Nobody Asked You
One of the best comments I received on my novel Hospital Hill was that the main character, a 50-something year old woman on the cusp of retirement, was ultimately relatable. However, had I written the character of Valerie Martin in Victorian times, she might not have made quite the same impact. Not to mention the fact that, had my novel taken place more than one hundred years ago, history would be treating the women of the asylum quite differently. In looking at the history of asylums and mental health treatment, the patients committed for lengthy stays were disproportionately women who were committed legally by their husbands, often for less than acceptable reasons. Also, had I published this book in that era, my name would not have appeared on the cover because I too am female.
While embarking on a new asylum novel, an interesting article about Alice James, the younger sister of the celebrated author Henry James popped up on LitHub. The post was titled "Do Female Lives Matter" and the author went on to posit that, very often in history, the answer to that question is a resounding no. Women were largely forgotten in both history and literature and as the author reminds us, "Anonymous was a woman". Now, the literary world is populated by powerhouse women writers and we can thank our predecessors-- Flannery O'Connor, Harper Lee, and apparently Alice James- for these advancements. No longer are we handicapped by that second X-chromosome and women have taken the literary world and made it their own, often without having to mention feminism even once!
In other news, as I wind down the first semester of my MFA, one of my mentors, Justin Taylor, continues to torture the literary world with Craft Talk Nobody Asked For. As a mentor Justin is a craft machine. He's brutal, cutthroat, and unbending. He raises the bar for the authors he works with and if you read his piece on Sam Lypsyte's The Fun Parts, you'll certainly understand why and you'll understand why I love getting feedback from Justin. Read his piece and consider how he feels about one of Lypsyte's rambling, explosively moving and symbolic sentences-- you'll never look at the English language the same way again.
While embarking on a new asylum novel, an interesting article about Alice James, the younger sister of the celebrated author Henry James popped up on LitHub. The post was titled "Do Female Lives Matter" and the author went on to posit that, very often in history, the answer to that question is a resounding no. Women were largely forgotten in both history and literature and as the author reminds us, "Anonymous was a woman". Now, the literary world is populated by powerhouse women writers and we can thank our predecessors-- Flannery O'Connor, Harper Lee, and apparently Alice James- for these advancements. No longer are we handicapped by that second X-chromosome and women have taken the literary world and made it their own, often without having to mention feminism even once!
In other news, as I wind down the first semester of my MFA, one of my mentors, Justin Taylor, continues to torture the literary world with Craft Talk Nobody Asked For. As a mentor Justin is a craft machine. He's brutal, cutthroat, and unbending. He raises the bar for the authors he works with and if you read his piece on Sam Lypsyte's The Fun Parts, you'll certainly understand why and you'll understand why I love getting feedback from Justin. Read his piece and consider how he feels about one of Lypsyte's rambling, explosively moving and symbolic sentences-- you'll never look at the English language the same way again.
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