Tag: women writers

Eight Reasons (Excuses) Why I Broke My Book Buying & Borrowing Ban

As it happens, I haven’t read, shall we say, exclusively from said to-read list.

Eight Reasons (Excuses) Why I Broke My Book Buying & Borrowing Ban
My actual book stack of unread books may be larger and more likely to tip over.

Checking on my reading goals1 seems to be a new habit of mine, one perhaps inspired by my discovery that I have a tendency to plan my reading and then read something different. But this year, I felt that I needed to whittle down my to-read booklist by focusing on books I already own. This decision, fueled by receiving several books as presents for my birthday and Christmas last year,2 became more urgent when I realized how long one book had been on my to-be read list.3 And it’s not the only book I’ve had for a few years but haven’t started/finished. It made sense, therefore, to put a moratorium on book buying, library loans (barring a few pre-approved exceptions), and other acquisitions until I made a good dent in my pile at home. With that in mind, I finished and returned my library books and picked the first books off the stack: Bird Girl and the Man Who Followed the Sun by Velma Wallis. Off to a good start in January!

If you’re suspicious that my resolve might be weak, you’d be correct. As it happens, I haven’t read, shall we say, exclusively from said to-read list. Apparently, the long list of books that I want to read continues to beckon and distract me from my reading goals. Fortunately, I have eight legitimate reasons (excuses) for breaking my resolve:

(1) My spouse. (No, really!) He found a book about bees at the Philadelphia Flower Show, one that supported bee researchers (we came this close to getting a beehive). Since it was practically the environmentally responsible thing to do and would make such a great coffee table book (a known weakness of mine), I went and bought it.

(2) Christmas gift card. I received a gift card for a bookstore, and it’d be rude to not use it, especially since one of the book I purchase was written by a fellow Women’s Writer Network member (The Chicken Soup Murder by Maria Donovan). It’d be ever ruder not to support a fellow woman writer, right?

(3) Used bookstore credit. After replacing several volumes of Agatha Christie short stories featuring Miss Marple and Hercules Poirot with two volumes that contained all their stories,4 I took the books I no longer needed to resell them at my local used bookshop. It turns out I had some store credit already, and I left with three books (sorry not sorry). So far, I’ve only read one!

(3a) Book replacement? So, I replaced books I owned for omnibus versions containing the same titles. To be honest, this strikes me as being an even exchange. You know what, I’m not counting this one, even if I re-read a few stories.

(4) Crowdfunded books I supported. Technically, I supported Helen Taylor’s debut novel, The Backstreets of Purgatory, roughly a year before I made any promises regarding reading only books I already owned. Although I already bought it, it only arrived a few days ago (and I will begin reading it as soon as I finish the two books I’ve already started). More sketchily, I also supported the Waymaking anthology. However, it has yet to arrive, so it surely doesn’t count until it’s in my possession, right?

(5) Reading for a Twitter chat. As part of my reading for the Women Writers Network Twitter chat on Women Writers and the Environment, I wanted to read a few books on the topic, one of which was on my pre-approved book to borrow list (Silent Spring by Rachael Carson). The other one (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail by Cheryl Strayed) wasn’t, but researching is important the way I see it.

(6) Kindle reader. I borrowed my spouse’s old Kindle reader to read library books that were on my approved exceptions list (eg, Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring), because I keep accruing library fines when I miss returning them by their due date.5 Then, I promptly borrowed a few additional books for the aforementioned Twitter chat (research!), a book on my to-be read list from 2016 that I don’t own, and a few titles for the #readingwomenmonth challenge. Who knew the hold list would be fulfilled so quickly?

(7) Book giveaways. I signed up for a book giveaway (see here) for #readingwomenmonth and won! Does it count if I didn’t buy it? Probably, but I’m not feeling repentant.

(8) Book sale. I suppose that’s not a good reason, but it was a book that piqued my curiosity and was under five dollars.

I suppose it’s good to have goals, even you don’t strictly adhere to them. With that said, I have read eight of the sixteen books I resolved to read back in January so far (my total list, not counting re-reads, contains 22 books). It’s entirely possible that I’ll make it through my list and make a considerable dent in all the books (new and old) I have in stock. While my book buying/borrowing ban may not have entirely succeeded, but it seems to help me stay on a track and read several great books I intended to read for some time.

