Feel Good Friday: Female Authors

Hey Athenites!

Although I will admit that I haven't been keeping upon my non-academic reading since school started (the much-loved but still mostly unread Rohinton Mistry book on my bedside table is testament to that), I still call myself "a reader."

Books are the best, y'all.

BUT, here's the catch. People of colour and female authors are still often pushed into obscurity, told that their writing is somehow "not universal" (?), are subjected to a hell of a lot of tokenism, or not represented on the"Top Ten" lists, which are hugely influential in kickstarting careers.

The Publisher's Weekly Top Ten of 2009 list, for example, featured absolutely no female authors. (They made some sort of vague pronouncement about this, saying that it "distrubed" them, as if the composition of the Top Ten list was preordained and not a totally subjective set of picks.) While I don't think that authors should be given the Top Ten distinction simply because they are female or a PoC, I do find it odd that the publishing world refuses to cast its net a little further out. Because I am sure that non-white-non-males have written some pretty damn good books too.

The New York Time's Top Ten of 2009, on the other hand, featured a number of female authors, including Kate Walbert's "A Short History of Women," which is all about feminism--just the way I like it. Just as with my badass female musicians post about a month ago, I am 100% sure that, if you enjoy reading, you know at least 2 or 3 excellent female authors. I will kick start the list with some picks of my own, but feel free to add your own in comments:

-Tamora Pierce. I know, I know, she's a fantasy writer whose target audience is the 12-15 range, but C'MON! No mockery. She writes strong, powerful female characters who are compassionate, ambitious, smart, just as capable as any boy, and always save the day!

-J.K. Rowling. Kind of obvious. But you can hardly write a list of female authors without her. I will not, however, be including Stephanie Meyer. Because everyone knows that Harry Potter is better (one of the many reasons why: Hermione is active, intelligent, brave, competent, and not a passive little lump on a log like Bella).

-Petina Gappah. This up and coming Zimbabwean writer has given a powerful and interesting interview in The Guardian about her work and about being labelled: "an African writer."

-Amulya Malladi. Writes fiction about India, America, family, and culture shock. Light reading, but very interesting, funny, and engaging.

-Toni Morrison. I haven't read anything by her, but have heard enough about her, from both family and friends, to convince me that she should be on this (not exhaustive) list.

-Jane Austen. I could not, in good conscience, exclude her from the list. I know that her Regency-era wordiness does not endear her to everyone, but dear god, I love her.

-Stephanie Bolster. Her book of poems, Two Bowls of Milk, is, in my opinion, utterly beautiful. She's also a Canadian who lives and teaches in Montreal.

-Margaret Atwood. I mean, really now. Can't forget Margaret, especially if you're Canadian. (Funny story: Yamina and I once thought that we saw her in the crowd at Ottawa's Tulip Festival and spent ten minutes mustering up the courage to go talk to her, and when we finally did, discovered that the woman we thought was Atwood was actually a tourist from California. I swear, she looked just like her!)

-Maya Angelou. Obvi.

Fill up this list with some great female authors of your own, because I know there are TONS of amazing authors that I've forgotten/don't know about. I would love to add a couple new authors to my holiday wish list this year!

Peace,

Stephanie :)

Mental Health Mondays: Ongoing Influence of Past Comments

At the end of this post I’ve included a list of quotes taken from Charles’ E. Bressler’s book “Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice.” They are a collection that he placed within the surrounding of feminist criticism. When I was reading through these quotes, most stated by well-known authors, it made me wonder how much the statements that individuals made in the past impact women in today’s present-tense.

Do you think that women, particularly women who are establishing a career or passion in writing (as that is who most of the quotes are directed at) continue to feel the affects of these negative words? Or do you think that “what’s past is past”
How much do the statements of the past, even if made hundreds of years ago, continue to affect the state of our mental health today?
What do you think? Take a look at the quotes I’ve listed…maybe focus on one or two. Do you think you are still influenced by these words, or are they a thing of the past that we simply shrug off?

Take a look at some of these....

"Do not let a woman with a sexy rump deceive you with wheedling and coaxing words; she is after your barn. The man who trusts a woman trusts a deceiver."
- Hesoid, poet 8^th century BCE (...p.s. "sexy rump" and "8th century BCE" , yes you read correctly.)

