Women in Translation Month: 100 Best WIT

It’s the first of August and that means it’s Women in Translation month. To find out more about it, head to founder Meytal’s blog and follow the #WITMonth and #womenintranslation hashtags on social media. Throughout the month I’ll be sharing reviews of the books I’ve been reading by women that have been translated into English. To start the month though, I’m posting my contribution to #100BestWIT. The rules are on the photo above so if you haven’t already, add yours to the list. Mine are in alphabetical order because creating a top ten in order of favourites was too difficult. If you click on the title, it will take you to my review of the book.

Vernon Subutex 1 – Virginie Despentes (tr. Frank Wynne)

Vernon Subutex once ran a legendary record shop in Paris. When his benefactor and musician friend, Alex Bleach, dies, Vernon is left homeless. Subutex moves between the houses and apartments of friends and acquaintances before ending up on the streets. Despentes gives a searing commentary on Western society’s views of a range of hot topics: social media, hijabs, the rich, sex workers and a whole lot more. Despentes is a fierce and unflinching writer.
[No link for this one as I’ve reposted the short review I wrote when this was a book of the year in 2017.]

Waking Lions – Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (tr. Sondra Silverston)

Doctor Etian Green, driving his SUV along a difficult track at the end of a nineteen-hour shift, hits and kills a man. Etian thinks no one’s seen him and leaves, but the following morning the dead man’s wife, Sirkit, arrives at Etian’s front door holding Eitan’s wallet. Sirkit makes a deal with him. Then Eitan’s wife, senior detective in the Israeli police force, is assigned to the murder case. A moral dilemma. Flawed humans who are neither wholly good nor bad. A gripping read.

Human Acts – Han Kang (tr. Deborah Smith)

The story of the aftermath of the student uprising and massacre in Gwangju, South Korea in 1980. Told by seven narrators, including the soul of Jeong-dae, each reveals the events of the uprising, its brutal suppression and the violence of the state. A disturbing and powerful novel.

The Impossible Fairytale – Han Yujoo (tr. Janet Hong)

A story in two halves. In the first half, is the tale of two twelve-year-old children: Mia, the child with two fathers, and The Child. Mia is privileged and spoiled. The Child lives in poverty and is abused and neglected. In the second half of the book the narrator is revealed to be the Child who is now both the writer writing the novel and a character in the novel. Han explores what fiction is and, in doing so, questions how we fictionalise our own lives.

Die, My Love – Ariana Harwicz (tr. Sarah Moses & Carolina Orloff)

The unnamed narrator of Die, My Love is an immigrant, a wife, a mother of a sixth-month-old son. She is also a woman full of rage and lust and love and hate. The book chronicles her increasingly desperate and often violent attempts to reconcile herself with the version of womanhood patriarchal society expects of her. An angry, passionate and powerful exploration of a woman on the edge.

Strange Weather in Tokyo – Hiromi Kawakami (tr. Allison Markin Powell)

Tsukiko Omachi and the man she calls Sensei meet regularly – without arrangement – at a bar near the train station. She’s 37 and jaded; he’s in his late 60s, a retired widower. He considers her to be unladylike; she thinks he’s old-fashioned. But they drink together; they go on walks together; he recites to her fragments of the poetry he swears he taught her at school. A beautiful, mostly gentle book about a slow-burning relationship.

The Notebook – Agota Kristof (tr. Alan Sheridan)

Twin brothers are taken by their mother to live with their grandmother while the war rages. Grandmother makes them do chores to earn their food and shelter; there’s nothing to wash with, and she hits, pulls and grabs them. The boys begin to do exercises to toughen their bodies and their minds. They also set each other composition exercises which they write in the notebook and which have to be true. Brutal, highly stylised and gripping.

The House in Smyrna – Tatiana Salem Levy (tr. Alison Entrekin)

A novel told in four strands. The first, the narrator’s journey to Turkey to her grandfather’s house. The second, the grandfather’s journey to Portugal. The third, the narrator’s relationship with her, now deceased, mother. The fourth, a passionate love affair between the narrator and an unnamed man. A story about exile in various forms and the impact that can have.

Faces in the Crowd – Valeria Luiselli (tr. Christina MacSweeney)

An unnamed female narrator writes a book about the lesser known Mexican poet Gilberto Owen. She frames this with comments about her current family life and the life she had before she married. Her family think there is a ghost in their house and the narrator spends time ‘with Gilberto Owen’s ghost’ who eventually tries to take over the narration. Clever and engaging.

The Mussel Feast – Birgit Vanderbeke (tr. Jamie Bulloch)

A mother and her teenage children wait for their husband and father to return from a business trip. The mother has prepared a feast of mussels, but it soon becomes clear that something isn’t right. A tale of an abusive father, narrated by his daughter, this has a tense atmosphere throughout.
[Review by Jacqui who guest-posted some IFFP reviews on my blog before she began her own excellent blog.]

Books of the Year 2016, Part One

As usual I’m dividing my Books of the Year into two parts. Part Two, coming tomorrow will be fiction published in 2016. Part One is fiction published pre-2016 and 2016 non-fiction. If you click on the pictures of the books they will take you to my full review.

Waking Lions – Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (translated by Sondra Silverston)

Doctor Etian Green finishes a nineteen hour shift at Soroka Hospital, six of which he spent helping to stabilise road traffic accident victims. In the time it takes for him to walk from the hospital ward to his car, he goes from exhausted to adrenaline-fueled. He decides to drive to ‘a particularly challenging SUV track’ he’s read about. Sprinting along, he hits a man and leaves him for dead. The next morning, Sirkit, the man’s wife, appears at his door along with Etian’s wallet which he dropped at the scene. Sirkit offers him a deal but it’s one that will have serious consequences for his home life and his job. Everything in Waking Lions is grey area. Sharp, thoughtful and challenging.

