bell hooks and Smashing the Patriarchy in YA Fiction

This week I'm wrong about how a YA series lives up the values of the late, great philosopher-critic bell hooks, plus an update on my other writing

Believe it or not, these are actively anti-patriarchal novels that are also super fun.

I’m currently reading The Will to Change by bell hooks (who died in 2021, in an enormous loss for the world). I have never once read bell hooks—an iconic feminist writer, philosopher, and thinker, for those unfamiliar—and not been in awe of her insight, empathy, clarity, and intellectual courage (not to mention her direct and elegant prose that is sophisticated while also being accessible—she is the prose writer I admire the most). This book is no exception, and it might be my favorite text of her’s that I’ve read.

The Will to Change is about men, particularly how men in the western world grow up and are taught through patriarchy that emotion is weakness, that their role is to violently assert their dominance over others, and how that universal education (from both men and women who endorse patriarchal ideology) leaves them starved for love and connection while also inflicting fear and violence on the people who care most about them. It’s the best book I’ve read at defining the value and purpose of feminist thought and practice for men and their emotional well-being, and the significance of understanding male identity for all feminists, men and women, for effective and meaningful feminist practice. I can’t recommend it enough.

The book extends hooks’ career-long focus on the poisonous ideology of domination that is fundamental to patriarchy. A moment that particularly struck me was when she discussed the popularity of Harry Potter (the book was published in 2004):

It was adult, white, wealthy males in this country who first read and fell in love with the Harry Potter books. Though written by a British female, initially described by the rich white American men who "discovered" her as a working class single mom, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books are clever modern reworkings of the English schoolboy novel. Harry as our modern-day hero is the supersmart, gifted, blessed, white boy genius (a mini patriarch) who "rules" over the equally smart kids, including an occasional girl and an occasional male of color. But these books also glorify war, depicted as killing on behalf of the "good".

The Harry Potter movies glorify the use of violence to maintain control over others. In Harry Potter: The Chamber of Secrets violence when used by the acceptable groups is deemed positive. Sexism and racist thinking in the Harry Potter books are rarely critiqued. Had the author been a ruling-class white male, feminist thinkers might have been more active in challenging the imperialism, racism and sexism of Rowling's books.

Again and again I hear parents, particularly antipatriarchal parents, express concern about the contents of these books while praising them for drawing more boys to reading. Of course American children were bombarded with an advertising blitz telling them that they should read these books. Harry Potter began as national news sanctioned by mass media. Books that do not reinscribe patriarchal masculinity do not get the approval the Harry Potter books have received. And children rarely have an opportunity to know that any books exist which offer an alternative to patriarchal masculinist visions. The phenomenal financial success of Harry Potter means that boys will henceforth have an array of literary clones to choose from.

First of all, let’s credit bell hooks for getting this right before most people. Rowling’s quest to be the most prominent transphobe in the world has only emphasized the thread of meanness and insensitivity more and more readers have noticed in Potter over time. I do think they’re fun, engaging books at the end of the day—as I discussed in my post last week—but hooks was still ahead of the curve in critiquing their values and subtext.

It’s the end of her observations on Potter that I want to focus on—the series has absolutely produced a series of imitators, but I do think many of them have been morally, philosophically, and quite honestly literarily superior, such as The Hunger Games trilogy, the His Dark Materials trilogy, and the Percy Jackson series (although hooks would still likely point to the prevalence of violence in the genre as a problem). A few lesser known books I would suggest that also fit the criteria: Graceling by Kristin Cashore, Pet by Akwaeke Emezi, and The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline.

But I do think one of my all-time favorite series (which I also briefly mentioned last week) might do better than most at embodying a hooks-ian ethos critical of hetero-patriarchal domination—not because it doesn’t feature a magical white boy playing out fantasies of colonial and patriarchal violence (it does), but because it is aware those fantasies are toxic and does so in a way that never lets you forget the damage they do to the human spirit. I’m talking about The Bartimaeus Trilogy.

Written by Jonathan Stroud, the series is set in an alternative London led by a ruling class that amasses and enforces power through summoning and commanding djinn. Through the power of the magical creatures they summon, who are bound by complex rules to obey their commands (but are constantly seeking to subvert those rules and kill their summoners), the British empire has oppressed not just its own lower classes but much of the world (this book is barely fictional in many ways).

Where most authors would focus a story in this world on a plucky resistance movement and a young, chosen-one archetype, Stroud chooses to center his trilogy on Nathaniel, a young apprentice of a low-level magician who is part of the ruling party. Taken away from his parents at a young age, his adopted father is emotionally and physically abusive and seeks to crush the spirit of the quiet, kind, intelligent boy brought into his care—partly as a way to enact the domination he is the victim of in his professional and social life. Nathaniel is the one person he can, as an unsuccessful patriarchal imperialist pawn, inflict his rage and shame upon.

