is no fun, who makes trouble” (hooks 109), how “She cries about not being able to do anything right” (hooks 110), and that “she is the problem” (hooks 111). It is as if hooks is giving a direct impression of her self-talk: an onslaught of criticism and judgment, made more acute by her siblings’ response to her, which is expressed using “them” and “they.” The chapter’s most prominent example of this is in the last lines, where hooks is finally allowed her own room downstairs. She writes how her siblings “are glad to see her go, they feel as if something had died that they had long waited to be rid of but were not free to throw away. Like in church, they excommunicate her” (hooks 111). The judgment and dismissiveness of these last lines, as well as the overall chapter, is astounding and stands as its own remark on hooks’ larger argument on black girlhood.  

In remembering her loneliness with transparency and detail, hooks reveals both the complex layers of black girlhood and brings truth to its misconceptions. Smith and Watson’s statement that “the remembering subject actively creates the meaning of the past in the act of remembering” (Smith and Watson 40) is in alignment with this sentiment; as the “remembering subject,” the meaning that hooks is creating around black girlhood is based on elaborating and even demystifying its foundations. The level of hooks’ division from her siblings and even from herself directly conflicts with the assumptions of black girlhood that identify solidarity as a fundamental element. This can even be seen in hooks’ use of third-person pronouns. She writes, in chapter thirty-seven and in the context of her new room, how “She can hide from the loneliness inside. She can pretend. She can read all night long. To them she is the problem child, the source of all their pain. Everyone else gets along well together” (hooks 109). The structure of this quote is divided between “she” and “them,” in which the “she” expresses the routine of hooks’ loneliness: pretending, hiding, and reading alone for hours. The immediate transition into “them” and “everyone” expresses both her siblings’ judgmental reaction to hooks’ loneliness-habits and the nature of their collective, which is the siblings’ harmony and togetherness. The language that hooks uses around her siblings to describe how they “get along well together” aligns with the black girl solidarity assumption, and hooks positions herself in direct conflict with it.  

With these claims in mind, it can be said that there is nothing formulaic about black girlhood and, consequently, there cannot be a traditional way to autobiographically write about it. What defines black girlhood, as seen in bell hooks’ memoir, is the collection of unique narratives of those who have experienced it. In chapter thirty-seven, hooks writes how “She invaded other people’s things and made them her own” (hooks 111). This perfectly summarizes what hooks accomplishes with her memoir: she reclaims black girlhood by invading the autobiography genre itself. Her use of the third-person reveals memory as constructed rather than simply recalled, supported by Smith and Watson’s explanation of memory as a reorganization into complex, culturally situated narratives. The narratives of Black life writing, therefore, are not narratives of writing in which hooks is a mere contributor; she takes ownership of Black life writing by reinterpreting its potential for representing her own memories and, as a result, creates a masterful narrative that is both a representation of hooks as a deeply complex individual and the written process of her reinvention.  

Works Cited  

Hooks, Bell. Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood. Henry Holt, 2007.  

Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography Now: An Updated Guide for  Interpreting Life Narratives. University of Minnesota Press, 2024.