Push – Sapphire

Claireece Precious Jones – Precious to her friends, Claireece to ‘mutherfuckers I hate’ – 16-years-old, five feet nine or ten, two hundred pounds, is pregnant for the second time to her father. Suspended from school, she goes to Each One Teach One, located on the nineteenth floor of a local hotel. Precious tells the story of her time attending the group, in which she learns to read and write, intertwined with that of her family situation. Push could be an unbearable read: every time you think it couldn’t get any darker, it does, but it’s balanced by Precious’ determination and Sapphire’s rendering of Precious’ voice which is pitch perfect and authentic.

One Night, Markovitch – Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (translated by Sondra Silverston)

Yaacov Markovitch and Zeev Feinberg go on the run after Feinberg is caught having sex with the wife of Avraham Mandelbaum, the slaughterer. The deputy commander of the Irgun, a friend of Feinberg’s, sends the pair to Europe where they will marry ‘a Jewish girl’ and bring them back to Palestine, thus circumventing the closed gates of Europe. Once the men return, they will divorce and the women will be free to remain. But Markovitch refuses to divorce his wife, the stunning but cold, Bella Zeigerman. The backbone of the story is that of three women: Bella; Feinberg’s wife, Sonya, and Mandelbaum’s wife, Rachel. Gundar-Goshen uses them to explore the ups-and-downs of marriage, parenthood, war, death …basically all of life is here.

The Glorious Heresies – Lisa McInerney

Maureen kills Robbie O’Donovan when she finds him in her house. As the mother of Cork’s biggest gangster, Jimmy Phelan, she doesn’t need to worry about clearing up her mess. But the mess is bigger than a body and some blood: Robbie’s girlfriend, Georgie, is looking for him and she has problems of her own; Tara Duane, Georgie’s confidant is keen to know everyone’s business and she lives next door to Jimmy’s alcoholic clearer-upper, Tony Cusak. And then there’s Cusak’s son, fifteen-year-old Ryan, who loses his virginity, starts his first long term relationship and begins to step out from the shadow of his alcoholic, violent, widowed father. A bloody entertaining read.

Ruby – Cynthia Bond

Ruby’s returned to Liberty Township, Texas from New York City. Everyone knows she’s mad: she pees in the street and has sex with many of the men in Liberty, but Ruby’s caught the attention of one man who wants to treat her differently; Ephram Jennings is planning to bring Ruby one of his sister’s white lay angel cakes. Ruby’s tortured by the ghosts which have attached themselves to her. As she gives herself to them, we learn about her childhood and the long-standing relationship she has with Jennings’ family. Bleak but threaded with hope and beautiful writing.

 

The Devil in the Marshalsea – Antonia Hodgson

Tom Hawkins, eldest son of a Suffolk gentleman, Oxford graduate, set to join the clergy and inherit his father’s position, finds himself in the Marshalsea for unpaid rent and other debts. He arrives after the widow of Captain Roberts has taken up residence in the debtor’s  prison after Robert’s murder made to look like suicide. Hawkins gets drawn into solving the murder as he deals with his roommate, the despised Samuel Fleet, and the prison’s regime, divided by rich and poor. Intelligent, packed with period detail and plot, bawdy, has a social conscience and some hilarious lines. Entertaining.

 
Pleasantville – Attica Locke

Pleasantville is a neighbourhood in Houston, Texas, built in 1949 “specifically for Negro families of means and class”. As a middle class, politically aware area, it also holds political power, a power which has become legendary over four decades. The story takes place in 1996 in the run-up to Houston’s mayoral election, the results of which might bring Alex Hathorne to office as the city’s first black mayor. As the novel begins the situation is quickly complicated by two events: the first is the abduction of a teenage girl, following a stint distributing campaign leaflets door-to-door in Pleasantville; the second is a break-in at Jay Porter’s office.As the story unravels, all the threads become entwined with the mayoral race at the centre. Locke considers who really runs an election campaign: a matter of business and money – who pays for the campaigns, who dictates strategy – but ultimately, how low people are prepared to go in their desperation for power.

Negroland – Margo Jefferson

Margo Jefferson grew up in Chicago in the 1950s and ’60s. Born to a paediatrician father and a socialite mother, she experienced a particular type of privilege: that of the well-off, educated, black family. Personal experience is interwoven with the history of those Jefferson identifies as belonging to Negroland: Frances Jackson Coppin and Joseph Willson, for example; and cultural commentary on film, television and the media, discussing those black men and women who did appear on and in those mediums and what they came to represent for black communities. Negroland is a superb book which consider the intersections of race, class and gender. It’s a fascinating read and an insight into an underexplored area of society.

The Argonauts – Maggie Nelson

The Argonauts charts Nelson’s relationship with the artist Harry Dodge, including the conception and birth of their son, Iggy, and Dodge’s decision to begin taking testosterone and have top surgery. The Argonauts is not straightforward memoir, it is intellectual argument illuminated by personal experience and supported by academic rigour. It explores love – constructing and maintaining a relationship outside of heteronormativity and maternal love as stepmother and mother (the latter from the point of view of adult child and parent as well as the expectant mother/mother of a young child) – and the body – sex, gender fluidity, pregnancy and birth. Rigorous and fascinating.

The Lonely City – Olivia Laing

Laing examines the idea of being lonely in the busiest place on earth – the city, specifically in her case New York City. Part memoir, part mediation on art, Laing looks at a number of artists who’ve dealt with the theme of loneliness – in their work and often in their private lives too – focusing in on Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Henry Darger and David Wojnarowicz. The Lonely City is a fascinating exploration of what loneliness is; how we attempt to stave it off; why some people are consumed by it, and what its relationship to artistic creation might be.

