by Diane Shipley)
Last month, American author and journalist Lilit Marcus wrote a piece for US culture site Flavorwire about her decision to read only books by women in 2013. A commenter soon came along to tell her that she shouldn't judge authors by gender or any other factor, including height (tall people and women having been equally oppressed, apparently).
When I shared the link on Facebook, one of my friends, herself an author, called it bizarre. But to me it seemed like a reasonable choice in the face of continued literary inequality.
Sure, this year we have a female Booker winner and an all-female Costa shortlist. But men have won the majority of both prizes. What's more, when a woman does bag a major award, there's no guarantee she'll get the credit. When Jennifer Egan won the National Book Critics Circle award in 2010, the LA Times reported it as a loss for Jonathan Franzen, who was also shortlisted.
In fact, books coverage is male-dominated across the board. For the past three years, literary organisation Vida has counted the gender balance in major publications in the UK and US. With few exceptions, the vast majority of book reviews and books reviewed are by men. One of the worst offenders is the London Review of Books, which devotes just 26% of its coverage to books by women. When author Kathryn Heyman asked why this was, the anaemic response from editor Deborah Friedell included the phrase "We're trying". Friedell gave no specific commitment to greater parity.
Female authors are overlooked not only in the media, but also in academia. In September, Canadian writer and professor of literature David Gilmour told Random House Canada's blog that, with the exception of one Virginia Woolf short story, he was only interested in teaching books by men, specifically "serious heterosexual guys". That he felt comfortable saying so suggests it isn't a taboo opinion in his line of work. In fact, Marcus was inspired to undertake her project in part because of the lack of gender balance in her English literature degree. "I had several classes where every single author we read was male, and I still regret not speaking up enough about it," she writes.
The problem isn't that only men have written brilliant books, or that we're made to study them. It's that the female contribution to literature has been – and continues to be – overlooked. Assumed to be universally relatable, male viewpoints – usually white, heterosexual, middle-class male viewpoints – dominate culture, the media, and life in general. The perspectives of women, black people and members of the LGBT community, on the other hand, are too often seen as niche.
Another commenter on Marcus's piece suggested that reading only female authors is sexist. But choosing books by a traditionally marginalised group and recommending them online isn't an attack on men. It's simply a small attempt to redress an imbalance.
However, Marcus acknowledged that her 2013 reading list lacked diversity. She read just six books by black women and fewer by LGBT authors. And, as she writes, just because a book is by a woman, it doesn't automatically mean it is feminist. "'Reading a book by a woman' is about as only-on-one-level feminist as just voting for a political candidate because she happens to be female, no matter how she votes on issues."
While I was initially tempted to follow in Marcus's footsteps, I realised I already unconsciously lean towards female authors, by a ratio of about 10:1. (This year's favourites include Wild by Cheryl Strayed, Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette and Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell.) But her conclusions about her project have made me think I should seek out a wider range of authors from different backgrounds in the new year – not for box-ticking purposes, but to enrich my understanding of the world. Of course, one person's reading habits don't matter much in the scheme of things. But perhaps if more people resolved to do the same, then the homogenous literary landscape (and the outdated industries surrounding it) would start to change.
Would you consider reading only books by women in 2014? And if so, where would you start?
*Blogger's note - I ask you the same question as above. Maybe you would like to comment. As far as I am concerned, I read a lot of good books by woman last year but more by men. I already have my challenges set up and there are ones by men that I really want to read. So I will think about it for 2015. But I would start with the works of A.M. Homes. One of my most favorite female fiction writers.
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