She wrote it, but look what she wrote about.
Currently Reading:
How to Suppress Women's Writing, by Joanna Russ
"Chapter 4: Pollution of Agency"
Wherein Russ categorizes the way that female artists are dismissed because they are either improper persons, or they wrote about improper subjects.
I was thinking about the books I read in middle school and high school. I read everything assigned, but at this point I certainly can't remember all of the books. Still, here's what I do remember reading, organized by grade and then alphabetically by author:
Middle School
The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury (I think 8th grade English)
Roots, by Alex Haley (I think 8th grade History)
Shabanu, by Suzanne Fisher Staples (I think 7th grade, but can't remember if it was for English or Social Studies; it may have been for both, because it was a joint, two-period class)
Night, by Elie Wiesel (I have no idea)
9th Grade English
The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston
Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare
Night, by Elie Wiesel
10th Grade English
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger
Some other Shakespearean tragedy, I forget which
Dawn, by Elie Wiesel
11th Grade English
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver
AP English (12th Grade)
Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
A Passage to India, by E. M. Forster
Dreamer, by Charles Johnson
Dubliners, by James Joyce
As I said, this list is incomplete; my memory is faulty, alas, and I'm pretty sure even at school-pace we got through more books than that. (Certainly I read more than four novels in all of middle school!) But I think it's near complete for high school at least; my school was on a weird variant of the quarter system, so I was only taking English for four months each grade.
Here're some stats from that list:
Books by Men: 19 1/2 (+1 repeated), or 81.25%
Books by Women: 4 1/2, or 18.75%
Which is not as bad as the break-down Russ talks about finding in anthologies of poetry, where women average 9% authorship. But what I find appalling, in retrospect, is the commentary that surrounded the books, in my mind and my friends' minds. Let me emphasize that these comments do NOT reflect how I feel now:
Middle School
The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury -- Awesome! SF!
Roots, by Alex Haley -- Mind-blowing, to see history brought to life this way! Also, I totally kick ass, 'cause I'm the only person in class who read this giant brick of a book.
Shabanu, by Suzanne Fisher Staples -- What the hell am I doing reading this book in school?!? It's about menstruation. The narrator chronicles her breast growth by comparing them to different fruit. We're reading this because the author went to my school, right?
The Pearl, by John Steinbeck -- Okay, I hated Steinbeck when my dad made me read him, and I still hate him now. But school books are supposed to be boring, right? It's how you know they're serious.
Night, by Elie Wiesel -- Fuck. The Holocaust sucked.
9th Grade English
The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros -- God damn it! I avoided reading this book in 8th grade, why do I have to read it now? Nothing HAPPENS. It's not IMPORTANT. It's just in the syllabus to fill the minority quota, isn't it?
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens -- Hey, this is nowhere near as awful as it was when Dad made me read it. I guess Dickens deserves his place as a classic author.
Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston -- Another minority book. But hey! This is my history! Well, sort of. But the internment wasn't that bad, compared to the shit everybody else had to go through. Like the Holocaust!
Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare -- *Eye roll* Don't you all know that my dad was reading my Shakespeare in my crib?
Night, by Elie Wiesel -- I get it. The Holocaust sucked.
10th Grade English
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens -- Wow, Dickens can REALLY write! Kick ass!
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston -- Another minority book. But at least this one is more interesting than The House on Mango Street. It sure sucked to be black.
A Separate Peace, by John Knowles -- War sucks. But I guess this deserves to be a classic.
Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger -- Okay, I'm too old for this now. I loved it when my dad made me read it three years ago though. Certainly speaks to my generation though; my friends all adore it.
Some other Shakespearean tragedy, I forget which -- At least this one isn't Dying for Love. But still, I've done Shakespeare already.
Dawn, by Elie Wiesel -- This is some depressing ass shit here. Why do I have to read so much about war?
11th Grade English
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald -- Fucking rich people. But still, I get why people teach this, I suppose. I'd probably like it if I had a better teacher.