 

Interview with Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

If you’ve read my reviews of One Night, Markovitch and Waking Lions, you’ll know how impressed I’ve been with Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s work. I was thrilled, therefore, when Pushkin Press asked me if I’d like to interview her to celebrate the paperback publication of Waking Lions. Here’s what we talked about…

Waking Lions combines a moral dilemma, people’s attitudes to immigrants and a portrait of a marriage in crisis; was it one particular idea that made you decide to write this book or a combination of things?

I always start with a particular idea, a specific question I have in mind. In “Waking Lions” it was the hit and run. It wasn’t a literary question, but a real event which struck me: I was twenty years old when I met the protagonist of this novel. I was travelling in India and met a young Israeli who just sat in the guesthouse and stared for nights. He had a dreamy face and long, light coloured hair. He was just out of military service and was supposed to be having the adventure of his life. But there was something wrong with him. The guy looked frozen. He didn’t speak, he didn’t smoke, he didn’t do anything. He just lay on the hammock in the guesthouse and stared at the sky. Something was eating him up inside, that was clear.

Eventually I went to him and asked if he was alright. He admitted to me that several days ago he had hit an Indian man with his motorcycle, and fled.

I was haunted by this story for ten years before I sat down to write it, and one of the reasons was that I couldn’t find the right path for the protagonist. I didn’t want to write a 300 page-novel about a white guy feeling guilty and contemplating it in his decorated living room. Only after I realized that this person is blackmailed by the widow of the refugee he killed did I sit down to write.

Your characters are complex human beings; does your background in Clinical Psychology help you in creating realistic characters?

I think both jobs demand that you’d be willing to leave your own skin for a while, and try to enter someone else’s mind. When you meet a patient who has done things that you morally disagree with – hit his children, for instance – you have to be able to try and understand his motivations. Otherwise you won’t be able to help him, or stop him from doing it again. In everyday life, when we hear of someone doing something bad we just say “asshole” and move on. As a writer and as a psychologist, you don’t have this privilege. If someone has killed his landlord, you want to know why. And to do that, you have to find the place within yourself that’s capable of murder.

However, I do try my best to keep writing and therapy separate. When you write a novel you are the master of the world you create. When you meet a patient you must never forget that this is another man’s story here, he’s the narrator, and you’re just there to help him create a better narrative than the one he’s trapped in.

I’m interested in your female characters. Both of your novels have male protagonists but it’s women – Sirkit in Waking Lions, Bella and Sonya in One Night, Markovitch – that are catalysts for change; can you explain why you chose women to take such roles?

That’s a great question.

It was clear to me that the hit and run driver was a white man, the most powerful animal in the food chain. At first, I didn’t know if it would be a man or a woman who would witness the accident. But the more I thought about it, I realized it had to be a woman. The traditional female role – watch, and be quiet – is suddenly changed. Because what she sees when she observes the accident gives her power over this man. The roles are switched.

It was very important for me that Sirkit wasn’t this “black angel”, a saint, an African Maria. I wanted her to be a real human being, with dreams and desires and powerful ambitions. I think to portray her as a saint is just as dehumanising as portraying her as the ultimate evil. A “refugee” is no more a saint than a “middle-class man”. Both are labels, and behind those labels there are real people – who love, cheat, hate and trust.

Again in both novels, you mention people’s passions – in One Night, Markovitch there are many examples, including Yaacov’s passion for Bella, Bella’s passion for Rachel’s poetry and the passion of the soldiers who storm the fortress; in Waking Lions Sirkit’s passion for learning is something that Eitan recognises in her. What’s your interest in people’s passions?

I think passion and fear are the biggest motivators. It’s either what you long for, or what you’re running away from. When I think about my characters I always try to identify both. That’s the moment they start dancing on the paper

 

Waking Lions is a gripping, tightly structured book with a number of twists. How did you go about plotting the novel? Were the twists decided in the planning or did some surprise you during the writing process?

When I write the plot I see myself as the first reader of the novel: I don’t want to get bored. So I try to ask myself: what would surprise you on the next page? It’s a bit like playing hide and seek with yourself.  In both  my novels, I had no idea how the story was going to end until the very end of the writing process. It’s like going on a hike – you don’t want to know how the view from the highest point looks until you actually get there.

Waking Lions is very different in terms to tone, style and central idea to One Night, Markovitch; did you deliberately set out to write a very different book?

No. I had no conscious thought of “what’s the next move”. I finished the first novel, and I missed the characters. After spending so much time together, it was like losing a close friend. And then suddenly I met this new story within me, and I followed it. When the second novel was finished I gave it to some friends, and they warned me that readers who expected a light tone – as in the first novel – would be shocked by the second one. But the reason I love writing is because it’s the only playground open to adults. The only place where you don’t have to remain coherent, clear, predictable. You can do what you want, be who you want, whether it’s a tale set sixty years ago, like Markovitch or something much more rigid and realistic like Waking Lions. I’m working on my third novel now, and once again I’m using my right to do exactly what I want to do, regardless of what’s gone before.

Both of your novels have been translated into English by Sondra Silverston; did you work closely with her on the translations? How do you feel about having your words translated into another language?

It’s really weird: my English is not good enough to read literature. I only read “Harry Potter” in English in high-school. So imagine what it is for me to open my own novel, and not recognise half the words! I simply trust Sondra that these are indeed the right words, with the right music.

Are you working on anything at the moment? Can you tell us anything about it?

Just that I’m working. Hard.

My blog focuses on female writers; who are your favourite women writers?

I owe Virginia Woolf every word that I wrote after the birth of my first child. “A Room of One’s Own” is for me one of the most important texts ever written.  It made me feel that I’m entitled to close the door and write, even if I’m a mother.

I also admire Elena Ferrante, “My Brilliant Friend” is my book of the year.

The Hebrew poet Yona Wallach is a big inspiration, both as a writer and as a therapist.

 

Huge thanks to Ayelet and to Pushkin Press.