NOTES:

  1. For the curious, I generally switch between reading and writing topics, with a few interesting science books and reviews thrown in. In the spirit of Reading Women Month, my June posts will focus on reading topics, which will include books written about and by women. ↩
  2. Considering that these events are but a month apart, I had a small shelving crisis—but, being a bookworm, it’s the kind of problem I like having. ↩
  3. I’ve finally started Margaret Fuller’s Women in the Nineteenth Century. The first few pages were slow going, but it’s picking up. ↩
  4. You wouldn’t believe how time consuming it is to find a story among four or five books, some of which duplicate certain tales. ↩
  5. I’m lobbying to get a shelf named after me. ↩

Summer Reading and Women Writers

Summer seems to finally be here, and it looks promising for reading more works written by women writers.

Summer seems to finally be here, and it looks promising for reading more works written by women writers. Recently, the Women’s Writer Network held their second Twitter chat of 2018 on June 5th. This time, our discussion focused on women writing the city, and we had an engaging conversation about how the urban landscape appears in writing. You can check out the highlights here and find our reading recommendations lists here.1 These chats tend to be inspiring, both for generating ideas about and for writing as well as providing opportunities for discovering (or rediscovering) authors. I’ll be sure to announce the next Twitter chat (planning already underway!) when details become available.

Additionally, Reading Women is celebrating their second year podcasting. As I discussed last year, Reading Women, dedicated to reclaiming half the bookshelf, focus on works written by and about women. In additional to the #readingwomenmonth photo challenge (I’m participating again this year), they are debuting a Mrs. Dalloway read along (incidentally, one of the books mentioned during Women Writer’s Network Twitter Chat) as well as other events described here.2

Finally, another opportunity to read more women writers will be in August, which is Women in Translation month. Founded by Meytal Radzinski in 2014, this event seems to grow every year. In addition to Meytal’s 2018 #witmonth resources page, you can check out the Translationista blog run by Susan Bernofsky and the Women in Translation blog (run by women translators) for more ideas and information. I’ll be discussing more about #witmonth when we get closer to August.

The Recs Lists

If you need additional suggestions for your reading list, I’m recommending several books I’ve read. Links will takes you to post I’ve written focusing on the books or their writing approaches.

Finally, check out these articles that list more amazing works by women writers:

For more ideas, you can also take a look at last year’s recommendations. Happy reading, everyone! And as always, feel free to share your suggestions!

NOTES:

  1. You can see the highlights for this year’s first Women Writer’s Network chat on Women Writers and the Environment here. The Goodreads list is available here. ↩
  2. I’ve just won a giveaway from Reading Women! ↩

Getting Women Right: Science’s Evolving View on Women

The timing of Angela Saini’s recently published book, Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story,[*] seems almost prescient following the publication of the Google memo. Once again, science has been invoked to demonstrate that inequalities between men and women exist because of biological difference instead of lingering prejudices about women’s capability. But, as Saini cautions us, such science isn’t without its biases[†] nor is there necessarily consensus on these findings. In Inferior, Saini seeks to provide insights into controversial studies and theories existing in several scientific disciplines that intimate or have claimed that huge biological gaps exist—ones reinforcing damaging stereotypes—and the new research challenging these findings, even when the facts don’t readily dispel such stereotypes.

Evolving Science

Sciences Asides: Getting Women Right: Science’s Evolving View on Women. Text by Rita E. Gould
Darwin assumed men drove evolution but newer studies focus on how evolutionary forces affected women, dispelling notions of female passivity, inferiority, and even chastity.

When they do, however, the results can be quite eye opening. Among the disciplines that Saini investigates, evolutionary biology has greatly altered its view of women, in no small part due to women scientists. Charles Darwin argued that the pressure only men experienced to obtain mates drove evolution, cementing male superiority to women in every way. Men became hunters, while women, passively engaged in childcare, evolved only because they inherited some of their father’s better qualities. For Darwin, men’s preeminence in all fields proved his point.[‡] Recent studies of increasingly rare modern hunter–gatherer groups, however, reveal cultures where men are caregivers and women are hunters, disputing the idea that such roles are predestined. Indeed, scrutinizing these populations (not to mention animal populations[§]) also contradicts the notion that females are universally monogamous.

Contentious Science

Sciences Asides: Getting Women Right: Science’s Evolving View on Women. Text by Rita E. Gould
Among the cases where “facts are greyer” than people find comfortable, testosterone appears to produce small behavioral sex differences.

