A few recs on the last day of Women's History Month; or, "She's fun"
1. Dolores - A documentary about civil rights activist Dolores Huerta, who was active in the sixties; and through my childhood, adolescence, and college years; and is still active today. With Cesar Chavez, she co-founded the United Farm Workers. UFW was always news in California, my home state, but I don't know how far outside that the news reached. You have probably heard of Cesar Chavez--your town may even have a street named after him! But you may not have heard of Huerta, because a lot of people in the movement didn't like having a woman at the forefront. Especially a woman like Huerta, who was an imperfect model of a certain idea of womanhood. And as we know, our culture wants its women leaders to be perfect while men are allowed all the humanity in the world. The doc is full of great footage and information about the movement and Huerta's role in it.
Press conference with the UFW leadership, Dolores Huerta, Richard César Chávez, and Rick Tejada-Flores 1972
Glen Pearcy - digital print
Courtesy of The Phillip & Sala Burton Center for Human Rights,
image provided by Farmworker Movement Documentation Project
2. The Male Glance - a worth-it long read by Lili Loofbourow that is relevant to anyone who is a woman, writes about women, creates other art about women, or knows a woman. So, everyone.
“I have observed that male writers tend to get asked what they think and women what they feel,” said Eleanor Catton after winning the Man Booker Prize for her novel The Luminaries. “In my experience, and that of a lot of other women writers, all of the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are to be where they are—about luck and identity and how the idea struck them.” There it is again: chance, accident, and the passive construction of female artistry—not how did you create, but how were you struck? Catton puts it well: “The interviews much more seldom engage with the woman as a serious thinker, a philosopher, as a person with preoccupations that are going to sustain them for their lifetime.”
Once I was a guest on a podcast of a somewhat serious nature, and I had somewhat serious things to say. My work is somewhat serious, though in person I'm a bit more lighthearted. My thoughts and opinions are somewhat serious, though I try to hold them lightly and with good humor. The host was a woman and the podcast interview went well.
A couple episodes later, a male author of adult litfic I've met and admire was a guest on the same podcast. The host referenced something I said, and said my name, and this guest said, "Oh, she's fun."
Now...it's true. I am fun. But to hear me and my whole body of work that has reached some critical acclaim and sometimes won awards reduced to "fun" was just depressing. I and my work were recipients of the male glance that scanned me and heard me laugh once and thought: Fun. "Fun" is a word I've heard a lot in my ten years of writing YA. When I describe what I do, I have heard something along the lines of, "That sounds fun!" as a response a shocking number of times.
(For the record, it's rarely fun.)
Anyway! One final rec:
3. I've been thinking a lot lately about Harriet Jacobs and her memoir, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The Classic Slave Narratives were assigned in a class I took, I think in high school though it could have been my first year of college. All of them affected me, but I remember Jacobs' story particularly. Her writing about her experiences was basically the first time the rape and sexual harrassment of women slaves was brought into open and wide discussion. She eventually escaped to freedom, and continued to work as an abolitionist before, during, and after the Civil War. She worked and raised money to improve the lives of recently freed slaves and black refugees, with a focus on education. If you aren't familiar with Jacobs, she is well worth your time.
I know my letters have not been necessarily tiny in length, but I make up for it be being tiny in frequency.
I'll be hitting the road a little in April, and will perhaps see you at either The Festival of Faith and Writing (registration is almost closed!) or the New England SCBWI annual spring conference!