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is the author of Waking Lions and One Night, Markovitch, both published by Pushkin Press. Waking Lions is published in paperback on 1st September, £8.99 pushkinpress.com 

Waking Lions – Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (translated by Sondra Silverston)

He’s thinking that the moon is the most beautiful he has ever seen when he hits the man.

So begins Waking Lions, Gundar-Goshen’s challenging, morality-questioning second novel.

 

Driving the SUV is Doctor Eitan Green. He’s just finished a nineteen hour shift at Soroka Hospital, six of which he spent helping to stabilise road traffic accident victims. In the time it takes for him to walk from the hospital ward to his car, he goes from exhausted to adrenaline-fueled. He decides to drive to ‘a particularly challenging SUV track’ he’s read about. Sprinting along, he hits the man.

He looked at the Eritrean again. Blood flowed from his head, staining his collar. If he was lucky, the judge would give him only a few months. But he wouldn’t be able to do surgery anymore. That was for certain. No one would hire a doctor convicted of manslaughter. And then there was the media and Yaheli and Itamar and Liat and his mother and the people he happened to meet on the street.

And the Eritrean kept bleeding as if he were doing it deliberately.

Suddenly he knew he had to go. Now. He couldn’t save the man. At least he’d try to save himself.

However, it’s not going to be as simple as that, of course. Firstly, there’s the problem of the dead man’s wife arriving at his door the following morning, Eitan’s wallet in her hand. Secondly, there’s the police investigation to which Liat Green is assigned; yes, Eitan’s wife is a senior detective in the Israeli police, determined to prove to the misogynists she works with that she’s highly capable. Finally, there’s the deal that Sirkit, the Eritrean’s wife wants from Eitan. It’s a deal that will have serious consequences at work and at home.

To say much more would spoil the novel for the first-time reader, I think. It’s a powerful enough book that it still works if you know the deal Sirkit asks for but I enjoyed discovering it myself and following the consequences of it through to the end.

If you’ve read Gundar-Goshen’s debut, One Night, Markovitch, you’ll find Waking Lions a very different beast (pardon the pun). The setting, the style, the pace are much altered but perfectly woven to create a tense, almost cinematic psychological thriller.

There’s a point in the second half of the novel when the narrator says this about Sirkit:

That one battered Eritrean had called her an angel and one grief-stricken Bedouin had called her a devil, and that both of them were wrong, had to be wrong. Because neither angels nor devils existed. Of that Eitan was convinced. People existed. The woman lying on the mattress only a few meters from him, that woman was a person. She slept. She ate. She urinated. She defecated.

It sums up Gundar-Goshen’s characters; they’re three-dimensional, thinking humans who make mistakes; who are both good and bad in different circumstances. By making the protagonist a doctor married to a detective, she questions our expectations of people. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? What punishment do they deserve and is it always delivered?

Waking Lions isn’t an easy novel to read. There’s no sugar-coating of the effects of Eitan’s deception and it’s all the better for it. This is a sharp, thoughtful, challenging novel. It marks Ayelet Gundar-Goshen out as a very talented writer indeed.

If you like the sound of Waking Lions or One Night, Markovitch come back tomorrow when I have an interview with Ayelet Gundar-Goshen about her work.

 

Thanks to Pushkin Press for the review copy.

One Night, Markovitch – Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (translated by Sondra Silverston)

Yaacov Markovitch and Zeev Feinberg are friends. Indeed, Feinberg is Markovitch’s only friend and the pair couldn’t be more different:

[…]there are people who walk through the world as if they were there by mistake, as if at any moment someone would put a hand on their shoulder and shout in their ears, “What is this? Who let you in? Get out, fast.” And there are people who don’t walk through the world at all. Just the opposite, they sail through it, slicing the water in two wherever they pass, like a boat full of confidence.

Feinberg is the latter, while Markovitch is ‘gloriously average […his] face was remarkably free of distinguishing features. So much that your eyes could not linger on him, but slipped onwards to other objects’.

The book begins with Markovitch saving Feinberg’s life; a young Arab almost shoots him as he has sex with Rachel Mandelbaum. However, Rachel is the wife of Avraham Mandelbaum, the slaughterer, who will not hesitate to kill. The following morning when the moustache rash on Rachel’s chest confirms that she was having sex with Feinberg, he and Markovitch are forced to go on the run.

The men go to see the deputy commander of the Irgun, a friend of Feinberg’s. He sends them to Europe where they will marry ‘a Jewish girl’ and bring them back to Palestine, thus circumventing the closed gates of Europe. Once the men return, they will divorce and the women will be free to remain.

Three women form the backbone of the story: Rachel Mandelbaum, Sonya, and Bella Zeigerman.

Rachel Mandelbaum came to Palestine five years prior to the beginning of the book. As she stood at the port, Avraham arrived, as he had every few weeks, looking for some one to fill his loneliness.

In her green dress she looked to him like a bottle that had been thrown out to sea and washed up on the shore, and he, the lonely survivor, would pick it up and read what was inside it. He took her home and married her but never succeeded in deciphering the words that were in the bottle.

Rachel never reveals herself to anyone. She abandons the German language of her childhood and keeps the Austrian soldier she loved locked inside her. Her story is one of loneliness and sadness.

Sonya is Feinberg’s girlfriend who he swears he’ll marry once he and Markovitch return from Europe because:

[…] that woman has the strength of ten men […] a heart the size of a dove, and a vagina of sweet water. […]she can make you laugh until your balls twist themselves around each other.

While Feinberg is gone, Sonya spends every day standing at the edge of the water, waiting for his return.

[…] if she was doomed to wait, even if she was cursed with the humiliating tendency of women everywhere to find a piece of sand on which to stand and look at the sea, waiting for their man to return, at least she had the strength to be angry about it. And so she cursed Zeev Feinberg with all her heart and soul, loudly and resolutely.

