In the last few months, I’ve been invited to three indie lit readings, two of which I was able to attend.* All-told, the three readings (all of which featured writers whose work I like and who are, undeniably, really good people) presented twelve men and two women. We know that women’s work is treated very differently than men’s across the boards of literary publishing. (If you’re not familiar with the numbers and notions, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts is doing an extraordinary job documenting the situation.) But I feel the absence most acutely on the independent publishing scene, a scene toward which I’ve grown to feel ambivalent, at times, in the midst of its great appreciation of the lives of young men; I’ve grown uncomfortable, in the most physical sense of the word.
I don’t mean to imply that the readings themselves were less than excellent: Of the eight men I was able to see reading, all presented engaging, smart, interesting work. More than half of them read baldly sexual and/or violent work, material that requires serious nerve to share with a room full of strangers. A few of my writer friends compare the indie lit scene to the indie music scene; it’s a more apt comparison than they may realize. (Remember, it was the woman-hostile independent/punk scene in the 80s and 90s that spawned Riot Grrrl.) This thing does, in fact, look like that thing. And it’s a problem.
Day in and day out, good independent journals full of excellent work release new issues authored at a three- or four-to-one rate by men. Readings all over the country are hosted with similar breakdowns. The editors of these journals and hosts of these events—both men and women—appear, in many cases, to be entirely unaware of the imbalance. They believe that they’re simply presenting the work that they love, and that work happens to be authored by a certain group of individuals, and those individuals happen to be male.
This has always seemed to me to be a gross oversimplification. If it turns out that all the work you like is by and about men, you are failing to value the voices and stories of women, and in the process of doing so, you are failing to value the lives of women. This should be obvious, but it turns out not to be: if it was, we’d be telling boys in high school to shut up and read Jane Eyre already, while the girls read Moby Dick and The Sun Also Rises and Slaughterhouse Five without complaint. Instead, we coddle boys who don’t want to read work by and about women, teaching them from a very early age that women’s stories, and therefore women’s lives, don’t merit their attention.
I also don’t mean to imply that a celebration of men’s lives is inherently problematic. That celebration is an incredibly important and valuable part of the American literary tradition. But where are the ladies?
Instead of seeking something close to gender parity in the literature reviewed in major outlets, we settle for only 20% of reviews discussing work by women. Instead of politely asking the very good people who devote their own money and time to publish independent journals and present independent readings the question with which I’ve titled this post, I politely join the audiences, have a cocktail, congratulate everyone, and spend the next two days burning a slow fuse of anger and shame—anger and shame at my own unwillingness to be so uncool as to speak up.
These concerns are at the heart of Engine Books’ promise that at least half its titles will be woman-authored. I don’t think it does anyone any good to start a press exclusively for women—it just gives everyone another room full of ladies to ignore—and even if I did, I’m not the editor to start that press. I love the work of men and women equally. That is, in fact, the whole point. If our literature only represents the experiences of just under half of our population, it doesn’t honor our humanity.
But something happened this week when I opened queries for the press. A thrilling thing: in the first 48 hours I received a load of excellent queries. And a disappointing thing: Less than 20% of those queries were from women. As the week progressed, a bit more balance introduced itself: I close Engine Books’ first week of operations with 20 manuscript queries, six of which are from women. So we’re up to 30%.
Perhaps this disparity is a function of my social and professional connections; perhaps those who heard about the press this week are overwhelmingly male. Or perhaps, as Lorrie Moore was reported to have said at a recent appearance, (roughly paraphrased) more women would see their bylines in The New Yorker if more women had the nerve to submit to The New Yorker. Or even to Engine Books?
I hope with every fiber of my being that she’s wrong.
But I’m terrified that it will be until we stop saying that writing about what’s termed, in reviews of and conversations about books by women, “domestic” makes male writers great and women writers unpublishable, unpresentable. (See Percival Everett’s wonderful essay on Freedom at VIDA.)
It’s hard to say these things out loud. They’re hard to say because they’re hard to hear. The usual response is either dismissive (“There are books by women everywhere. What are you complaining about?”), defensive (“You just hate men/writing by men/stories about men.”), or downright deplorable (“Shut up, you shrew.”). I learned, over many years, to stop saying them. Or rather, I unlearned what I knew: That they have to be said. That when they go unsaid, the world backslides into the kind of cultural segregation that’s taken over much of indie publishing.
It’s also hard to say them because I’m endlessly grateful for 100% of the writers who’ve trusted me to consider their work. Even those I won’t be able to publish have given me the great gift of a glimpse into their writing lives. All 20 writers have been flawlessly professional, engaging, smart, and clearly talented. But I would give a lot to have eight more women in their midst, all of their powerful, eloquent fiction standing shoulder-to-shoulder in my inbox.