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding -- Gah. So ugly, and so horrifying, and so kind of fun despite all that. This is MAJOR.
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne -- DUDE. SRS LITERATURE.
The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver -- Another minority book. And it's about parenting. Who cares?
AP English (12th Grade)
Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad -- SRS LITERATURE, SRSLY!
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison -- Minority book. . . OMG THIS IS AWESOME! I guess the minority quota IS good for something. . .
A Passage to India, by E. M. Forster -- Hey! India's cool! And maybe authors actually put all that theme crap in deliberately!
Dreamer, by Charles Johnson -- Another minority book. I guess they can't all be winners.
Dubliners, by James Joyce -- Okay, sometimes SRS LITERATURE is obnoxiously pointless. I guess I must not be *that* smart.
A particular pattern becomes obvious (actually two patterns, but I'm only talking about gender in this post; race will come next): books by men are "serious," while books by women are quota-fillers about seriously not-serious stuff.
And let me emphasize: there was serious vitriol surrounding the books by women that we read. All those books about war were emotionally wearing, but at least they mattered, right? But ask teenagers to read a book that addressed the female experience of puberty, the threat (or act) of rape, the responsibilities people feel to parents and as parents. . . and I'm afraid in our case we thought roughly: How on earth does that stuff matter? I mean, sure, it's stuff people go through. . . but it's not important in any way. Killing people is important stuff! That's how you know the author is saying something about society in general, not just some minority group. (And yes, we knew women were not a minority. We clearly would have been happy to read what women had to say. . . if they had anything important to say.)
A thought pattern straight out of Russ' examples: all the women writers just happened to be writing about improper subjects.
But what I want to talk about in more depth is what happened to the two white female authors, Suzanne Fisher Staples and Barbara Kingsolver. Though we didn't actually know Barbara Kingsolver was white; there wasn't an author bio/photo on the jacket, and there were Native American characters, so we assumed she was Native American of some sort. Thus we miscategorized her, and then dismissed her along with the two and a half non-white authors in a way I'll talk about in my next post.
But Staples was white, and we knew she was white, and that made her one step closer to being the right sort of person to be taken seriously as a writer.
So we attacked her personally.
What sort of person writes about menstruation? Describes breasts in terms of fruit? "Lesbian!" was muttered, though I did not take part in that particular bit of branding. What TRASH it was, and by extension she was! There's no way any teacher would put this on the reading list by choice -- so we developed the conspiracy theory that the school administration insisted it be read because Staples was an alumna. We even did a two-page spread in the school opinion page (yes, I was on my middle school newspaper staff) about the "controversy" surrounding the inclusion of the book in everyone's syllabus. We had to comb our entire class for someone willing to defend it, and it ended up being that guy that everyone knew was a total brown-noser. And even he couldn't convincingly refute the cronyism charge.
I didn't find out until nearly a decade later, when I worked in a bookstore, that Shabanu was a Newberry Honor Book.
The thing I find most galling is that I actually liked Shabanu at first. Being the sort of reader I am, I pretty much always read the assigned book whole, the first night, then had to go back to follow along at the class's slower pace. So I read Shabanu before all my friends, and I remember being. . . amazed and uncomfortable and delighted at seeing my experience reflected in a novel. I even liked The House on Mango Street as I read it during a rehearsal of A Midsummer Night's Dream (yes I was in theater in high school), despite my anticipatory snobbishness based on a two-page excerpt I had read the year before. But when my friends began muttering, began the process of dismissal, my somewhat tentative liking was pushed back.
A surprisingly insightful high school friend once told me that I was so constantly contrary because I wanted to stand out, to be different; this explained my insistance that winter was the best season (though it is) and my resistance to cell phones (though they are obnoxious) and my refusal to apply to Ivy League schools (though I probably wouldn't have gotten in). But even that contrary streak, that overwhelming desire to not think the way everyone else thinks, could not withstand the faux-intellectual disdain that I felt would have been aimed at me had I admitted to liking books by women, about women.
