We Are All Alike, Eleanor Lowden.
Dear Books,
It's been about a year now, that I have been keeping track of the books I have read; in conjunction with a commitment to reading women authors. I also include non-white writers (any gender), and trans or non-binary authors, but my favorites are from women like me*, writing about what it feels like to inhabit their bodies.
It isn't a total ban, either, I read some white men now and then; and, as I go along filling my head with predominately women's voices, or perhaps I should say: non male writers? I notice, I notice it hard, when I read one of these menwrit books that is trying to build a great castle, an empire, with words- all about their sex organs and oozing what have yous. I know you think I am exaggerating, but try it- try 5 books in a row by women, and then pick up one of these men and see if you ken what I am getting at.
It's not that all the women (plus) are the same style/type of writing, and it isn't that I could pick them out in a blind taste test, it's something kind of small and ineffable. Many women write in ways that have a very Male Voice, and some men write in a genderless way, too. If I had to distill it all to one single difference, it might be a question mark. The lack of definiteness, not authority or confidence, but a kind of inherent acknowledgement that the view is multiple, and this line, this sentence, can only be a snapshot. Or, maybe the question mark is the sense of searching. One thing, though, even if I cannot define it, it is there.
It's also not that I don't love, love a word castle, built out of strange and wonderous similes and inhabited by lonely princes of darkness and light. No, I love that kind of thing, I really do. I think what I am trying to tell you, is that I was surprised to find a such a definite feeling of difference.
For the counters and statisticians, it has been 64 books by female and female-identifying writers, and 14 by men in 49 weeks- and that makes 88, and well, if I had counted sooner I'd have seen what a silly thing it was to start this calendar year off with a plan to try to read 50 books! Oh, and I am not done with the women, not at all! Check out this list of writers on my shelf still to be read:
Clarice Lispector
Han King
Lillian Hellman
Jenny Ditski
Dianna Athill
Maeve Brennan
Alice Munro
Lillian Faderman
Sara Ahmed
Eudora Welty
Donna Haraway
Eileen Chang
Jen Hatmaker
Samantha Harvey
Kathleen Hanna
Kate Zambreno
Ágota Kristóf
Saidiya Hartman
Tove Ditlevsen
Lydia Lunch
Kate Manne
Barbara Comyns
Cristina Campo
Willa Cather
Janet Frame
Isabel Allende
Fleur Jaeggy
Inger Christensen
Esther Kinsky
Ellen Meloy
Eileen Chang
Agnes Smedley
Cookie Mueller
Claire Messud
Susana Kayson
Shirley Jackson
Margaret Drabble
Jean Rhys
Angela Carter
Anaïs Nin
If you are still wondering why anyone would read like this, well, let me put it this way: These are my sisters, and they have millions of pages of wisdom to give me! Who the hell am I to refuse such a gift?
* Like me, in this case, means a woman who writes. It's also extra dear to my heart and enlivening when the women authors are within ten years or so of my age.
PS If you want to hear a few favorites, well; The Price of Salt, The Quest for Christa T., What Kingdom, Astragal, To Throw Away Unopened, The Last Samurai, The Lady with the Little Fox Fur, The Old Child, All Passion Spent, Checkout 19, The Lover, Small Things Like These, and here is one old dead white guy for you: A Room with a View.