*The one I missed conflicted with the Indiana Authors Award dinner, which I was attending at the invitation of Sunnyoutside Press, finalist Micah Ling’s publisher. Micah was one of two women among the six finalists in the evening’s two categories, plus a winner in a pre-announced category, a man. (The mayor came and talked about the importance of reading. Just that week he’d cut $1.4 million from the library’s funds while the city is giving the local NBA franchise $1.6 million for an unnecessary scoreboard. But that’s a sigh for another day.)
UPDATE: After a second week, I’m now up to almost 42% queries from ladies, just over 58% from men. Obviously, there’s no possibility of making any kind of sense of this, after talking about it publicly, except to say that, if you read this and decided to send work, regardless of your sex, thank you!
enjoyed this post, Victoria…. sharp, fair–and ultimately provocative, like much of your essaying….
i have no answers but i can’t resist saying that i’m proud of how we rate at Wigleaf in terms of sex/gender balance. there’s never been a policy–explicit or otherwise–to give stories written by women special consideration, but by my estimate our contributors were around 60% women last year…. is it an accident? probably. so i shouldn’t be proud of it maybe. but i do suspect this: when people see evidence of openness, they might respond by submitting…..
Where are the women, indeed. As you no doubt know, our students, even the brightest of them (despite their gender), cannot fail to see the beauty of _Slaughterhouse-Five_ while openly scorning work by Jane Austen, Kate Chopin, or the Bronte sisters. Look, too, at the way popular films featuring women’s issues and humor are treated by the critics. Compare, for example, Anthony Lane’s treatment of action films with “chick flicks” like _Mama Mia_. Regardless, of the medium or genre (and there may be exceptions I haven’t considered here), it appears that women’s issues and experiences are considered trivial compared to men’s. Years ago, an author I know had her work rejected by an editor who told her she was unlikely to publish any literary short story that included children as major characters.
Thank you for addressing this issue.
An excellent and much-needed perspective on this issue. I’ve been struggling to put my finger on it for a while now and think this point might come closest to what I’ve been feeling: “A few of my writer friends compare the indie lit scene to the indie music scene; it’s a more apt comparison than they may realize. (Remember, it was the woman-hostile independent/punk scene in the 80s and 90s that spawned Riot Grrrl.) This thing does, in fact, look like that thing. And it’s a problem.” I don’t have any answers, but, coming of age in the 80s and listening to my punk-women idols, I assumed the future would be much brasher, brassier, bolder, chock-full of brash, bold, and brassy women in the arts, music, politics, life. Not that we don’t have our rock stars, but shouldn’t there be more than this?? Kick down that door and take no prisoners was the message I heard. Now many of my female students tell me that feminism is dead, unnecessary, too strident. No need for door-kicking, they’d argue. Which leaves us where exactly? Knock politely and hope we’re let in?
Scott, I think its accidental nature is exactly why you should be proud of it. Clearly Wigleaf isn’t enacting these hidden biases against the work and lives of women. I don’t know if quotas are even helpful, though I’ll be honoring one at the press. But not having one, or even an intentional balance, and being balanced anyway is definitely an accomplishment.
Beth and Julie,
I, too, had such high hopes. In college in the early 90’s, stomping around in my shit-kicker boots, I though we were taking over the world, or at least our stake in it, our half. But I think, in most areas, commerce wins every time. Women will still buy & read books by men, but most men don’t buy & read books by women.
I told a few people lately that the best way to cure this may be for men to write seriously and thoughtfully about the lives of women, and I still think maybe this is true. But it means we have to endure stuff like Freedom being treated like the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL when it would be brushed aside if penned by a woman. Also, it would take generations of this to infiltrate the larger body of contemporary literature with a sense of the value of female stories and female lives. It’s like flying the damn airplane into the hangar to get the kid to eat the meatloaf, but then, to quote Reality Bites, “it was never meatloaf,” and it shouldn’t have to be treated as such.
Dear A Woman:
I suppose I should have said so in some kind of comment FAQ, but anonymity can be really unhelpful in these discussions.
As for the content of your comment, Engine Books publishes books, not stories. And no, I don’t. I’ve already received more wonderful submissions from both sexes than my publication mission would support in any given year, and that’s just the first week. And as I made clear in my post, well, I’ll just quote from above: “I don’t think it does anyone any good to start a press exclusively for women—it just gives everyone another room full of ladies to ignore—and even if I did, I’m not the editor to start that press.” Is that in some way vague or unclear?
