meanders by againleadenskyJune 10 2006, 16:09:52 UTC
hmm. Interesting. (Note for reference - I am a woman, but not a feminist, and I don't read books as a feminist does.)
She didn't really write it (a man did, or even her own "masculine" side).
Out of curiosity, where does Tiptree fit in here? (And 'Andre Norton'?)
She wrote it, but it's not literature. She wrote it, but look what she's writing about! She wrote it, but she only wrote one.
Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird. Still ends up on nearly every "American Classic" list.
She wrote it, but she's alone in the tradition. She wrote it, but....
On a side note, because you do bring up "literature is defined by men" - do you hold that quality in literature is without affect by cultural norms - that what Russian readers find to be "great" would be the same sort of thing that American readers find as great?
Do different things appeal to different cultures and ages, and is it possible that within a culture that different things would appeal more to men than to women? So that even in a gender-neutral society, a survey of women on "greatest lit ever" would yield a list that does not equal the results of a survey of men?
Granted, this isn't in the situation we are in now, but I think this might be useful for identifying what we want to end up with, rather than just saying what we have now is insufficent.
If one female author is mentioned in one generation with another female author, and if one of those authors isn't mentioned the next generation, of course it will look like female authors are writing in a void and out of a tradition, when in fact they were. It's just that no one knows what tradition, because it's not in the textbooks.
When I read this, my reaction, as a writer, is I'm not doing women's writing. I don't read women's writing. I am influenced by writing.
Is it possible that at least some of these women were not writing from a vacumn, but from the 'mainstream lit' - including the lit produced by (mostly) men?
I mean, for example, Butler (Octavia E) was a black woman writing SF. *pause to swear about not having more Butler novels to read, ever* The lit tradition Butler had to draw from was sf by mostly (now) dead white men. And she should be read, I think, in that context, not as a co-writer of the same school as Walker and Morrison.
I'm not trying to say that there has not been an ongoing series of decisions made along the lines of "this story isn't about the sort of things that relate to my life because the writer is not like me" in relation to writing by "people of non-dominant groups", but that I have trouble with the term "oppression".
Re: meanders by againoyceterJune 15 2006, 18:07:09 UTC
Unfortunately, I haven't read enough about either Tiptree or Norton to know how they fit in... most of what I know about them is via hearsay =(.
On a side note, because you do bring up "literature is defined by men" - do you hold that quality in literature is without affect by cultural norms - that what Russian readers find to be "great" would be the same sort of thing that American readers find as great?
No, I think quality in literature and what's defined as literature is greatly affected by cultural norms. I can't say if a list by women in a gender-neutral society would be different from a list by men, though I'd argue that right now, because most of what's considered as "great" literature has been defined by men, it's hard to talk about it without that filter.
I think many women write within a male tradition (aka, the "mainstream" tradition), largely because there is no documentation of a female tradition. It's hard to write in a tradition that you don't know exists.
While Russ' book is intended to be confrontation with its use of the term "suppress," which is why I think she wrote it in the style of a manual, I think she makes a good point. People don't have to deliberately intend to oppress something on an individual level if the societal strictures are already in place to do that for them.
She didn't really write it (a man did, or even her own "masculine" side).
Out of curiosity, where does Tiptree fit in here? (And 'Andre Norton'?)
She wrote it, but it's not literature. She wrote it, but look what she's writing about! She wrote it, but she only wrote one.
Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird. Still ends up on nearly every "American Classic" list.
She wrote it, but she's alone in the tradition. She wrote it, but....
On a side note, because you do bring up "literature is defined by men" - do you hold that quality in literature is without affect by cultural norms - that what Russian readers find to be "great" would be the same sort of thing that American readers find as great?
Do different things appeal to different cultures and ages, and is it possible that within a culture that different things would appeal more to men than to women? So that even in a gender-neutral society, a survey of women on "greatest lit ever" would yield a list that does not equal the results of a survey of men?
Granted, this isn't in the situation we are in now, but I think this might be useful for identifying what we want to end up with, rather than just saying what we have now is insufficent.
If one female author is mentioned in one generation with another female author, and if one of those authors isn't mentioned the next generation, of course it will look like female authors are writing in a void and out of a tradition, when in fact they were. It's just that no one knows what tradition, because it's not in the textbooks.
When I read this, my reaction, as a writer, is I'm not doing women's writing. I don't read women's writing. I am influenced by writing.
Is it possible that at least some of these women were not writing from a vacumn, but from the 'mainstream lit' - including the lit produced by (mostly) men?
I mean, for example, Butler (Octavia E) was a black woman writing SF. *pause to swear about not having more Butler novels to read, ever* The lit tradition Butler had to draw from was sf by mostly (now) dead white men. And she should be read, I think, in that context, not as a co-writer of the same school as Walker and Morrison.
I'm not trying to say that there has not been an ongoing series of decisions made along the lines of "this story isn't about the sort of things that relate to my life because the writer is not like me" in relation to writing by "people of non-dominant groups", but that I have trouble with the term "oppression".
YMMV.
- hg
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On a side note, because you do bring up "literature is defined by men" - do you hold that quality in literature is without affect by cultural norms - that what Russian readers find to be "great" would be the same sort of thing that American readers find as great?
No, I think quality in literature and what's defined as literature is greatly affected by cultural norms. I can't say if a list by women in a gender-neutral society would be different from a list by men, though I'd argue that right now, because most of what's considered as "great" literature has been defined by men, it's hard to talk about it without that filter.
I think many women write within a male tradition (aka, the "mainstream" tradition), largely because there is no documentation of a female tradition. It's hard to write in a tradition that you don't know exists.
While Russ' book is intended to be confrontation with its use of the term "suppress," which is why I think she wrote it in the style of a manual, I think she makes a good point. People don't have to deliberately intend to oppress something on an individual level if the societal strictures are already in place to do that for them.
Reply
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