But after the deputy commander of the Irgun returns a visit she paid to him, she finds herself in bed with Feinberg’s friend through sheer boredom. Unfortunately, she has quite an affect on the deputy commander and it isn’t sated by her marriage to Feinberg on his return.

Bella Zeigerman is the woman Yaacov Markovitch marries in Europe.

[…]Bella Zeigerman was, without a shadow of a doubt, the most beautiful woman in the apartment. And although, unlike Yaacov Markovitch, [Feinberg] didn’t think she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, she undeniably belonged to the Olympus of goddess-like women which would never admit Yaacov Markovitch, even as a servant.

On their return, Markovitch refuses to divorce her and the two stay locked in a frosty marriage which sees Markovitch fall out with his best friend, Bella leave and return, and Markovitch raise someone else’s child.

Gundar-Goshen covers several, intertwined lives in this novel. The ups-and-downs of marriage, parenthood, war, death …basically all of life is here. The relationships and the children, born to different fathers struck me as Shakespearian. These twists could have become farcical and the fact that they do not demonstrates Gundar-Goshen’s ability to plot on a large scale. Her characters are fully-rounded and it was refreshing to read about three women who were distinctly different people.

Credit must also go to the translator, Sondra Silverston: the writing fizzes throughout. It was an utter joy to read.

I finished reading One Night, Markovitch bathed in a warm glow. Although the novel has difficult and sometimes tragic elements to it, there’s something truly life-affirming about it. Like all great literature, it has eternal truths about humanity at its core, while telling a truly individual story. It is a wonderful book.

 

Thanks to Pushkin Press for the review copy.

 

Book Lists for All Humans #5

It’s been a while…not because there haven’t been lists published that weren’t gender balanced, I’m sure there have been, more because while I’m not compiling In the Media, I’m not in my media Twitter feed and so I’m not seeing them. However, I was on the Guardian website this afternoon and they’d published a new ‘Top 10 books’ list. DBC Pierre deserves some sort of award for producing the whitest, most male list I’ve seen so far. Apparently, women/people of colour don’t write books that writers should read. Be told people, only white men know how to write.

Here’s my alternative list, please feel free to suggest your own additions/alternatives in the comments:

To create a setting that feels as though it really exists: The Essex Serpent – Sarah Perry

To see complex characters, whose behaviour raises questions about morality, in action: Waking Lions – Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (translated by Sondra Silverston)

To write successfully from a child’s point-of-view: My Name Is Leon – Kit de Waal

To manage a complex structure based on a lunar cycle and as good as any box set: The Luminaries – Eleanor Catton

To change point-of-view in every chapter, including that of a dead body, and detail some of the atrocities of which humans are capable: Human Acts – Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith)

To incorporate your own life and letters into fiction/essay/critique: I Love Dick – Chris Kraus

To bring a historical character to life: Bring Up the Bodies – Hilary Mantel

To write a coming-of-age story in fragmented sentences: A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing – Eimear McBride

To write a metafictional account of a massacre: The Gypsy Goddess – Meena Kandasamy

To create an unreliable, first person narrator: The Private Life of Mrs Sharma – Ratika Kapur

 

Links are to my reviews.

My Plans for #ReadDiverse2016

I don’t do New Year resolutions. I learnt some years ago that those vague statements – I’m going to do more exercise/eat less/learn a language – don’t last beyond mid-January. But goals do, at least specific ones you can work towards and extend, if necessary, or not beat yourself up about if you don’t quite fulfil them do.

Last year, I set a goal to read more books by women of colour. I joined Eva Stalker’s #TBR20 project with the caveat that I’d continue to read review copies I was sent as well. I still haven’t completed all the reviews of those books yet but the main effect it had was I paid attention to what I was reading, specifically who the writer was. In 2014 10% of my reading was by writers of colour, in 2015, it was 32%. The unintended consequence of this, however, is that the number of books I read by writers from LGBTQIA communities plummeted from 6% to 0.5% and books in translation from 11% to 0.6%. (The latter was partly a consequence of me not really taking part in #WITMonth due to personal circumstances but still, it’s poor.)

The plan for this year then: more reviews of books by women of colour; more reviews of books by women who identify as LGBT; a proper focus on women in translation in August.

I’m aiming for 50% of my reviews to be of books by women of colour. I’ve changed the focus from the percentage I’m reading with the intention of even coverage on here. What I noticed last year was that although I was reading books from my #TBR20 stack, when I got back to reading and reviewing after my break in the summer, I was focusing on books by white women, the ‘big titles’. As a consequence, I have a stack of review copies by women of colour. These are now at the top of the pile.

I’ve also created a new #TBR20 pile focusing on writers from the LGBT communities. And here they are…

Half of the books (those on the left, except Anaïs Nin who appears to be in the wrong pile) are by women of colour. I used several sources to help me compile the list: More than 50 books by Queer People of Color by zarahwithaz; 10 Novels & Memoirs By and About Black Lesbian, Bisexual and Queer Women on Autostraddle;100+ LGBTQ Black Women You Should Know: The Epic Black History Month Megapost also on Autostraddle, and the Wikipedia list of LGBT Writers.

Elsewhere, you might have seen on social media that Media Diversified have created Bare Lit Festival (@BareLit). ‘A literary festival focused entirely on writers of colour’, which will run from the 26^th – 28^th February 2016.

We want to counteract the trend of equating literary merit with whiteness by highlighting the amazing variety of work currently being produced by BAME writers. That’s why we’ve put together an exciting programme of performances, panels and conversations — such as ‘Second-Generation Poets in Exile’, ‘What Does Liberation in Literature Look Like?, Sci Fi vs. Afrofuturism’ and much more.

I’ve already bought my weekend pass and you can support the festival by buying passes or single event tickets now and helping them to raise the cost of running the event. Find out more on their Indiegogo page.

Mention of Media Diversified brings me to this interesting piece, posted a couple of days ago: Decolonise, not Diversify by Kavita Bhanot. I agree with everything she says.

