Response to PW's list
Contributor
Written by
Heather Hewett
November 2009
Contributor
Written by
Heather Hewett
November 2009
Inspired by Kamy Wicoff's call to action, I have been thinking about all the ways in which an inattention to gender and race can result in lists that exclude. As a writer and professor who teaches literature, I make lists all the time. They are not "best books" lists, as I try to make clear to my students, since I choose books for a wide and divergent range of reasons; but they are always excellent books; and they are, in fact, lists. As I make these lists, every semester, I am conscious of the fact that there was a time, quite recently, when some of the writers I love and admire most -- Virginia Woolf, Zora Neale Hurston, Jane Austen, James Baldwin, and Bessie Head come most immediately to mind, though there are many others! -- were not regularly read in many U.S. classrooms. Their works were not read because they were women, or because they were writers of color, or both. Their works were not read because they were overlooked, or misunderstood, or marginalized; they were not read because they sometimes challenged the way that culture defined the category of the "best." The work of scholars to excavate the rich traditions of women writers, and writers of color, has given many contemporary writers an important history to look to -- and important models to consider when forging a writing life of their own. I teach my students to be open to what writers have to teach us. Sometimes what they have to teach us is that perhaps we should rethink our expectations as readers, that even "pure" aesthetic evaluations can be mired in cultural and historical assumptions. So, let's ask: what do we mean by best? Whose best? Best for whom? And maybe then let's focus on creating a richer and deeper conversation that goes beyond a reductive "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" approach to literature.

Let's be friends

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Comments
  • Kimberly Fujioka

    Your insightful comment is so relevant to me. Just a couple days ago I was speaking with a publisher on the phone who was trying to convince me to be an editor on his team; he mentioned that he was interested in me because I am bilingual and can edit in Japanese. He wants to attract more Japanese authors. I looked at their website and was appalled--only a couple books by women ! Those two women authors wrote "romance novels".
    His reply to me about their under representation of women was that they don't recieve good manuscripts from women.

  • Heather Hewett

    Hi Kamy, Yes! To Jean Casella's great list of international women writers (in translation), I would add the following writers (some write in English, some in other languages):

    Mariama Ba
    Nadine Gordimer
    Bessie Head
    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    Tsitsi Dangarembga
    Fatima Mernissi
    Marjane Satrapi
    Yvonne Vera
    Maryse Conde
    Simone Schwarz-Bart
    Marlene Nourbese Philip
    Michelle Cliff
    Lorna Goodison (poet)
    Sarah Kirsch (poet)

    Highly subjective, a bit eclectic, and on the shorter side... but it's a start!

  • Kamy Wicoff Brainstorming

    Such good questions, all. Do you have any international women writers, in particular, you'd like She Writes members to know about? I know you are busy at the conference, but I'd love to get your knowledge on this subject and share it with the whole community.

    Thanks for being here Heather, and for your leadership.

    Warm best,
    Kamy