A Book of One's Own: The Myth of a Top Ten

When asked to come up with a list of the top 10 books for 2009 to counter Publisher's Weekly all male Top Ten Best Books of 2009, our group of over 5000 women writers at She Writes decided not to make a list. What point could be made by making a top 10 female authors list? Virginia Woolf posited that great artists are androgynous. It is hard to believe the claim that PW was dismayed that their list turned up all male. There isn't anything new about a top 10 list -- they're fun -- but can they effect change? A controversial top 10 ... well, that's something.

The She Writes members decided to blog. And in the words of Virginia:

I thought about the organ booming in the chapel and of the shut doors of the library; and I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in; and, thinking of the safety and prosperity of the one sex and to the poverty and insecurity of the other and of the effect of tradition and the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer.

And then I picked a book of my own.

Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape edited by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti is a crucial book and an urgent need. According to the Office for Victims of Crime, every single minute in America, there are 1.3 forcibly rapes of adult women; 78 women raped each hour; and 1,871 women raped every day--more than half a million women raped every year (683,000). Dismantling our rape culture is one of the most important causes of our time. The right-wing and religious groups continue to promote the rape culture by insisting on the "pro-family marital structure, in which sex is exchanged for support and the woman's identity is absorbed into her husband's; reinforce[ing] the idea of women as property." And internationally, rape is increasingly used as a weapon of war and terror.

The book is important on many Escherian -- levels -- addressing the full frontal disclosure of female sexuality and pleasure--it's an exclamation on sluggish pace of women's' equality. The essays include statistics like: "One in thirty-three men will survive sexual assault" and remind us that "73 percent of sexual assaults are committed by someone the victim knows."

Yes Means Yes! moves beyond a powerful indictment of rape culture to declare the right of female sexual pleasure and ownership of our bodies. "Women are not empty vessels to be f-ed or not f-ed; ... and we should feel safe saying no -- even if we've been drinking, even if we've slept with you before, even if we're wearing tight jeans, even if we're naked in bed with you." And I'll add, even if we're married to you.

As a rape survivor, a woman, and violence prevention advocate, it seems natural that I would choose this book. However, I already know that next year, Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks will be in my top ten. It's a strange tale...almost presents as science fiction ... a discovery of true science gone awry ... masterful prose that makes science intriguing for the lay man. I purposefully won't Google anything about it -- I want the journey as led by Skloot whose sentence titles alone send the curious mind racing for answers and imagining the possibilities that will unfold within the pages:

Doctors took her cells without asking. Those cells never died. They launched a medical revolution and a multimillion-dollar industry. More than 20 years later, her children found out. There lives would never be the same.

I did cheat and read a tiny excerpt. To be honest, I almost forgave PW's list when they put Skloot and "The Immortal" on their cover. However, it is unthinkable that female authors didn't deserve a slot in the top ten. Take a look and take your pick. Every woman should have a book of her own.

 

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Comments

[Madeline Wheeler - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks for sharing Fish Head Soup...and for leaving your link. I checked out your blog and love all your nicknames. I'll try to find you on SheWrites to get to know you better! SheWrites has a Mass writers group if you haven't already joined!

[Fish Head Soup]

Thanks for blogging about this, Madeline! I'm also baffled by the PW and National Book Award lists, partly for the very reasons that Stouthouse lists:

"The book industry is a female-dominated industry, as any bookseller can tell you. Michiko Kakutani and Janet Maslin are among the most influential book critics in America. Herta Muller won this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, and Doris Lessing won it in 2007. Two of the biggest selling authors in the world are Stephenie Meyer and J.K. Rowling. Oprah's Book Club is the single most influential force in publishing today."

I don't think anyone is saying women should be added to "Top Ten" lists for the sake of fairness, but rather that it seems highly unlikely that a woman didn't deserve a spot. We are aware that PW's list was of the top 100, and that there were 29 women on it, and yet we are unmoved.

I think there's an idea in our culture that books by men are considered real literature-- important and intellectual-- and books by women, while wildly popular, are only chick lit and not worthy of recognition because only women read them. Unfortunately, it seems that some women are helping to perpetuate this idea.

I blogged about this, too: http://www.patriciacaspers.blogspot.com

[Madeline Wheeler - Huffpost Blogger]

garyd63 thanks for the support. Your points are the reason for my dismay.

[garyd63]

Dismay has a way of curdling at the edges, Madeline. Pleased to hear my remarks came through centered and not snarky.

Perhaps you’re the one to ask about this. A month or so past the Sunday “New York Times Book Review” ran a very positive front page review of Kate Walbert’s wonderful _A Short History of Women_. (The one 2009 book everyone should read and ponder.) And that was that from the NYTBR. I don’t have the data, but isn’t it unusual for the Times to feature a book, print a very strong review, and then not add it for at least a week to their “Editors’ Choice: Recent books of particular interest"?

Just asking.

[Madeline Wheeler - Huffpost Blogger]

StoutHouse thank you for your comments. I am , however, still disappointed in the list.

[StoutHouse]

Exactly. Which is why I wrote, "The PW editors saw that their final list was all male, noted the fact with some concern, and moved forward with renewed faith in their selections."

[garyd63]

"Exactly" doesn't quite cut it. The PW editors only get points for introspection this year if they were inwardly noting how women authors have been and continue to be judged and ranked by preconceptions and standards not applied to male writers. Did it register and stick that they had just perpetuated this practice? If not, their "some concern" is better translated as "blowing off" this deep problem.

[StoutHouse]

The book industry is a female-dominated industry, as any bookseller can tell you. Michiko Kakutani and Janet Maslin are among the most influential book critics in America. Herta Muller won this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, and Doris Lessing won it in 2007. Two of the biggest selling authors in the world are Stephenie Meyer and J.K. Rowling. Oprah's Book Club is the single most influential force in publishing today. And you're upset because no women made PW's annual top ten list?

The PW editors saw that their final list was all male, noted the fact with some concern, and moved forward with renewed faith in their selections. To have inserted a woman in the top ten simply because there was no woman in the top ten would have been misogynistic. In case you didn't notice, several female authors earned a place on their list of the best fiction of 2009, including Yiyun Li, Gillian Flynn, Jane Gardam, Zoë Heller, Nancy Mauro, Ana Menendez, Jayne Anne Phillips, and Sarah Waters. What do you make of that fact?

You write, "It is unthinkable that female authors didn't deserve a slot in the top ten." To which I say, "Um, no, actually it's not."

[garyd63]

And what if next year’s list turned up ten male authors again? And if lists from the past were examined and, lo and behold, men dominated these lists since Shakespeare’s sister’s time, would that elicit a similar shrug, a sniff, a not “unthinkable” retort? Sanity and literary merit is not statistical, but patterns of exclusion, even unconscious and unintentional exclusion, should raise concerns among introspective people. And if judges of literary excellence are not introspective then they should just turn their job over to Judge Posner and forget about it.