the shrinking librarian

Apr 14

“I think the question of what makes a strong female character often goes misinterpreted, and instead we get these two-dimensional superwomen, who maybe have one quality that’s played up alot. Like, you know, a catwoman type. Or she plays her sexuality up a lot and it’s seen as power. But they’re not strong characters who happen to be female, they’re completely flat, and are basically cardboard characters. The problem with this is that then people expect women to be that easy to understand and women are mad at themselves for not being that simple. When in actuality, women are complicated. Women are multi-faceted, not because women are crazy, but because people are crazy and women happen to be people.” Tavi Gavinson, Still Figuring It Out on TedxTeen (via nouvel-esprit)

Mar 26

The Lack of Female Road Narratives and Why it Matters

“But there is no female counterpart in our culture to Ishmael or Huck Finn. There is no Dean Moriarty, Sal, or even a Fuckhead. It sounds like a doctoral crisis, but it’s not. As a fifteen-year-old hitchhiker, my survival depended upon other people’s ability to envision a possible future for me. Without a Melvillean or Kerouacian framework, or at least some kind of narrative to spell out a potential beyond death, none of my resourcefulness or curiosity was recognizable, and therefore I was unrecognizable.”

(via 1001bookstoreadbeforeyoudie)

Jan 5

“And that’s the part that disturbs me. The heart of the question implies that if a male character is “strong” that’s to be expected, because boys and men are strong. Normal. Default. Go about your business. But if a female character leads a story, does stuff, has a voice and a purpose and changes her life or others’ lives or starts or stops a war or makes a stand or has power then it’s newsworthy, because that’s not expected, not true to life. Not normal. Not our default assumption about girls. So stop and take note. I know I shouldn’t still be surprised by that question, but I am, every time. When I began writing novels, I assumed I wouldn’t have to prove my right as a woman writer or have to dig out a place for female characters. I thought people who had come before me had already done that, writers like Tamora Pierce, Robin McKinley, Anne McCaffrey, Ursula LeGuin. I felt like I didn’t have the burden of screaming back at the world, “a girl can carry an action story, look, look!” While writing I’d decided that sexism didn’t even exist in my fantasy worlds and I never had to wrestle with it. In my worlds, girls do stuff and nobody thinks two things about it. But it turns out that my books aren’t published in my fantasy worlds. They’re published in this world.” From Shannon Hale: squeetus: “Why do you write strong female characters?” (via sdiaz101)

(via libraryjournal)

Oct 12

“But why? Women today make up more than half of the population, and 80 percent of the fiction market, yet we are still considered a niche. The fact that ladies read is still somehow news, and whenever too many of us pick up one particular book, like 50 Shades of Grey, commentators dissect the contents for clues as to what women (all of them) are thinking. As Jessica Grose detailed in Slate earlier this month, books written by women—like her own debut novel, Sad Desk Salad—are often instantly subjugated as “for-girls-only,” marketed as something lesser-than, and then unfairly scrutinized. “[W]hy, for instance, was a series like Twilight so much more critically derided than Steig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy? Both sets are huge best-sellers, and both are horribly written (unless you like elaborate, repetitive descriptions of sandwiches). But Larsson’s were never painted as embarrassing, pathetic props for bored housewives (or their husbands),” Grose wrote. “Larsson’s weren’t sneered at by the critical class the way that popular books in women specific genres tend to be.” A Brief History of the Beef Against Women Reading (via darienlibrary)

(via libraryjournal)

Sep 16

“

Still, [Junot] Diaz admits that writing in a woman’s voice comes with certain risks. “The one thing about being a dude and writing from a female perspective is that the baseline is, you suck,” he told me. “The baseline is it takes so long for you to work those atrophied muscles—for you to get on parity with what women’s representations of men are. For me, I always want to do better. I wish I had another 10 years to work those muscles so that I can write better women characters. I wring my hands because I know that as a dude, my privilege, my long-term deficiencies work against me in writing women, no matter how hard I try and how talented I am.”

For one of the most lauded writers of his generation to say he needs another decade of practice to write better women is no small thing. But Diaz told me that he’s often appalled by the portrayals of women in celebrated novels.

“I know from my long experience of reading,” he said, “that the women characters that dudes [write] make no fucking sense for the most part. Not only do they make no sense, they’re introduced just for sexual function.”

He gave a high-profile example, though he wouldn’t name names.

“There’s a book that came out recently from a writer I admire enormously. A woman character gets introduced. I said, ‘I promise you, this girl is just here to throw herself at the dude, even though the dude has done nothing, nothing, to merit or warrant a woman throwing herself at him.’ And lo and behold. This brilliant young American writer, that everybody sort of considers the god of American writing, turns around and does exactly that. When I asked my female friends, we all had a little gathering, and I was chatting. I was like, ‘Have you heard of a woman doing this?’ They’re like, ‘Are you fucking nuts?’”

