bell hooks, the celebrated Black feminist writer and thinker, recently penned a book called Feminism is for Everybody. It is a provocative title to be sure, but hooks is not the first writer to tackle the subject of how so-called "women's issues" can often have profound consequences on men. Literary works of fiction have long struggled with this central theme. In particular, Jean Toomer's Cane includes some powerful vignettes which highlight just how damaging it can be for men when they do not understand and appreciate women as whole, 3-dimensional beings. Although the negative consequences the male characters suffer in "Karintha," "Becky," "Carma" and "Blood Burning Moon" are as varied as the men themselves, one could argue that the common thread amongst these men is isolation. It is ironic to the extreme, but each of central male characters in Toomer's vignettes actually themselves create a distance and isolation from the...
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