Woman-kind is strong and resilient. Throughout history they have been dominated but have overcome it to be strongly and fiercely independent of themselves and their life. They have established themselves firmly within the outer ‘masculine’ world of work and the inner ‘feminine’ world, seamlessly moving in and out of both without much effort.
Literature, in that respect has not been left out. Women have been actively been contributing to it and a wealth of literature have been created and published, waiting for to be read. However, there doesn’t seem to be an equal parity between the women and men in the literary market. The dismissal of female writers is epidemic in the literary world, evidenced by the drastic imbalance between reviews of male-written works and female-written works. In 2012, according to literary analysis organization VIDA, works written by women accounted for 22% of reviews in The New York Review Of Books, 25% of reviews in The Times Literary Supplement and a mere 8.7% in the London Review of Books.
When Joanna Walsh spoke to a publisher (who happened to be a male) recently, she says that he “thought contemporary men and women writers have complete parity, on the evidence of prize lists. Having seen the VIDA stats, I don’t really agree, though it’s evident that things are a lot more equal than when Kate Mosse started the Women’s Prize (then Orange, now Bailey’s) in 1996 in reaction to prize shortlists regularly featuring only 10% women.” He however agreed for the need to rediscover women writers who were published earlier or have been overlooked.
Joanne explains further that it is important for women and men, readers and writers, to be aware that the literary heritage is more diverse that they might have originally thought. On personal level, she adds, “I’d particularly like to see new editions of the short stories of Leonora Carrington, Jean Rhys and Clarice Lispector – all major writers of the 20th century, all out of print in the UK – but that’s only my personal passion.”
There have been other endeavours that are happening concurrently to the #readwomen2014 to celebrate women’s writing. Critical Flame, an American Journal, is dedicating this year to women writers and writers of colour. “Women writers and writers of colour are underserved and undervalued by the contemporary literary community,” Daniel Pritchard, Editor. “Silence on this literary disparity has not been the problem of the past few years. Inertia has.”
Read more women!
When writer and artist Joanna Walsh created a set of bookmarks to send as New Year’s cards, decorated with drawings of her favourite female authors, she didn’t realize she would be jump-starting an entire movement.
The bookmarks named 2014 “the year of reading women,” and listed 250 female authors ranging from Angela Carter to Zadie Smith, asking recipients to ‘if not vow to read women exclusively, look up some of the writers I’ve drawn on the front or listed on the back.’ But demand for the cards grew and grew, along with suggestions on Twitter for other female authors that should have been included. In addition to the droves of readers showing support through the hashtag, other writers and editors have pledged their dedication to diversification.
“I’ve been massively surprised by the takeup,” says Walsh. “When I started tweeting the names I’d typed on the back of the cards, I worried readers might think I might come across being polemical, or boring, but so many people were eager to run with it themselves: lots of women, many of whom may have been reading female writers already, but also men—and women—who realised they’d hadn’t thought about what they were reading, and wanted to try something new.”
The Twitter account works very well as a ‘virtual book club’ so subscribers can share recommendations, and talk to each other about writers they’ve discovered. I’ve already discovered several writers I’m very keen to start reading as soon as I get the chance. Some of the most interesting responses she has received, she says, are “from readers who’d looked at their recent reading, realised there was an imbalance they couldn’t entirely account for, and resolved to try something new”.
#readwomen2014’s Inspiration
What began as a personal project for friends soon developed into something bigger and far-reaching. Her inspiration to take this project was Matt Jakubowski, a US based author and literary critic, who is dedicating this year to read women and Jonathan Gibbs, a UK based author and journalist, who did the same last year.
Matt Jakubowski, as a result of reading only women this year, will only be reviewing books written by women. He believes that there is some sort of cultural movement that is afoot. “It could be that perhaps people are feeling more willing now to take a stand against gender bias in publishing and the literary world, finding it a little easier perhaps to speak out about it now,” he says.
Jonathan Gibbs undertook the project of reading only women last year after reading Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station and “basically getting peed off with that self-reflexive, ‘I know I’m shit and that makes me great’ male narrator type story.”
While consciously being aware that his favourite contemporary authors were mainly male, and acknowledges the fact it was largely constructed by the book industry and media, his sees his project of reading women writers as to see if whether “there were women who wrote in a way that responded to my need to see myself in the books I read.” He, however, found the results of the project inconclusive and his favourite authors – male – were not “knocked off the perch in my reading head.”
When the project comes to an end at the end year, Joanne hopes that this movement will prompt other people to start a variety of initiatives for the coming year. However, #readwomen2014 will end this year and is already seen to be influencing other sectors into starting various campaigns including a 2015 campaign for reading books in translation and another to highlight the position of women working in the film industry.
Though Walsh’s list includes many female authors from the past, like Jane Austen and Gertrude Stein, it turns out that 2014 will be a good year for anyone who takes her advice and likes new fiction. “I think its important people are willing to consider books by a range of writers they might not usually read,” says Joanne.
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Although this twitter phenomenon took place last year, I feel it is still relevant now too.
One of the books that I have enjoyed reading, and in particular keep going back from time to time, is Mitch Albom’s For One More Day. The writing and its simplicity in conveying its core messages stood out for me when I first read it around 10 years ago. Today, it still does. It is perhaps this simplicity that makes it easily accessible and understood to many that have attracted many to pick up a copy and read it.
Just before the start of the novel, Voldemort, the most powerful Dark wizard, killed Harry Potter’s parents but mysteriously disappeared himself while trying to kill Harry. While the Wizarding world celebrates Voldemort’s downfall, Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall and Hagrid bring Harry Potter to be in the care of his only family left, his mother’s sister’s family, a Muggle Family (Non-wizarding family).
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is a fantasy novel which follows the adventures of a Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins. Upon its publication in 1937, it reached a wide critical acclaim with it being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and was awarded a prize from the New york Herald Tribune for the best juvenile fiction.
READING CAROUSEL 