Tag Archive for "literature"

Posts Tagged literature

Publishing’s perpetual problem with women among many other things.

In the wake of the Jonah Lehrer controversy, Roxanne Gay wonders if the publishing industry coddles young male writers and unpacks the fascination with our boy genius narrative:

Lehrer’s success and this current humiliation, how far he had to fall, is a symptom of a much bigger problem, one that is systemic, one that continues to consistently elevate certain kinds of men simply for being a certain kind of man. Jonah Lehrer fits the narrative we want about a boy genius. He is young, attractive and well educated. He can write a good sentence. He can parse complicated science for the masses and make us feel smarter for finally being able to understand the complexities of the human mind. He is ...

In the wake of the Jonah Lehrer controversy, Roxanne Gay wonders if the publishing industry coddles young male writers and unpacks the fascination with our boy genius narrative:

Lehrer’s success and this current humiliation, how far he had ...

By Syreeta McFadden • 11 years ago

Gatsby. What Gatsby?

I don’t know about you, but I’m really feeling this trailer. Baz Lurhmann’s signature penchant for assigning an anachronistic soundscape to re-imagined and vividly colorful fictional histories had me at beat drop from Jay and Ye’s No Church in The Wild. That track is perfect for setting the tone for the uninitiated; a dark and sexy accompaniment to what —we who never lived through the decadent bacchanal— known as the Jazz Age. More than anything, it made me want to re-read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. It was my summer reading from 2002, a quiet book about a society’s unraveling at the height of wealth and opulence, a post war America lumbering its way into modern age. I never had to read The Great Gatsby in ...

By Chloe Angyal • 12 years ago

And the Hey, Boo tickets go to…

Caterina Gironda, who sent in this lovely poem:

I want to tell you that I am woman,
Because I feel my womb swell once a month,
And bleed with the promise to produce a new life.
I want to tell you that I am woman,
Because I recall when my hymen bled like a head wound
with the first thrust of a man.
But I am sorry, Ms. Steinem,
I no longer know what woman and man even means.
I no longer know what brings us together and who we feminist against.
I no longer can shelter us under one umbrella,
Can find a rallying cry to bring us out to march,
Can glance in solidarity at a sister survivor.
For ...

Caterina Gironda, who sent in this lovely poem:

I want to tell you that I am woman,
Because I feel my womb swell once a month,
And bleed with the promise to produce a new life.
I want ...

By Chloe Angyal • 13 years ago

Anne Shirley: red-headed snippet, freckled fictional heroine and stealth feminist

This is the third post in a series about the Anne of Green Gables books by Lucy Maud Montgomery – if you want more Anne, you can have more Anne!

Feminist heroines are hard to find in fiction. It’s pretty rare to open up a modern novel and find a heroine who uses the f-word to describe herself, and of course, that never happens in fiction written before the term “feminist” existed (although I do sometimes imagine Pride and Prejudice’s Lizzie Bennet showing up to the ball at Netherfield wearing a “This is what a feminist looks like t-shirt” over her ball gown. Doesn’t everyone?). So when I’m reading fiction, and particularly old fiction, I have to hunt ...

This is the third post in a series about the Anne of Green Gables books by Lucy Maud Montgomery – if you want more Anne, you can have more Anne!

Feminist heroines are hard to ...

By Chloe Angyal • 13 years ago

Happy belated birthday, Jane Austen!

Yesterday was the 235th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen, creator of my favourite fictional heroine, Lizzie Bennet (Lizzie shares the top spot with Hermione Granger and Anne Shirley). It was my dear friend Anna who informed me of the anniversary, which was appropriate, as it it was Anna who first introduced me to Pride and Prejudice. Anna was a precocious reader and attempted Austen far earlier than I did, and when we were about ten or eleven, she stuck a quotation from the book up on her wall. It read:

No one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, ...