Six top books on difference and the power of otherness

Hilton Als is The New Yorker's theatre critic. His new book, White Girls, considers a variety of cultural celebrities who derived power from their otherness.

One of his six favorite "works that serve as meditations on difference and the power of otherness" as shared with The Week magazine:

My Sister's Hand in Mine by Jane Bowles

The playwright Jane Bowles produced relatively little during her brief career, but this volume of collected works proves that what she wrote was mighty. Her women are verbally pointed but emotionally lost. They remain unfulfilled because their trappings of normalcy — marriage, a "nice" home, etc. — do nothing to eradicate their feelings of alienation.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue