Here is an interesting thought: should we still read books written by straight, white men? Now, when first hearing this, there can be an immediate reluctance and even backlash to this (admittedly) extreme question: why on Earth would anyone restrict themselves from reading a book for any reason? I mean, wouldn't stopping someone from reading a book based on one specific trait cause more harm than good? Is it not limiting? Well, perhaps that is true, but is that not what publishers and readers have been doing for centuries, long before women were writing/reading or even allowed to be (known) published writers? But, one could say, that was "all in the past," right? Certainly, because women make up the largest percentage of published (and even "successful") writers, it is certainly not the case? No - in fact, many popular women writers even use initials to hide their gender so that it does not keep someone from picking up a book just because it was written by a woman. There are countless studies about the relationship between women and literature - one study even finding that books about women are less likely to win awards. There is also the fact that most sci-fi and fantasy books are written by white men. And while it's certainly possible to read exclusively women writers without exhausting the list (what with the rise of women representation in SFF from all sexualities, ethnicities, and backgrounds), what is still considered "great" literary works that "Fathered" the genre is, and possibly forever will be, praised and lifted up. Their voices will always be there, their impressions even on writers today is inescapable. Could there possibly be a way of reinventing the wheel, of creating a world that does not have the finger prints of racism and misogyny? Are these things as internal as they are external? Is even all works written by white men always racist or minsogynst? I have no definitive answers to any of these questions, but they are questions that I have been thinking about for quite some time now. And these are questions that I will probably think about for many years to come, and even years down the road there will exist no clear answer. And much like what poet Adrienne Rish wrote in her poem "Diving Into the Wreck": "the things I came for/ the wreck and not the story fo the wreck/ the thing itself and not the myth/ the drown face always staring/ toward the sun." So many books, especially classics, are assigned reading in school. Strictly talking about American authors, when someone asks who the "Greats Titans" of Literature are, people unthinkingly name off Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Twain, Salinger, and many others. Do we not gloss over their bigotry, sexism, and racism because of their "art?" Is it even possible to separate the art from the artist when so much of what is considered to be "great" or "canon" is tied so much to these men? For much of history, women wrote under fake names (from the Bronte sister and George Eliot, to Mary Shelley and Louisa May Alcott), and even used their initials to not allow their gender to hurt their sales (think JK Rowling, EL James, SE Hinton, and LM Montgomery). While many men could chose to use their initials if they wanted to (or purely for aesthetic reasons only), women had to at times strategically name themselves so that they could be viewed as the same level as men. (Ironically, there is now a rise in men, who are now even encroaching on the mystery/thriller genre, many creating female-sounding pseudonyms as a way to "get in.") And okay, I just "went off" on a tangent about women's misrepresentation in literature and it's history of marginalization, but what about the crux of the question: should we still read books written by white, male authors? Do we STILL have to? Is the perspective they have to share even a good one, anymore? What kinds of perspective do they give in our own present, ever-expanding literary canon that would still be deemed as "valuable?" I do not mean to push "tokenism," or rather, reading a book solely based on the author's skin tone or gender just for diversity's sake. Readers should be picking books based on their merit, not based on how many check marks you can have to just say, at the end of the day, that you "read diversely." And, absolutely, a lot of these great works written by Dickens, and Tolkien, and Fitzgerald does have literary merit. However, what I am concerned with is who classifies "literary merit?" Who gets to decide whether something has the right to be read, and is there even a new way to decide that for ourselves? While there is no arguing that popular classics, dominated by men and their view of the world (and of women and other marginalized groups), there are are a group of women from that era - and beyond - to pick from. From Jane Austen and Virginia Wolff, to Margaret Atwood and NK Jemisin. You may still have to read books by men, but you can always balance it with a book by a woman. Sources:
VIDA: Women In Literary Arts. http://www.vidaweb.org Flood, Alison. “Books about Women Less Likely to Win Prizes, Study Finds.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 1 June 2015, www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/01/books-about-women-less-likely-to-win-prizes-study-finds. Bates, Jordan. “Literary Canons Exclude Works No Matter How Selective Canon Makers Are.” The Daily Nebraskan, 16 May 2018, www.dailynebraskan.com/culture/literary-canons-exclude-works-no-matter-how-selective-canon-makers/article_da83def2-ad43-11e2-b07a-0019bb30f31a.html. Snell, Tonie. “Tokenism: The Result of Diversity Without Inclusion.” Medium, Medium, 30 May 2017,medium.com/@TonieSnell/tokenism-the-result-of-diversity-without-inclusion-460061db1eb6.
0 Comments
When people joke about suicide, there can be a hidden kernel of truth on their true feelings about it. Perhaps it is not "hidden" exceptionally well behind a joke or a poem, but it is a way to creatively interact with their emotions and confess their experiences. In this era of post-war poetry, we see an influx of voices that were not overly flowery or complicated, but those who spoke plainly on their experiences - which differed greatly from the typical white man that was given a platform so often in our society. This movement of revealing, personal poetry is known as "confessional poetry," and is one that still being read and even written to this day. This erasure of private and public life has been going on since the end of the 19th century, but certainly after the Second World War, we see an influx of different writers and poets from all backgrounds (especially in America). Poetry, one could argue, might have always been "confessional" - isn't that what poetry is? To shed light onto truths? However (to again borrow Ezra Pound's philosophy on Modernist poetry) this age of poetry was "made new." Dying
Sources:
Academy of American Poets. “A Brief Guide to Confessional Poetry.” Poets.Org, 2014, poets.org/text/brief-guide-confessional-poetry. Accessed 4 Oct. 2019. Grobe, Christopher. “From Midcentury Confessional Poetry to Reality TV.” Literary Hub, 8 Apr. 2019, lithub.com/from-midcentury-confessional-poetry-to-reality-tv/. Accessed 4 Oct. 2019. Edmund, Aiyana. “The Tragic Relationship of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.” Literary Ladies Guide, 2012, www.literaryladiesguide.com/literary-musings/relationship-sylvia-plath-ted-hughes/. Accessed 4 Oct. 2019. |
aboutWSU English Literature major and Marketing minor. Archives
May 2020
Categories |