Awesome awesomeness on gender and reading from writer Maureen Johnson

When I was in college, I remember hearing the story of Dorothy Parker typing out the words, “Please god, let me write like a man.” Even if I didn’t know my own reading bias, I understood at once, instinctively. It was the way to legitimacy. Men wrote of Big Things that Mattered. Sure, some of them were endlessly introspective. Yes, the big things that mattered were often penises. Also, sex. Also sex with penises. Also, girls, and how difficult and incomprehensible and unattainable we are for some sex with penises. It was like the penis was literally the magical eleventh finger that allowed you to write, and if I could just GROW ONE SOMEHOW, or imagine it into being, I would gain the abilities I so desired.

I've never read any Maureen Johnson, but I like her style. Go read her article. For the record I did the bookshelf test. I will maintain that I received seriously skewed results since we're post-Big Move, having both gotten rid of a lot of books while conscientiously not purchasing more, and using the library a ton more than previous, but in the Books I Read For School category I have:

Aethered II: King of the English by Ryan Lavelle
Life in the English Country House by Marc Girouard

(This is not including the whole shelf of school library books currently in the house for research purposes, ones like Pauline Stafford's Unification and Conquest and the Royal Historical Society Transactions, sixth series, volume four, featuring a mix of authors but yes, another by Prof. Stafford.)

In the Books That I Consider Favorites, there are:

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

It's a strange little exercise, but definitely one that makes you think about reading across the intended gender lines.

I think the author made some excellent points. When I was young, you couldn't have dragged me to Hatchet or anything by Jack London. The Chronicles of Prydain had no appeal. Neither did any C.S. Lewis. But I read whatever Zilpha Keatley Snyder I could get my hands on, as well as anything by John Bellairs. I had a Judy Blume box set that got worn out. Those young adult sort-of-romance novels featuring fiesty heroines in historical settings, the ones whose titles were always the heroine's name, were huge hits with me. I still credit my base knowledge for the Battle of New Orleans to one of those books. And if the book was anywhere from vaguely creepy to full-bore fright-fest, I probably tried to get a hold of it and read it. (My mother recently told me that she was pretty certain she was going to hell for letting me read The Exorcist when I was about twelve. I think I turned out ok.) I read what played to my interest. I read what appealed to me. Boys in woods with dogs were not my thing.

There was also a great set of biographies that were published for young readers. I didn't own any of these, but would comb the library for them and repeatedly check out the ones that were about women. I know more about Lucretia Mott and Maria Mitchell than the average person thanks to this. But I never checked out any of the biographies about men. I remember my father asking me once, I think more confused than concerned, why I never read the mens' biographies. I just said I didn't think they were interesting. And they weren't to me. Looking back, I can understand a bit more now that there was nothing for me to identify with hearing stories of privileged men, just the same as my lack of concern for boys in woods with dogs.

High school reading really was a parade of men authors, if not manly men books. Julius Caesar, Great Expectations, The Great Gatsby, The Plague, Lord of the Flies, The Odyssey, Romeo and Juliet, The Jungle (hated), The Scarlet Letter. The only female author I can remember was Harper Lee, because what high schooler doesn't have To Kill a Mockingbird hoisted upon them at some point? College may not have been much better. Bear in mind most of these books come from World Cultures classes as well as my one British lit class, early English literature, but the college years had us with Candide, Gulliver's Travels, The Catcher in the Rye, Slaughterhouse Five, Things Fall Apart, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. Even the most literary-based world cultures class, taught very well by an eccentric lit professor, included just one female-authored and female-based novel, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.

I'm not trying to make too much of a point here. I do think, in reflection, that my assigned literary reading for school was definitely based in male authors, but that situation was seen more in my later education, high school and undergrad years, rather than the earlier, formative young adult-type years. Most of my reading at that age came from without school, since I was an avid-bordering-on-obsessive reader. Ever since that young age, I've always been a proponent of reading what appeals to you, whatever it may be. I still haven't read Jack London. I still do read romances, biographies, and other good and great literature. I also feel very fortunate that I've always been very up front about my reading and have never been called a sissy or whatever for being an avid reader. But it also occurs to me that even at a young age, I was unconsciously realizing, via books, tv, and movies, that we still live in a man's world, and I was doing my best to reject masculine-centric concepts in my books.

Commenter number 103 on this article really broke my heart. You know why? I was that girl when I was a kid too.