How to Suppress Women's Writing, by Joanna Russ
"Chapter 4: Pollution of Agency"
Wherein Russ categorizes the way that female artists are dismissed because they are either improper persons, or they wrote about improper subjects.
I was thinking about the books I read in middle school and high school. I read everything assigned, but at this point I certainly can't remember all of the books. Still, here's what I do remember reading, organized by grade and then alphabetically by author:
Middle School
The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury (I think 8th grade English)
Roots, by Alex Haley (I think 8th grade History)
Shabanu, by Suzanne Fisher Staples (I think 7th grade, but can't remember if it was for English or Social Studies; it may have been for both, because it was a joint, two-period class)
Night, by Elie Wiesel (I have no idea)
9th Grade English
The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston
Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare
Night, by Elie Wiesel
10th Grade English
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger
Some other Shakespearean tragedy, I forget which
Dawn, by Elie Wiesel
11th Grade English
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver
AP English (12th Grade)
Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
A Passage to India, by E. M. Forster
Dreamer, by Charles Johnson
Dubliners, by James Joyce
As I said, this list is incomplete; my memory is faulty, alas, and I'm pretty sure even at school-pace we got through more books than that. (Certainly I read more than four novels in all of middle school!) But I think it's near complete for high school at least; my school was on a weird variant of the quarter system, so I was only taking English for four months each grade.
Here're some stats from that list:
Books by Men: 19 1/2 (+1 repeated), or 81.25%
Books by Women: 4 1/2, or 18.75%
Which is not as bad as the break-down Russ talks about finding in anthologies of poetry, where women average 9% authorship. But what I find appalling, in retrospect, is the commentary that surrounded the books, in my mind and my friends' minds. Let me emphasize that these comments do NOT reflect how I feel now:
Middle School
The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury -- Awesome! SF!
Roots, by Alex Haley -- Mind-blowing, to see history brought to life this way! Also, I totally kick ass, 'cause I'm the only person in class who read this giant brick of a book.
Shabanu, by Suzanne Fisher Staples -- What the hell am I doing reading this book in school?!? It's about menstruation. The narrator chronicles her breast growth by comparing them to different fruit. We're reading this because the author went to my school, right?
The Pearl, by John Steinbeck -- Okay, I hated Steinbeck when my dad made me read him, and I still hate him now. But school books are supposed to be boring, right? It's how you know they're serious.
Night, by Elie Wiesel -- Fuck. The Holocaust sucked.
9th Grade English
The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros -- God damn it! I avoided reading this book in 8th grade, why do I have to read it now? Nothing HAPPENS. It's not IMPORTANT. It's just in the syllabus to fill the minority quota, isn't it?
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens -- Hey, this is nowhere near as awful as it was when Dad made me read it. I guess Dickens deserves his place as a classic author.
Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston -- Another minority book. But hey! This is my history! Well, sort of. But the internment wasn't that bad, compared to the shit everybody else had to go through. Like the Holocaust!
Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare -- *Eye roll* Don't you all know that my dad was reading my Shakespeare in my crib?
Night, by Elie Wiesel -- I get it. The Holocaust sucked.
10th Grade English
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens -- Wow, Dickens can REALLY write! Kick ass!
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston -- Another minority book. But at least this one is more interesting than The House on Mango Street. It sure sucked to be black.
A Separate Peace, by John Knowles -- War sucks. But I guess this deserves to be a classic.
Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger -- Okay, I'm too old for this now. I loved it when my dad made me read it three years ago though. Certainly speaks to my generation though; my friends all adore it.
Some other Shakespearean tragedy, I forget which -- At least this one isn't Dying for Love. But still, I've done Shakespeare already.
Dawn, by Elie Wiesel -- This is some depressing ass shit here. Why do I have to read so much about war?
11th Grade English
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald -- Fucking rich people. But still, I get why people teach this, I suppose. I'd probably like it if I had a better teacher.