That dynamic is one hooks writes about extensively, and just as she recognizes how in the real world the paradigm leads to violent, emotionally stunted young men who see compassion and emotion as weakness, Nathaniel has his instincts for goodness and community crushed by his repeated shame and trauma.

Throughout the trilogy, Nathaniel becomes more and more successful as he seeks and achieves domination of others, both human and djinn—as he becomes someone who can inflict pain and violence on other people and use it to wield power. He ingratiates himself with people he despises to eventually usurp them, he backstabs and plots, and he eventually becomes one of the most powerful young people in the violent empire that destroyed his better self. Every success he achieves, that in the standard plot of a YA franchise involves the personal growth of a character, instead leads to the rot of his soul. We subconsciously root for him as a reflex, but despise him at the same time, and despise ourselves for both emotions. We are made complicit. It’s as if Katniss started planning and defending the Hunger Games as her story progressed, and we kind of wanted it to happen (oh wait, the Hunger Games prequel played with this exact idea and was amazing, and I wrote about it). We can’t celebrate traditional beats of success because the toxic violence he is inflicting on others and himself is unmistakable.

The other two protagonists of the series offer his only counter-influences, but are also made worse by the logic of empire. One is Kitty, a commoner who joins a violent resistance movement to the ruling class. What hooks would appreciate about her arc is that while her cause is recognized as just and right, we see how the violence she and her compatriots inflict—even on unmistakably evil people—causes them to become more unhappy, less fulfilled, and more similar to the people they seek to overthrow. Kitty resists the contamination of her soul, but can’t figure out a way to struggle for what is right without violence.

The final central character is Bartimaeus, Nathaniel’s preferred djinn to summon and command, who quickly gains some measure of power over Nathaniel through learning his true name (which comes through recognizing his better qualities—symbolism!). Bartimaeus has been summoned by powerful imperialists for millennia and is a hilarious, intelligent, cutting narrator of the absurdities of empire and how it maintains itself through getting the oppressed to fight one another. He takes a toxic pleasure in being clever and effective in the real world, but he also constantly laments being forced (through violent summoning magic) to hurt his own kind and even humans. He is slowly becoming twisted by his magical domination into a grotesque parody of his oppressors as he is forced to carry out their oppressive work. He longs to return to “the other place”—where djinn exist in their true form, as swirling essence intermixed with one another and without being confined to a physical form or space. As a metaphor, the other place is incredible—a place where total freedom and total community are not in opposition to one another, but necessary to each other—where the connection we all have to one another is essentially realized—and which is antithetical to control.

The three characters occupy dramatically different parts of this world—the ruling class, the enslaved, and the oppressed resistance—but all three are twisted into slowly accepting and embracing the self-mutilating ethic of empire and domination.

I don’t want to spoil what is (despite the darkness of what I’ve described) a fun, entertaining series—but to make my point, I have to share a few features of its ending.

The resolution is brought about by all three characters rejecting the ideology that brought them to that point. It is begun by Kitty not just abandoning power through domination, but by embracing its inverse. She surrenders herself to Bartimaeus, places complete trust in him while risking her life, and in that act is able to understand his perspective and create a true, meaningful, lasting bond. It is an anti-imperial act—one of surrender rather than violence, of trust rather than control. I think this scene is incredibly powerful, and is one hooks would celebrate.

Nathaniel and Bartimaeus eventually must do the same, as they let go of their incessant struggle for control over each other and instead work to protect the innocent. It’s an exciting finale—that is, unfortunately, filled with (justifiable, but still) violence. And they succeed—through abandoning their hatred of one another and embracing the possibility of connection and healing.

But the brilliance of the series is in its final conclusion. Nathaniel and Bartimaeus succeed, but can’t escape the consequences of their courage and the fact it came too late. Their decisions have lasting, meaningful, tragic consequences for themselves.

There is no happy ending, but there is an ending where all three characters feel—for the first time in the entire series—fulfilled and satisfied with the righteousness of their actions, because it came through rejecting the ideology of the world that damaged them. We feel that victory even as we mourn its consequences. Stroud suggests that at a certain point, that’s all that’s possible. If you’re looking for a book series that wrestles with the nuanced and far-reaching damage of violent patriarchy, I can’t recommend it enough.

A Quick Update

I promised updates on my creative writing projects, so exciting news—I no longer hate my script! It is, in fact, I think, maybe kind of pretty good now—certainly much leaner and more focused and I hope at times more funny and emotional than it was before. I’m very proud to be at this point, even as I continue revising.

I am now willing to share it with people—partly so I can get feedback about where I’m being blinded by affection for my work and can cut, change, and improve it. If you want to read its current form, I’d be honored to send it your way, and would love to hear what it made you feel and use that to make it better.