On the other hand, Diaz said, “I think the average woman writes men just exceptionally well.” He cited Anne Enright, Maile Meloy, and Jesmyn Ward as examples of younger writers who write great male characters—and pointed to two of his idols, Jamaica Kincaid and Toni Morrison, as timeless masters. But he also detects an across-the-board improvement even in woman-penned books that are less than high-brow, especially in Young Adult fiction. “Look how well the boys are rendered in The Hunger Games,” he said.

” this quote is complete magic to me (from this article). (via nailure)

(via sharkyteeth)

Jun 4

Break the YA Monopoly: Give Us Female Heroes For Adults

sharkyteeth:

“But what about Ripley? I know, there are examples here and there of female characters who take up that ring or big damn gun or quest and run with it into their own proverbial sunset (or don’t). But they’re still far from the norm in fiction. And, more importantly, there are certain types of characters who are practically never written as women. Captain Jack Sparrow. Ford Prefect. Loki. Jonathan Strange. Gandalf. In fact, that’s a whole other dilemma, but one that still demands investigation.

Lisbeth Salander of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a hero of pop fiction, some might say. But how many women only become heroic figures due to terrible trauma in their lives (that are usually rape and/or physical violence)? Salander is the poster child for this sort of female character-building, the kind that films like Sucker Punch have capitalized on to their own overblown, outrageous conclusions.

It’s not that we should do away with narratives where women overcome abuse at the hands of men; those are important stories in their own right. But that’s not the sort of hero that every woman is looking for. Maybe she’d like a woman who is trying to overcome fear, or indolence, maybe she would like to see someone who is coming to terms with a Great Destiny™. Maybe everyone would like to see that.”

Apr 16

A Mighty Girl

Launched a couple weeks ago, A Mighty Girl bills itself “The world’s largest collection of books and movies for smart, confident, and courageous girls.”

A.J. Walkley: Androgynous Pen Names

“Regardless of the fact that some female authors tend to write on subjects that might be more interesting to female readers, there are plenty of others who write books that should be readily accepted by the masses. It is interesting to ponder whether Harry Potter would have received the same fanfare if J.K. Rowling had published as Joanne Rowling instead.

Before you get to the readers, however, there are publishers to consider as well. Some women feel the need to submit manuscripts under androgynous or male-seeming pen names simply to get their work read and potentially accepted for publication.”

(via LISNews)

Apr 13

Chloe Schama: In Defense Of Girly Book Covers | The New Republic

“But I didn’t mind. I was happy that my editor altered the cover of my book, advertising it more transparently as a woman’s story. Itopened doors for me, gaining me readers I probably would not have found otherwise. It struck me as smart marketing, if not a declaration of the major ‘event’ that an all-text cover apparently spells. A work doesn’t depreciate when it’s placed in a certain genre. In some instances, I think, it can even be elevated. And ultimately, it stands or falls on the merits of what’s inside. Wolitzer talks about the confining effects that such cover art implies, but there’s an alternate effect as well, one that is basic and benign: It helps readers find what they might like. And in helping readers, it helps writers.”

(via LISNews)

Apr 7

“

The problem that needs to be fixed is not kick all the girls out of YA, it’s teach boys that stories featuring female protagonists or written by female authors also apply to them. Boys fall in love. Boys want to be important. Boys have hopes and fears and dreams and ambitions. What boys also have is a sexist society in which they are belittled for “liking girl stuff.” Male is neutral, female is specific.

I heard someone mention that Sarah Rees Brennan’s THE DEMON’S LEXICON would be great for boys, but they’d never read it with that cover. Friends, then the problem is NOT with the book. It’s with the society that’s raising that boy. It’s with the community who inculcated that boy with the idea that he can’t read a book with an attractive guy on the cover.

Here’s how we solve the OMG SO MANY GIRLS IN YA problem: quit treating women like secondary appendages. Quit treating women’s art like it’s a niche, novelty creation only for girls. Quit teaching boys to fear the feminine, quit insisting that it’s a hardship for men to have to relate to anything that doesn’t specifically cater to them.

Because if I can watch Raiders of the Lost Ark and want to grow up to be an archaeologist, there’s no reason at all that a boy shouldn’t be able to read THE DEMON’S LEXICON with its cover on. My friends, sexism doesn’t just hurt women, and our young men’s abysmal rate of attraction to literacy is the proof of it.

”

The Problem is Not the Books by Saundra Mitchell (via albinwonderland)

THIS. All of THIS.

(via kayleemb)

(via flameintobeing)