Speaking only for myself, I didn’t get involved with #diversedecember because I thought it would change the world but I did hope it might lead some people to question their world view or the view the white-dominated world imposes upon us.

During December, Salena Godden (@salenagodden) posted a video of her performing her new poem ‘I Count’. ‘I have become a woman that counts…’ she begins. Yep. I became a woman that counts when I started this blog. I don’t think it’s a solution and it’s certainly not going to bring about one on its own, but while ever white/male/hetero/cis domination exists, I’ll count. For me, #ReadDiverse2016 (@ReadDiverse2016) is about hoping you’ll join in that count too.

In the Media: 29th March 2015

In the media is a weekly round-up of features written by, about or containing female writers that have appeared during the previous week and I think are insightful, interesting and/or thought provoking. Linking to them is not necessarily a sign that I agree with everything that’s said but it’s definitely an indication that they’ve made me think. Also, just a note to make it clear that I’m using the term ‘media’ to include social media, so links to blog posts as well as traditional media are likely.

News this week from ABC that a Tasmanian writer, Marjorie Davey, has published her first novel at the age of 95. She might be the oldest but she’s not the only woman to be published later in life; Abby Ellin’s article, ‘Finding Success, Well Past the Age of Wunderkind‘ in the New York Times includes Lucille Gang Shulklapper, first published at 60, and Cathy writes about Leland Bardwell: The forgotten woman of Irish literature, first published at 48, on 746Books.

At the opposite end of the age spectrum (give or take) the big news this week was that Zayn Malik left pop band One Direction. Before the news broke, Leesa Cross-Smith wrote ‘One Direction & Other Boy Bands‘ on Real Pants (which had me watching more 1D videos than I’d ever seen before (which was none)) while advertisements for Granta popped up). Anna Leszkiewicz wrote ‘I’m an adult woman with a real boyfriend – and I’m absolutely heartbroken about Zayn Malik quitting One Direction‘ in The Independent, Mackenzie Kruvant wrote, ‘How One Direction Helped Me Find My Girls‘ on Buzzfeed, and Huma Munshi wrote, ‘The Courage of Zayn Malik and Why Strong Men Cry‘ on Media Diversified.

Media Diversified also published an open letter ‘To the organisers of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction‘ regarding Cathy Newman and Grace Dent being members of the judging panel.

Granta, in celebration of their new website, opened up some of their archive, including these letters from Iris Murdoch to Raymond Queneau; ‘Night‘ by Alice Munroe; Sayaka Murata’s ‘A Clean Marriage‘ (tr. Ginny Tapley Takemori), and ‘Hardy Animal‘ by M.J. Hyland

It was the anniversary of Virginia Woolf’s death this week. Daniel Swift wrote ‘Virginia Woolf in the Bomb-scarred City‘ in Five Dials and Louise Brearley read Virginia Woolf’s final letter to her husband in The Telegraph.

And in commemoration of the third anniversary of Adrienne Rich’s death, The Critical Flame have devoted a whole issue to her and her work. The table of contents is here.

Angelina Jolie Pitt turned to writing this week with her ‘Diary of a Surgery‘ in The New York Times. Fay Schopen responded with ‘Angelina Jolie says the decision to deal with her cancer was simple. Mine is not‘ in The Guardian, while Caroline Corcoran wrote about her own experience, ‘I never felt like I’m less of a woman because I don’t have breasts or ovaries‘ in The Independent.

But the woman with the most publicity this week seems to be JK Rowling. ‘JK Rowling says she received ‘loads’ of rejections before Harry Potter success‘ wrote Alison Flood in The Guardian; Stylist ran ‘JK Rowling’s Brilliant Response to Fan Who ‘Can’t See’ Dumbledore as Gay, Plus 9 Times She Owned Twitter‘; Matilda Battersby wrote, ‘JK Rowling defends Dumbledore on Twitter: Seven Things You Might Not Know About the Hogwarts’ Headmaster‘ in The Independent; Chris Mandle wrote, ‘Why we need more fictional gay role models like Albus Dumbledore‘ in The Telegraph and Stylist ran a piece titled, ‘JK Rowling Describes Hitting ‘Rock Bottom’ In a New Book About The Benefits Of Failure‘

In Harper Lee news, the cover of Go Set a Watchman was revealed this week. The Guardian are inviting people to design their own.

Finally, if you want a good reading list of books by women, the Edge Hill Short Story Prize announced its longlist this week, including Anneliese Mackintosh, Stella Duffy, Kirsty Logan, May-Lan Tan, Hilary Mantel and A.L. Kennedy.

The best of the rest articles/essays:

