In the 1840s, all of the Brontë sisters wrote their initial works under fictional names. Jane Austen’s Sense And Sensibility was written ‘By a Lady’, and all her novels were published incognito during her life. George Eliot was Mary Ann Evans in reality, as we all know. Despite their great potential, women authors have been undeservedly subject to a non-conducive environment for centuries. They have been forced to doubt themselves whenever it came to articulating their struggles. For years they have lived in dread of their writing careers. But it is not the nineteenth century anymore and women do not have to write under fake male names to be taken seriously, or is it?
Many women authors still experience hardship and fear unwarranted criticism. In 2021, they are free to write but many still face struggles quite comparable to those of the 19th century female authors. They are often receivers of disrespect from male authors, readers, and critics. They are judged negatively for the same things that men would have written and gotten away with quite easily.
Consequently, they carry within themselves an ancient anxiety that connects them to female authors from several generations ago. That the most efficacious female author of this century, J. K. Rowling was asked to assume a gender-neutral name to make sure Harry Potter books appealed to boy readers is enough evidence to substantiate the existence of this lingering ancient anxiety. Even when she ventured into writing crime fiction in 2013, Rowling chose a male name (Robert Galbraith), which has not gone well with many.
J. K. Rowling
One could always argue that Rowling was simply choosing anonymity and exercising the freedom of choice in doing so, but can we completely rule out sexism and the fear of censure in this area? For Culture (BBC), Holly Williams writes that it is not always as simple as “bad sexism keeping a good woman down.” She believes that generalised conclusions in this matter do injustice to the canon of women’s writing by propagating the myth that women writers had to pretend to be male to be successful. Williams underlines that women wrote “anonymously, pseudonymously and under their own names in the 18th and 19th Centuries” “I rather enjoy having another persona,” Rowling explains but still, it does make one wonder if their favourite author has some problem with her own name or with feminine sounding names in general.
In her insightful article titled, “Homme de Plume: What I Learned Sending My Novel Out Under a Male Name,” Catherine Nichols talks about how she was repeatedly rejected by agents when she was writing under her own name. When she switched to a male pseudonym (George), she felt the ground slip from under her feet. “I sent the six queries I had planned to send that day. Within 24 hours George had five responses—three manuscript requests and two warm rejections praising his exciting project,” she writes.
There is substantial evidence available to prove that it is not easy being a female author even in 2021. Take the case of mystery books, for instance, where there is a general inequality between male and female writers. Writing for bitchmedia, Barbara Fister articulates, “though overall numbers have improved, more mysteries by men than women are nominated for and receive high-prestige awards.” Fister also adds that while individual bloggers are very warm towards books by women, “high-profile publications such as The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal '' do not review their books equally. The latest Vida Count (2019) demonstrates how major publications such as The Nation, Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, London Review of Books have done quite poorly at including works by women authors.
Unfortunately to gain respectability and serious attention, it is almost like an unsaid requisite to be covered by publications in which professional reviewers comment on books. Another concern is that “women are far more likely to be published in paperback than hardcover,” which is a disparity that can easily go unnoticed. In an article published in The Guardian, Danuta Kean, the books editor for mslexia remarks on the sexism prevalent in the books world: “ . . .women are still under-represented among authors submitted to the Man Booker, which remains the only prize that can guarantee an author remains in print.”
In a 2017 Huffpost article focusing on the hurdles women writers face especially in bestselling genres, Kate Raphael, the author of Murder Under the Bridge talks about her struggles saying that even though women make over fifty percent of the mystery and crime fiction writers in the world, they “get fewer than 50 percent of reviews and far fewer in the most prestigious outlets. There is also a narrower range of characters that are acceptable for women in crime fiction. An agent rejected my book because my main character, a Palestinian policewoman, disobeyed her boss.”
And the disparities don’t end with mysteries. Meg Elison and Aya de Leon, dystopian fiction and street lit writers respectively, also talk about the disparities they experience as women. The author of the Justice Hustlers Series, Leon says that “street lit is traditionally male-dominated, and — as in most parts of the literary industry — male gatekeepers and audiences tend to ignore women’s writing.” Specialising in speculative fiction, the author of The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, Elison says that in terms of the gender ratio, the post-apocalyptic fiction “is crazily unbalanced” and that “most of the stories that take place after the end of the world are by men, about men and written for men.”
There is enough reason to celebrate women’s voices and their stories—their contributions to history and modern society and their role in shaping contemporary reality. There are many women authors whose writings have made an impact in 2020.
Shulph Picks: Women authors who made an impact in 2020
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women White Feminists Forgot by Mikki Kendal
Hood Feminism featured in “The 100 Must-Read Books Of 2020” curated by Time, in which it is defined as “one of the most important books of the current moment.” In a review of the book by The Guardian, Kendall has been dubbed as “the sort of feminist who is here to unsettle.”
