Brainstorming
I have a confession to make. I bought a lot of books last week as part of our Day of Action -- 49, to be exact -- to show my support for the women writers who published in 2009, every last one of them ignored in Publishers' Weekly's Top Ten Books of 2009 list. But I haven't read any of them yet. Yes, it's only been a week. But truth be told I haven't read nearly enough lately.
I have a kindergartner and a three-year-old; I started She Writes in June; there are other things. Reading is my great love, and yet I have hardly been doing enough of it. But reading is what I want to do now, in response to the announcement of the 2009 National Book Award winners on Wednesday night -- all of them, as I am sure you are aware by now, white, and all of them male.
Last night I didn't feel like reading. I felt like screaming, and actually contemplated recording a scream and asking all of you to join in. Then I thought, this is boring. This is not useful. This doesn't help me understand it any better, though on some level, and I will stick by this no matter what anyone says, I don't have to read the nominated books to know that it is impossible that books by white men were just "better" than books by everyone else this year, and in so many other years, and that that's all there is to this.
On the other hand, I had the honor of attending the National Book Awards last year with my friend and mentor Marilyn Yalom, and that evening I met Maxine Hong Kingston, who was being recognized for a lifetime of achievement, and saw Mary Jo Bang, who had been part of the judging committee for poetry, and cried when Annette Gordon Reed, a black woman and the author of the superb book "The Hemingses of Monticello," won the award for nonfiction. The late Diane Middlebrook, also my mentor and the guiding spirit of She Writes, judged the nonfiction award in 2004, and I am certain if she were with me, she would tell me to refrain from judging the judges until I'd read the work carefully myself. I am also well aware that two of the five judges for fiction this year, for example, were women (Jennifer Egan and Lydia Millet), and that the nominees were diverse even if the winners were not. Gloria Feldt, in the midst of writing a book about women and power, shared a quote with me recently from Boss Tweed: "I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating." Women writers I greatly admire took part in the nominating and the awarding this year, and the women I know who have done it in the past have done it with integrity, honesty, passion and care.
I'd like to honor their efforts as well. So while I know it's a flawed list, as all lists are, I am going to start by reading the novels nominated in 2009 for the National Book Award. And then I'm going to blog here on She Writes about what I think of them. I am going to ask all of you to join me in this, and I am going to organize discussions on She Writes about what we find. Will you read with me? I plan to start, happily, with Lark And Termite, by Jayne Anne Phillips, and then go, a bit more grudgingly I'll admit, to this year's winner, Let The Great World Spin, by Column McCann. And I will work my way forward from there. If you have read these books already, great. If you haven't, consider reading them in the spirit of fairness, inquiry, and yes, protest. We will be announcing live chats and forums on She Writes to share our responses and our thoughts. More to come on when and where. F
or now, I'll sign off, and do the thing I love to do most in the world: read. And I hope you will, too.
Warm best, and more soon,
Kamy
>I am mystified that most of the book awards go to white men if most books are bought by women.
There was a very interesting piece in the UK Guardian on this, The Female Frontier: The postwar literary landscape has been dominated by the male giants of American letters. So where are all the women? She writes about how much our education in literature influences what we see as great now, and how what we're taught in school is predominantly written by men.
I just got LARK AND TERMITE from the library and can't wait to get started on it. I might not have heard of it if not for this site...so thanks.
Kamy, I love your spirit of "churning butter" with fury, and then stepping into bold action! Love your process here -- a real investigation and study of a MYSTERY. A mystery though that may not be one at all. When you look at the list of Nobel winners of the last 100 years, say, you will be stunned that most winners are either utterly forgotten or bizarrely and grossly undeserving. This is the same old mystery. Fashion and politics of the day govern the choices, just like now -- with a maximum of input from the Old Boys Club. And as we know from our feminist education, women are token members of the club -- influenced, as we all are more or less, by the zeitgeist. And the zeitgeist has one simple name: backlash. Exceptions, as always, prove the rule.
So I admit I am not curious about the male winners of the present lists. But apart from reading book reviews (with X-Ray eyes) I tend to spend hours browsing through books, also bestsellers and list winners at my local, lovely bookstores to confirm what I believe I know already: that I won't waste my precious life time reading bad or mediocre fiction that is the fashion of the day. I find that mediocre fiction usually jumps off the page just by thumbing through a book. I feel there is so much to learn about our world today in terms of solid, exciting, provocative information that the tower of books next to my bed mostly holds non-fiction books and memoirs. But I can tell you, there was a time in my feminist life when I did exactly what you are proposing to do right now: study, in detail, what we are sold as "great", award-worthy, "top ten", "best book" fiction... And it sure was worth it!! :) Renate
Check out the Hudson Bookseller's 2009 list!