• Katie Barnes, ‘This Is Not My Cinderella‘ on Feministing
• Maggie Tokuda-Hall, ‘My Abortion Was A Hard Choice—But The Right One‘ on Ravishly
• Heather Cromarty, ‘Personal Jesus Built My Hotrod‘ on Queen Mob’s Tea House
• Robert McCrum, ‘The 100 best novels: No 79 – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1960)‘ in The Guardian
• Lizzy Kremer, ‘Thinking at Night: Writing into the Silence‘ on Publishing for Humans
• Leslie Reese, ‘Little Leslie’s Report‘ (on Edwidge Danticat’ on Folklore & Literacy
• Brigid Delaney, ‘Leave Gwyneth Paltrow alone! Her website gives me joy‘ in The Guardian
• Jane Bradley, ‘Shapps fell into brand confusion trap‘ (Confusingly, mostly about female writers and pseudonyms) in The Scotsman
• Leo Jay Shire, ‘As a Mixed-Race Woman, in the Game of Racial Top Trumps My Blackness Always Wins‘ on Media Diversified
• Mallika Rao, ‘No Punctuation Is Funnier‘ on The Huffington Post
• Jaya Saxena, ‘The Way to the Heart is Not Through the Liver‘ on Archipelago
• Rivka Galchen, ‘Do Money Woes Spur Creativity or Stifle It?‘ in The New York Times
• Stacey Patton, ‘Loving White People Won’t Fix Racism‘ in Dame
• Roxane Gay, ‘Men You Meet While Traveling By Airplane‘ in The Butter
• Elisa Gabbert, ‘Much Hinges: The joys of using the “wrong comma”‘ on The Smart Set
• Ester Bloom, ‘Dreams of Being a Feminist Housewife‘ on The Billfold
• Maya Dusenbery, ‘Is Medicine’s Gender Bias Killing Young Women?‘ on Feministing
• Casey Plett, ‘Rise of the Gender Novel‘ on The Walrus
• Martha Bayne, ‘Words Fail‘ in The Rumpus
• Kendra Atleework, ‘Why Must One House Burn While Another Is Spared?‘ in Guernica
• Mallory Ortberg, ‘Children’s Stories Made Horrific: The Frog Prince‘ in The Toast
• Nathan Smith, ‘Feminist Artifacts: The Archive of Germaine Greer‘ in the Los Angeles Review of Books
• Meera Syal, ‘Growing up between cultures is tough – until you realise it’s a creative blessing‘ in The Guardian
• Diana Williams, ‘I chose to be a mother at 50: Why would a single, middle-aged woman endure years of fertility treatment to have twins?‘ in The Independent
• Elen Caldecott, ‘My Inspiration: Gillian Cross‘ in The Guardian
• Anjum Hassan, ‘Sisters‘ in Granta
• Kelly Davio, ‘The Waiting Room: What My Self-Respect Looks Like‘ in The Butter
• Rachel Vorona Cote, ‘A For Books’ Sake Guide to Literary Self-Care‘ on For Books’ Sake

• Toni Morrison, ‘No Place for Self-Pity, No Room for Fear‘ in The Nation
• Rachel Cusk, ‘Raising Teenagers: The Mother of All Problems‘ in The New York Times
• Eillie Anzilotti, ‘A Life in My Mother’s Clothes‘ in The Toast
• Sarah Seltzer, ‘Beyond Mansplaining: A New Lexicon of Misogynist Trolling Behaviors‘ on Flavorwire
• Joanne Harris, ‘Why I’m Saying “Fuck you” to Clean Reader‘ on her blog
• Lionel Shriver, ‘Why filthy literature should not be cleaned up‘ in The Guardian
• ‘Louise Doughty and Jacqui Lofthouse: Tortoises Rather Than Hares‘ on Something Rhymed
• Jacquie Lawrence, ‘Where have all the lesbians gone in TV and film?‘ in The Guardian
• Natasha Desborough, ‘Why I couldn’t use the phrase ‘camel toes’ in the title of my first novel‘ in The Guardian
• Beulah Maud Devaney, ‘Helpful Spring Cleaning Advice From Gothic Novelist Shirley Jackson‘ on Ravishly
• Brittney Cooper, ‘Black girls’ sexual burden: Why Mo’ne Davis was really called a “slut”‘ on Salon
• Catie L’Heureux, ‘Why I Live in an All-Women Boardinghouse in New York City‘ in The Cut
• Elizabeth Minkel, ‘From the Internet to the Ivy League: Fanfiction in the Classroom‘ on The Millions
• Jenny Diski, ‘Like a Lullaby‘ in The London Review of Books (£)
• Elisa Gabbert, ‘Beauty Is Youth, Youth Beauty‘ on Real Pants
• Emma Frankland, ‘I’m a transgender woman – why shouldn’t I play Hamlet?‘ in The Guardian
• Lucy Hancock, ‘This Is What It’s Actually Like to Go to Private School in the London Suburbs‘ in Vice
• Sarra Manning, ‘In Ross Poldark, we have reached romantic hero nirvana‘ in The Guardian
• Isabel Rogers, ‘Shopping List‘ on her blog
• Rebecca Winson, ‘I don’t give a toss about the number of women in boardrooms‘ on A Bit of Class
• Hannah Giorgis, ‘Many women of color don’t go to the police after sexual assault for a reason‘ in The Guardian
• Frances Ryan, ‘The benefit sanctions regime should be scrapped‘ in The Guardian
• Dorian Lynskey, ‘Kapow! Attack of the feminist superheroes‘ in The Guardian
• Melody Schreiber, ‘Facing the Beast: On Anxiety and Sisterhood‘ in The Toast
• Carmen Maria Machado, ‘O Adjunct! My Adjunct!‘ in The New Yorker
• Mallory Ortberg, ‘Scenes From The Bell Jar And Other Sylvia Plath Works, As Remembered By Someone Who Never Finished Reading Sylvia Plath‘ in The Toast
• Sarah Perry, ‘Lent Talk: Behold the Man‘ on BBC Radio 4 (+ transcript)
• Rachel Smalter Hall, ‘Why I Need a Break From Books About Dead Girls‘ on Book Riot

 