Mikki Kendal
Kendall raises questions on the hypocrisy of mainstream feminism, which is principally white feminism in her view. She writes from a place of personal experience and understanding to offer a realistic commentary on the ingrained biases of feminism practiced and propagated by white women that takes no cognizance of the struggles of women of colour who live underprivileged lives. She talks about growing up as a black woman, the hidden hegemony of white feminism that conveniently ignores important issues related to race, class, sexual orientation, and wage inequality. Kendall’s frustration can be palpably felt when she talks about how feminist academic writings and academic researches associate insensitively with low-income black women—treating them as if they were laboratory rats.
Her book also covers the pressures and trauma women such as herself have always had to put up with via the unrealistic white beauty standards imposed on women of colour. To exemplify the common societal ill-treatment of black and brown women, she writes:
“Five minutes after it was confirmed that (now Duchess) Meghan Markle was dating Prince Harry, white women rushed to criticize her hair. Tossing aside any awareness that a biracial woman might have different hair-care needs, they focused on her hair’s failure to match that of her new white sister‑in‑law, Duchess Catherine.”
She raises concerns on widespread colourism in America and in the rest of the world and encourages white feminists to scratch the surface to see what lies underneath their loud cries against patriarchy: white privilege and self-centredness. Kendall is here to remind all of us that the need for feminism has to be viewed beyond career progression and advancement of a select section of females. She wants feminists to do something to raise issues beyond themselves—to try to ensure basic safety, nourishment, wage equality, and freedom from gun violence for women of colour. And when Kendall speaks for women of colour , she also speaks for trans women and men, nonbinary and queer people who are often ignored by mainstream movements. Kendall’s discourse is written in 18 stimulating essays; “It’s Raining Patriarchy”, “Parenting While Marginalized,” “Hunger” to name a few. The essays are beautifully interconnected and collectively challenge commonly held notions of the posh, white society.
Alongside, Kendall emphasises the need for women to huddle together and support each other to fight patriarchy. In an interview given to Marie Claire, she defines her feminism as “the work that you do for your community, for yourself, and for your family. It’s less about the academic end, or about becoming a CEO, and more about survival and sustainability for the long-term—for your community and yourself.” And this is what best sums Kendall’s appeal.
Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America by Laila Lalami
A New York Times Editor’s Choice, longlisted for Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and named the best book of the year by Time, NPR, Bookpage and the L.A. Times, Lalami’s Conditional Citizens is an exploration of what it means to be American. A Moroccan-American Pulitzer Prize–finalist, Lalami narrates to us her journey from Morocco to the United States of America, and thereafter her journey from being an immigrant to a US citizen. Keeping her personal experience at the centre, Lalami discourses on civil rights and liberties in relation to US citizenship, and elucidates the harsh realities of the American melting-pot—plucking substantial examples from history, politics, and literature to corroborate her argument and concerns.
Laila Lalami
Lalami pinpoints how white supremacy is still the reigning power in America—well-nourished and supported by the legislation and popular opinion. Her essays highlight the impact of this preferred whiteness: the inevitable establishment of a caste system in which some lives are more important than others. She refers to people like herself as the “conditional citizens” of America, who have to perpetually deal with a hard-hearted treatment in the country. She raises concern about the suppressed voices of immigrants to America, who don’t have any real rights to speak against policies of the American government even after they become citizens. They are often mocked and told to go back to where they belong whenever they question any state policy, Lalami laments.
Her comprehensive essays expose both the implicit and explicit patterns via which injustices such as racial profiling, colourism, patriarchy, wage inequalities operate in the country. Lalami’s collection of well-researched essays expose the failure of the United States of America as a nation, as a homeland. In one of her interviews, Lalami explains how important it is to criticize the place one loves:
“I believe you can show allegiance to the United States and you can show your love for a country through a critical examination of it. I don’t think that allegiance needs to be blind. I really look at citizenship not as a status, but as a relationship, . . . because I look at it as a relationship, then I think that it’s an act of care to write a book like this.”
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Included by Time in the “The 100 Must-Read Books OF 2020,” and a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction, The Undocumented Americans is a collection of reported essays, an “autobiography-exposé” by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, a Harvard graduate, currently pursuing her doctoral studies at Yale. When Karla was just one and a half years old, her parents migrated to the US, leaving her behind in Ecuador; she was also brought to America when she was around five. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was once an undocumented American. In her essays, she narrates stories of people like herself simultaneously speaking from a place of personal experience.
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
In its entireness, her book is a critique of the American Dream for which immigrants go through trauma. She also talks about her struggles with mental health and the trauma she suffered in her early childhood years when her parents had to leave her behind in Ecuador. In an interview given to The Rumpus, she says:
“I write because I have to support my family. I write because I want to change the discourse around undocumented immigrants. I write because I want to do something dramatic to change the canon of American immigrant literature. And I write because I want to be a beacon of light to children of immigrants who feel like they have to deny their humanity in order to make progress for the community.”
Granting utmost respect to the undocumented Americans who she met in five different cities of the country, she has changed their names in her narration of their stories—connecting them to her own. Describing her work, Time puts it quite aptly: “For all the political debate that surrounds them, it remains rare for undocumented Americans to share their own stories in full,” which makes Villavicencio’s book a must-read.
Written by
Ambika Singh, PhD
Content Manager, Shulph