"Plato thanks the gods for two blessings: that he had not been born a slave and that he had not been born a woman."
- Plato (c. 427-c.347 BCE)

"The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules and the other is ruled. Woman “is matter, waiting to be formed by the active male principle…Man consequently plays a major part in reproduction; the woman is merely the passive incubator of his seed.” (People actually BELIEVED this!!!!! It was thought to be scientific fact! Wtf?!??!!)
- Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

"Frailty, thy name is woman."
- Shakespeare (1564-6116)

"Mary Wollstonecraft is a hyena in petticoats”
- Horace Walpole, author of one of the earliest Gothic novels

"Nature intended women to be our slaves...They are our property…what a mad idea to demand equality for women!"
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

"Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even any…recreation"
- Robert Southey, poet laureate (1774-1843)

"Women writers are a “damned mob of scribbling women” who only write anything worth reading if the devil is in them."
- Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

"The woman author does not exist. She is a contradiction in terms. The role of the woman in letters is the same as in manufacturing; she is of use when genius is no longer required."
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865)

"Jane Austen is entirely impossible to read. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Feminism is a political mistake. Feminism is a mistake made by women’s intellect, a mistake which her instinct will recognize."
- Valentine de Saint-Point (1875-1953)

"Educating a woman is like pouring honey over a fine Swiss watch. It stops working."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922- )

With love and hopes of forward-motion,

Nadya

The Vagina Monologues: a review

One of the first things I learned when I became interested in feminism was that there was this incredibly important book I absolutely HAD to read. This was, (you guessed it) The Vagina Monologues.

Seeing as The Vagina Monologues is Feminism 101 required reading, and that Athena is a feminist introduction in many ways, I thought these two pieces of literature were compatible enough to be discussed on the same blog.

The Vagina Monologues was written over the course of several years, with new narratives being continously added-on, and published in 1998. In the introduction, playwright Eve Ensler says that she "never outlined the play or consciously shaped it. [She doesn't] really remember how it began: a conversation with an older woman about her vagina; her saying contemptuous things about her genitals that shocked me and got me thinking about what other women thought about their vaginas."

Ensler says that she never "consciously shaped" TVM, and I think this shows in the reading of the play. The narrative is disjointed and would be much more enjoyable when presented in a play, as if you were talking quietly with a friend. Over the course of TVM, Ensler discusses the experiences of a diversity of women, which is one of the most beautiful things about the piece. A woman whose husband hates her pubic hair; an elderly Jewish woman from Queens with an 'embarrassing' reaction to arousal; an English woman learning to masturbate; a black woman from the Southern U.S.A. who was raped when young; a lesbian ex-lawyer who devotes herself to "making vaginas happy"; the story of a birth; and the piece that I found the most affecting of all, a Bosnian woman who was raped and reflects on what her vagina used to feel like.

Ensler asks questions such as: "if your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?" and hears responses such as: "a beret; silk stockings; an electrical shock device to keep unwanted strangers away." Again, exercises such as this are ones that I feel are better presented on stage. In plain text on a page, these responses seem abstract, random, meaningless, and sometimes annoying ("ok, let's get to the real story...." I often muttered to myself).

The Vagina Monologues emphasizes the one-ness of woman & vagina. "I love vaginas. I love women. I do not see them as seperate things," says the ex-lawyer. At times, to be honest, this overwhelming aura of joy in the vagina seems a bit exaggerated to me. I find myself thinking: "yeah, yeah, yeah. Total BS. It doesn't really seem like a 'wondrous world' to me." But maybe this same frustration is the reason I need to read and experience The Vagina Monologues.

I feel that in order to be truly appreciated, The Vagina Monologues needs to be seen on the stage, with an excited, joyous crowd where 400 people can join you while you chant "vagina" over and over again. But I also feel that TVM is not a stand-alone piece. It is the rare individual, I imagine, who will see TVM and suddenly, magically, feel at peace with her vagina. Sure, begin with The Vagina Monologues. But there is much, much more to feminist literature than this.

Have you seen TVM live? Have you read the book and have an opinion? Please share your thoughts!

-Steph :)