• Andrea Cornwall, ‘Why gender equality by numbers will never measure up‘ in The Guardian
• Amy Juicebox, ‘The Consequences of Attacking Our Little Black Girls‘ on Blavity
• xTx, ‘Today I am a Lonely, Sexless Book Looking for Love and Understanding‘ in The Butter
• Anna Weiner, ‘The Most Wonderful Staircase‘ in The Offing
• Clare Pollard, ‘All the Amazing Women We’ve Never Heard Of‘ on her blog
• John C. Goodman, ‘……Regina Who? And Other Obscure Women Writers……..‘ on Queen Mob’s Teahouse
• Megan Carpentier, ‘All These Angry Women?‘ in Esquire
• Rene Denfeld, ‘Why we execute people is the big question, not how‘ in The Guardian
• Joshua Rothman, ‘Knausgaard or Ferrante?‘ in The New Yorker
• Nancy Tomich, ‘Elusive Aurora‘ in The Toast
• Anna Fitzpatrick, ‘A Post About Books, Sort Of‘ on The Hairpin
• Suzanne Koven, ‘Cheaters: A Life In Eyewear‘ in The Rumpus
• Stephanie Boland, ‘Shock news: contra to the headlines, people with depression have jobs‘ in the New Statesman
• Maureen O’Connor, ‘How I Became a Hoarder of Discontinued Makeup‘ in The Cut
• Kate Colby, ‘The Itch‘ on The Rumpus
• Jo Chandler, ‘Manus in the Balance‘ in The Monthly
• Michele McPhee, ‘The Monster Next Door‘ in Boston Magazine
• Lisa Hix, ‘The Tragic Life of the Courtesan in Japan’s Floating World‘ on Collectors Weekly
• Suzanne Dean, ‘The Shore: A Cover Story‘ on the Penguin Blog
• Hilary Mantel, ‘How to Play “Wolf Hall”‘ in The New York Review of Books
• Tracey Thorn, ‘Your songs are like your children – you have to wave them off into the world‘ in the New Statesman
• Tabitha Blankenbiller, ‘Fiesta Barbie‘ on Hobart
• Sophie Heawood, ‘Stuck on an ice-bound ferry? What a great opportunity for apocalyptic sex‘ in The Guardian
• Parul Sehgal, ‘How ‘Flawless’ Became a Feminist Declaration‘ in The New York Times
• Marina O’Loughlin, ‘‘Something nasty is stirring’: inside Nigel Farage’s battle for South Thanet‘ in The Guardian
• Sasha Marie Storman, ‘The Role of Women in Horror Films‘ on The Inflectionist
• Catherine Chanter, ‘I found my birth mother through the newspaper small ads‘ in The Guardian
• Swetambara Chaudhary, ‘This Photo Was Removed By Instagram. The Owner Writes A Powerful Open Letter In Response‘ on Scoop Whoop
• Anne Thériault, ‘We Need To Stop Devaluing Femininity‘ on Ravishly

The interviews:

• Alison Stone in 3:AM Magazine
• Kim Gordon on Salon
• Bhatupe Mhango-Chipanta on Brittle Paper
• Jane Hirshfield on The Huffington Post
• Michelle Tea on Weird Sister
• Ruth Goodman on The Daily Beast
• Judy Finnigan in Woman
• Nuala Ní Chonchúir on 746Books
• Joanna Briscoe on Rebecca Mascull’s blog
• Alison Bechdel on The Millions
• Abigail Thomas in the Los Angeles Review of Books
• Megham Daum on Flavorwire
• Val McDermid and Kate Tough on Scottish Book Trust
• Evie Wyld on the Penguin Blog
• Sarah Manguso in The Rumpus
• Rachael Herron on Compulsory Podcast
• Judith Butler in The Los Angeles Review of Books
• Ayelet Gundar-Goshen on Bookanista
• Porochista Khakpour on Electric Literature
• Renata Adler in Vice
• Helen Grant on Scottish Book Trust and Author Allsorts
• Sally Green in The Guardian
• Alice Urbino on Broken Frontier
• Johanna Basford on We Love This Book
• Ann Fisher-Wirth on Bloom
• Isabel Wolff on Random House
• Jennifer Jean on DP Life
• Can Xue in BOMB Magazine
• Eva Dolan on Goodreads
• Helen Marshall in Nightmare Magazine
• Sarah Hall in The Guardian
• Naomi Klein in The Independent
• Amelia Gray on Vice

If you want some fiction/poetry to read:

• An extract from Weightless by Sarah Bannan on Bloomsbury Books
• An extract from Binary Star by Sarah Gerard in The Quietus
• An extract from Disclaimer by Renée Knight
• ‘Lunch Poem‘ by Ashleigh Young on Eyelashroaming
• ‘Coach tour on the A99 to Wick‘ by Claire Askew on Scottish Book Trust
• An extract from The Night Falling by Katherine Webb on Orion Books
• ‘I Hope You Sing About Me‘ by Vanessa Willoughby in The Toast
• ‘When Joan Jumped Into the Sea‘ by Elle Nash in The Offing
• ‘Oboe solo for two players‘ by Claire Fuller on her blog
• ‘Richard‘ by Carol Ann Duffy in The Guardian
• ‘A Poem‘ by Morgan Parker in The Awl
• ‘Beau Soleil‘ by Claire Lombardo in the Atticus Review
• ‘Opposites Detract‘ by Cath Bore on The Fem
• ‘tsunami as misguided kwannon‘ by Lee Ann Roripaugh on The The
• An excerpt from Shadows Over Paradise by Isabel Wolff on Random House
• ‘Keep It In the Ground‘ by Carol Ann Duffy in The Guardian
• ‘How to walk past a tree in winter‘ by Shinjini Bhattacharjee on Three Drops from a Cauldron
• ‘The Knot‘ by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin in The Irish Times
• Two Poems by Catherine Pond in Blunderbuss

The lists:

• Top 5 YA Debuts of 2015 on Max and Mummy
• If You Loved ‘Bad Feminist,’ Try Reading These 11 Books, Too on Bustle
• 29 Awesome Books With Strong Female Protagonists on Buzzfeed
• Five books by transgender authors that everyone should read on The Walrus
• 14 Novels About Muslim Life That Shouldn’t Be Missed on Buzzfeed
• Sarah Menkedick’s Four Books on Early Motherhood on Vela
• Quotes from Five African Woman Writers to Help You Jumpstart Your Writing Dreams on Brittle Paper
• 5 Flannery O’Connor Quotes to Live By on Flavorwire
• Feminist Books for Children on For Books’ Sake
• Sophie Kinsella’s Literary Heroines on the Penguin Blog
• Books of the Week on Publishers Weekly