Best Fiction: "The Year of the Flood" by Margaret Atwood, "Little Bee" by Chris Cleave, "Spooner" by Pete Dexter, "The Magicians" by Lev Grossman, "The Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver, "Fool" by Christopher Moore, "The Song is You" by Arthur Phillips, "Lark & Termite" by Jayne Anne Phillips, "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett, and "Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.
Oh, man! Here I am trying desperately to reduce my consumption and use the local library, but they don't have any of the newest books out. Guess I'm off to Amazon. BTW, the first one on my list is Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's newest. She is amazing!
I would love there to be chats about books and I would love to read Lark and Termite although I'm trying to decide if my to-read stack, which is already a mile high it seems, can take one more book and do I put L&T at the top or after others? I think that AnnaBeth's comments about how she chooses books makes for an interesting discussion too. I look at the award winners when I see them on the shelf, but I too am drawn to title. But even more than that I am drawn to the cover. For instance, I find it weird (or should that be I find me weird) in that for the longest time many people whose recommendations I usually love kept telling me how great "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime was" yet for the longest time I kept passing it over in the bookstore, the cover didn't draw me in. Don't know why. I have since read it and I liked it, maybe not as much as others but I liked it. . I can, however, pick up a book and be interested in it based first on its cover then it's title, without having ever heard of it before. Kamy, how do you choose books, other than wanting to pick women authors published in 2009? When you are just shopping, for fun?
I love to discuss books with others, so hope to be able to join in. Right now I'm reading Home by Marilynne Robinson but I'll be done by Dec. 1. I'm also about half way through The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers, God knows when I'll be done with that. Anna Beth wrote that it's possible to read a short story collection over the course of months; I find it quite possible to do the same with a novel! (But I do have a habit of reading more than one book at a time.) I read quite a bit but like you, Kamy, not as much as I used to, and would like to push myself a little in this area. Also, I'd like to focus on women authors more than I have for awhile. So I'll happily get hold of a copy of Lark and Termite and look forward to the discussion.
I must say that I have never chosen books for their award winning status, or Oprah recommendation. I guess I use a sort of zen form of decision making. I see a book and it is usually the title that strikes me, and I often have never heard of the author, and I like it that way. It is like I am drawn to read it, or not, that simple. I just love reading, and want to soak it all in as fast as I can,(which is less than ever unfortunately, with work and other things that are supposed to be important distracting me.)
I just finished Lauren Groff's Delicate Edible Birds this morning. I had seen it on some of the lists that were compiled here at she writes. I have been working on it for months, which is possible for a short story collection, and upon finishing the last story, I am very sad that it is over. I plan to write a blog about the whole work to contribute to this effort. I will get to it later. Reading is food to me. Why else have I written all these years but to contribute my part to all the works that have moved me and changed my life in a way nothing else can. To good reading! (and may we all have time to do more of it...ha ha)
Oh my gosh, Kirsten thank you so much for pointing me to that. I corrected my post...thank you everyone for these comments, more soon! My five-year-old is telling me I better turn my laptop off or else.
I find I'm getting tired of the emphasis placed on these top-whatever lists. The best of the best? Says who? Like most book lovers I own piles of books that were bestsellers/prize winners/redefined-the-genre...I'll probably never get to them all. If I do the title or the author may have vanished back into obscurity. But at the same time it kills me that we hand over so much power to PW, the Amazon rankings, etc. It adds an unpleasant element to writing books, buying books, reading books.
For the record I'm about to start HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY by Audrey Niffeneger. Considering that I had to wait on my library's hold list for two months to get it, I'd guess it's doing well. I have no idea where it will fare in the prize wars, but I'm heading into it with delightful anticipation.
Great idea!
I'm choosing Lark & Termite for my book club's next book! I'm very excited that Jayne Anne Phillips made it to the list of nominees this year. And, just a note of correction: Junot Diaz is not a female writer. He is the author of the (fantastic) novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and the story collection Drown. He hails from the Dominican Republic. He is definitely not a woman, however. ;-)
Kamy, I agree with your judgement of this particular situation. Both women and men have written excellent books that have changed the way I see the world. I am mystified that most of the book awards go to white men if most books are bought by women.. Maybe men get more praise and mentoring than women writers do. It seems we need to change the national culture. There are numerically more women than men, but change is hard...
I plan to join you in your reading of the nominated books, but I probably won't be able to start for another month or so, I am reading several other books by men and women that I have to finish. I cannot wait to read, write, and hear about these nominated books. What a great idea!