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding -- Gah. So ugly, and so horrifying, and so kind of fun despite all that. This is MAJOR.
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne -- DUDE. SRS LITERATURE.
The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver -- Another minority book. And it's about parenting. Who cares?
AP English (12th Grade)
Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad -- SRS LITERATURE, SRSLY!
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison -- Minority book. . . OMG THIS IS AWESOME! I guess the minority quota IS good for something. . .
A Passage to India, by E. M. Forster -- Hey! India's cool! And maybe authors actually put all that theme crap in deliberately!
Dreamer, by Charles Johnson -- Another minority book. I guess they can't all be winners.
Dubliners, by James Joyce -- Okay, sometimes SRS LITERATURE is obnoxiously pointless. I guess I must not be *that* smart.
A particular pattern becomes obvious (actually two patterns, but I'm only talking about gender in this post; race will come next): books by men are "serious," while books by women are quota-fillers about seriously not-serious stuff.
And let me emphasize: there was serious vitriol surrounding the books by women that we read. All those books about war were emotionally wearing, but at least they mattered, right? But ask teenagers to read a book that addressed the female experience of puberty, the threat (or act) of rape, the responsibilities people feel to parents and as parents. . . and I'm afraid in our case we thought roughly: How on earth does that stuff matter? I mean, sure, it's stuff people go through. . . but it's not important in any way. Killing people is important stuff! That's how you know the author is saying something about society in general, not just some minority group. (And yes, we knew women were not a minority. We clearly would have been happy to read what women had to say. . . if they had anything important to say.)
A thought pattern straight out of Russ' examples: all the women writers just happened to be writing about improper subjects.
But what I want to talk about in more depth is what happened to the two white female authors, Suzanne Fisher Staples and Barbara Kingsolver. Though we didn't actually know Barbara Kingsolver was white; there wasn't an author bio/photo on the jacket, and there were Native American characters, so we assumed she was Native American of some sort. Thus we miscategorized her, and then dismissed her along with the two and a half non-white authors in a way I'll talk about in my next post.
But Staples was white, and we knew she was white, and that made her one step closer to being the right sort of person to be taken seriously as a writer.
So we attacked her personally.
What sort of person writes about menstruation? Describes breasts in terms of fruit? "Lesbian!" was muttered, though I did not take part in that particular bit of branding. What TRASH it was, and by extension she was! There's no way any teacher would put this on the reading list by choice -- so we developed the conspiracy theory that the school administration insisted it be read because Staples was an alumna. We even did a two-page spread in the school opinion page (yes, I was on my middle school newspaper staff) about the "controversy" surrounding the inclusion of the book in everyone's syllabus. We had to comb our entire class for someone willing to defend it, and it ended up being that guy that everyone knew was a total brown-noser. And even he couldn't convincingly refute the cronyism charge.
I didn't find out until nearly a decade later, when I worked in a bookstore, that Shabanu was a Newberry Honor Book.
The thing I find most galling is that I actually liked Shabanu at first. Being the sort of reader I am, I pretty much always read the assigned book whole, the first night, then had to go back to follow along at the class's slower pace. So I read Shabanu before all my friends, and I remember being. . . amazed and uncomfortable and delighted at seeing my experience reflected in a novel. I even liked The House on Mango Street as I read it during a rehearsal of A Midsummer Night's Dream (yes I was in theater in high school), despite my anticipatory snobbishness based on a two-page excerpt I had read the year before. But when my friends began muttering, began the process of dismissal, my somewhat tentative liking was pushed back.
A surprisingly insightful high school friend once told me that I was so constantly contrary because I wanted to stand out, to be different; this explained my insistance that winter was the best season (though it is) and my resistance to cell phones (though they are obnoxious) and my refusal to apply to Ivy League schools (though I probably wouldn't have gotten in). But even that contrary streak, that overwhelming desire to not think the way everyone else thinks, could not withstand the faux-intellectual disdain that I felt would have been aimed at me had I admitted to liking books by women, about women.