It makes me sad that you’re not seeing any variety from women writers. I suspect you aren’t looking hard enough, because it’s certainly there. Are you asserting a sameness among all women writers? Because that strikes me as plain ignorant. Perhaps that ignorance stems from the fact that Target only stocks books that honor a certain sameness, but that speaks directly to the post’s main point and has exactly nothing to do with indie publishing.
My opinion is that literary criticism is itself still male biased. I don’t mean that if a man writes it, then it is more acceptable. But the ways in which women experience the world and the way that they transfer that into language is generally different from how men do it. Modern literary criticism and how literature is taught in schools still reflects a bias toward a male approach to writing – writing that embodies how the male physique and mind channel energies. These energies determine sentence structure, word choice, and plot choice (hence the chick flicks). Some marvelous writers (poets in this example) like Lowell, Plath, and Sexton are considered “confessional.” Many people see that as not as valid as the more objective style that someone like Robert Bly exemplifies. Women tend more toward the personal, and (I believe) toward subtlety. Take a painter like Frida Kahlo. She painted a tremendous number of self-portraits. These are not seen as valid as war scenes, for instance, or the poitical murals of her husband/ex-husband Diego Rivera.
In Gilligan’s “A Different Voice.” she explores early development of boys and girls as a way to understand how the two can approach similar situations from vastly different positions. In my mind, it is not that one way is better than the other. However, the male voice has the weight of literary criticism and history on its side.
A quick housekeeping note: The comment from A Woman, to which I responded above, has been unapproved because she provided an obviously fake and aggressive e-mail address. As WordPress says, your email will never be shared. But if it’s obnoxiously fake, there’s no reason for me to honor your participation in the conversation.
Barbara, your thoughts above are nuanced and incredibly smart–thank you! I’ve always resisted Gilligan, because her framework strikes me as simplistic, but I think most of our cultural responses to contemporary literature are kind of simplistic, as well. This might well be an area where Gilligan is totally applicable and refreshing.
This is such a hard subject, simply because there seem to be so many variables and angles from which to view, and I’ve been trying to be conscious of it myself going forward with Vouched, both the titles on my table, and the authors I have read at Presents. I did have a strange pit in my belly about the last Presents being a boys’ club line-up, and intend to rememdy that in March. But, I’m now seeing the same problem you are in your submissions: I’ve now been approached by 8 male authors about reading, and only 1 female. To balance the scale a bit more, I am going to have to solicit female writers, which I have no problem doing, and fully intend to. It just bums me out that that’s the case–the hard facts, the numbers, &c. It just places responsibility on those trying to showcase talent (editors, reading series MCs, &c.) to seek out where they feel there is a lack.
The numbers regarding the titles on my table are much more attributed to me: of the 20-25 titles on my table, only 3 of them are written by women. I actually hadn’t even noticed that until I became really conscious of the all-male line up for the last Vouched Presents, and I got to thinking about the distribution in the titles I’m selling from the table. Since then, I’ve made a conscious effort to look into more titles by women, hoping to find the titles that blow my head off so I can get them on the table and have a better balance there. I’m glad Micah is such a dang good poet, because I plan to get one of her books on the table at least, and so on.
For what it’s worth, I know you weren’t making this post in any part as an indictment of Presents, but I thought you’d appreciate knowing that I had recognized the lack, that I’m seeking to find a better balance, that I am excited for what you’re doing with Engine.
Thanks for these thoughts, Christopher. I really do think this is true: People my age and younger have been more or less explicitly trained not to notice in equality and disparity. We’re supposed to pretend that our culture is color-blind and gender-blind, but behind that blindness we nurture our own prejudices without examination. I will admit that I wished it had occurred to you to have a woman read for Andy Devine, but I know that unless the drum gets beaten all the time, awareness is just not at the forefront of our lives.
And that’s exactly what happens: once you’ve accidentally been seen as a less-than-lady-friendly space, the ladies just don’t come in without being explicitly invited. It’s the ladies’ responsibility, too, to push open doors, even if we don’t feel welcome. But that’s hard on our souls, so we don’t do it as often as we should.
(I recognize and apologize for the ableism implied in the use of the word “blind.” I’m trying to consider the language of the anti-feminists here, and give it some actual thought, and that makes me sound like an asshole.)
I’m happy to see your commitment to publishing women and comments about VIDA. I’ve written about this several times on my blog as well. I learned about you when I discovered you’ll be publishing Patricia Henley’s story collection and had to run and check you out as I love her work and she’s one of my mentors. Looks like a very exciting press! Sybil