However, some areas of study still are poorly understood and others hotly debated. Notably, the role of sex hormones (responsible for sexual development and reproduction) remains less clear. Once thought to be the agents that made men masculine (testosterone) and women feminine (estrogen and progesterone), it’s now understood that these hormones are produced by the gonads of both males and females, albeit in differing amounts. While this discovery dismissed the view that masculinity and femininity were opposites, lingering questions about how these hormones interact within our bodies and affect our minds remain. The theory that sex hormones create significant differences between the brains of male and female fetuses, predisposing them to certain roles, is among the more controversial topics. However, it’s important to recall that the roles of culture and child rearing cannot be ruled out in such cases. And while “small behavioral sex differences” associated with testosterone have been demonstrated in young children (72), most studies tend to show more overlap than difference in typical child development.

Inferior serves as a much-needed corrective to assumptions that science provides clear, objective evidence that significant differences exist between women and men. As science strives to gain a clearer picture of women, it’s more than apparent that women are far from inferior. Indeed, the theme of humanity’s plasticity runs throughout Inferior, suggesting that men and women have more in common than not. And that, indeed, is a great discovery.

NOTES:

[*] Saini, Angela. Inferior: how science got women wrong and the new research that’s rewriting the story. Beacon Press, 2017.

[†] Saini observes that the biases that kept women from participating work likely prejudiced science’s objectivity. Women in science, regardless of how underrepresented they are due to social disparities (ranging from childcare to gender bias and sexual harassment), has influenced how science is performed, with new ideas being considered and old ones challenged, very often by women scientist. (10).

[‡] Saini argues here (and elsewhere when disputing how the Google memo got the science wrong) that Darwin was hardly the only man of his time to conflate structural inequality with biological differences (14–8).

[§] That’s not to say all species engage in promiscuous behavior, just that it’s incorrect to assume that all females are monogamous (136–7).

Writing Using Your Experiences: What We Really Mean by “Write What You Know”

Writers, particularly inexperienced ones, often are exhorted to “write what you know.[*] I first heard this advice mentioned during a session for my school’s creative writing workshop. While the remark wasn’t directed to me, I nonetheless considered it. Much of what I knew as a reasonably well-behaved teenager didn’t strike me as “page turner” material. It also wasn’t the sort of fiction I wrote then; among other things, I was dabbling in horror fiction without the dubious benefit of supernatural events in my life. But no one seemed to have objections to my writing in this vein, either. It was a moment where advice left me confused instead of enlightened.

Sleepy reader on a log
The response I imagined that fiction based on my teenaged experiences would generate.

I’ve since realized the problem with this too pithy prescriptive involves how little guidance it provides. A short acquaintance with fiction demonstrates countless stories that incorporate research (eg, historical fiction) along with imagination instead of solely relying on the author’s personal history or knowledge. While we’re clearly not instructed to only write about what we know, the lack of further instruction (eg, how we should write about what we know) could be misinterpreted to imply that very limitation. We also tend to assume the “what we know” refers exclusively to our life events. The conclusion many arrive at (myself included) is that we’re told to fictionalize our lives. If what I know includes everything I know, then I certainly have permission to write about what I’ve learned from any source.[†] As a voracious reader of horror fiction, I knew quite a great deal about the genre—and that meant I already was writing what I knew though I didn’t appreciate it in that moment. But if such advice creates confusion, perhaps it’s time to reconsider what we really mean when we advise people to write what they know.

Inspiration and Information

  • Inspiration

The student in my workshop had asked for suggestions regarding what she should write about, and our mentor recommended writing about what she knew in the spirit of examining her personal experiences for topics that might work as a story. It’s the most common interpretation of “write what you know”, and I suspect it’s what most people intend when they dispense this advice. And drawing stories from our personal well of memories can be quite inspiring. Autobiographical novels such as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women rely heavily on the incidents of the author’s life. Other authors use certain autobiographical details as a springboard for their stories, among them Amy Tan. Her novels often involve a strained mother-daughter relationship of an immigrant Chinese mother and her American-born daughter.[‡]

Orchard House, home of Louisa May Alcott and the inspiration for the March family home in Little Women
Louisa May Alcott used Orchard House (Concord, MA) as the basis for the March family home in Little Women but did not actually live there until she was 25. (Photo by R. Gould)

The crucial observation here is that these authors were inspired by their experiences. While Tan’s history as a first-generation American undoubtedly informed her novels, she chose to avoid fictionalizing actual events in favor of writing their emotional truth. And neither author felt beholden to strictly adhere to the literal truth because recreating actual events didn’t suit their stories. Alcott’s novel diverges factually from her life in several places. For example, Alcott did not grow up in a single home as a child (unlike the March girls) but moved 22 times. Faithfully replicating all those moves, however true to life they were, would have taken too much focus off the March girls’ adventures. Our experiences can be the starting place when we write fiction, but real events shouldn’t get the final word.

  • Informing the Text

If we’re rethinking “write what you know”, then it’s important to consider how else personal knowledge and experience otherwise influence our tales. Many authors use locales they know well to serve as their setting, as Alcott did when she based the March family home on her own home, Orchard House. Character development, of course, is another area where our knowledge helps us round characters by gifting them with skill sets, opinions, and interests (like hobbies) that we or others we know possess. Agatha Christie used her familiarity with her own profession when she created named Ariadne Oliver, a friend of Belgian detective Hercules Poirot, who just so happens to write mysteries featuring a foreign (not English) detective.

The response I imagined that fiction based on my teenaged experienc
Including sensory details (crunching carrot) that we know lets the readers share our character’s experiences such as eating vegetables.

The familiar often diffuses subtly throughout fiction. Our knowledge of social scenarios, for example, guides what our characters’ behavior during dialogue. Characters in a kitchen don’t stand at attention and declaim lines: they lean against counters, clear away dishes, or sip beverages, depending on the story’s set up. Our experiences also provide us with the sights, sounds, touch, and smells we include in stories. Sensory details such as the crunch of a carrot allow readers to vividly experience what the characters do. Importantly, our experiences also allow us to make imaginative leaps. Even when we haven’t faced the same terrible ordeals our characters have, we know how we’ve been hurt, lost, abandoned, and heartbroken. We can use the emotions we’ve experienced in these moments to connect ourselves as well as our readers to what our character undergoes. Knowledge of our identity, too, lets us question how people different from us may feel differently or similarly in a given situation. And yes, our experiences, when they’re lacking, signal when we need to research and fill in what we don’t know.

Writing Using Our Experiences and Knowledge

What we know and our experiences, in some ways, define where fiction begins. They inspire what we write and give narratives depth that they wouldn’t have otherwise. And that’s why using our experiences to inspire our work as well as fill in the myriad details of story is good advice.

Read More

Bret Anthony Johnston’s article “Don’t Write What You Know” in The Atlantic. I found this article after I’d written much of mine, and it provides thought-provoking nuance and insights on this topic.

NOTES:

[*] I’ve previously written about how writing advice often is presented as a set of “rules” when it should be treated as guidance that can be used or dispensed with as needed. “Write what you know” isn’t specifically discussed there, but it certainly warrants some clarification.

[†] To give a somewhat snarky example, I don’t have to experience radiation poisoning to explain why uranium can be dangerous. I can refer to what I learned in science courses.

[‡] Fiona Mitchell discusses the concept of having “one story to tell” in her article “Have You Got More than One Story?”. As she observes (and Tan illustrates), there are many ways to tell that one story.

Reading Women Month: Spreading the Word About Women Writers

Dedicating a month to reading women writers both brings more attention to their terrific works and fulfills Reading Women’s mission to reclaim half the bookshelf.

In celebration of their first year podcasting, Reading Women debuted Reading Women Month to encourage everyone to read great books written by or about women throughout June.[*] As a member of the newly formed Women Writers Network, I love to see women’s writing being discussed and promoted. The latest VIDA count demonstrates that women writers still publish less than their male counterparts. Dedicating a month to reading women writers both brings more attention to their terrific works and fulfills Reading Women’s mission to reclaim half the bookshelf. You can show your support by using the hashtag #readingwomenmonth when you post about the books you’re reading on social media like Twitter and Instagram.[†]

If you need additional suggestions for your reading list, I’m recommending several books I’ve read:

Finally, check out these articles that list more amazing works by women writers:

Which women writers do you love to read? Share your favorites in the comment section below!

NOTES:

 

[*] The event includes both reading challenges and photo challenges, as well as giveaways. Details are here.

[†] Feel free to use the #women_writers and #readingwomen to increase exposure of your posts!

[‡] I discuss Hidden Figures here.

[§] You can read my review of Swing Time here.