Just Keep Reading

I’m pretty hard on myself based on what I’m reading, more specifically, on what I’m not reading.

Somewhere along my journey to complete my bachelor’s in English, I decided that some books were books I must read and others weren’t worth my time. I allowed my pretentious English major perspective to shape what I read for a few years, sloughing off YA novels and things I deemed “unimportant,” while I painstakingly and diligently returned to the dry Russian novels I decided I should been reading. Especially in my senior year, I began to change my perspective. I mostly have Lemon to thank for that, and also John Green because that man can write a YA novel. Haters gonna hate. (I’m looking at you English majors). Though, my perspective has changed, I still occasionally find myself feeling guilty for reading numerous modern novels in a row while ignoring novels familiar to course syllabi.

Somewhere during The Vandenburg Rewrites’ unintentional hiatus, I found myself in a reading rut. I am aggressively type A and I approach my reading goals as such. I make a list of books I both want to read and books I think I probably should read, and then I put them in a specific order making sure I don’t read too many books written in the same time period, about the same issues, by authors with similar voices subsequently. I force myself into an eclectic reading schedule, and I have always done this. I think it’s good to be thinking about what you’re reading and aiming for a variety of influences, but I’m also pretty sure it leads to inevitable reading slumps and hours of time wasting.

At the beginning of the summer, a reread of Mrs. Dalloway was at the top of my list. This was mostly because I had just watched The Hours. I still want to reread it, but a week after graduation, I could not get interested in it. I tried to read the first twenty pages of that novel for a solid week and got nowhere. I thought I didn’t want to read just because I didn’t want to read Mrs. Dalloway. This of course led to a Netflix binge, which really isn’t good for anyone. I emerged from that short slump with my personal discovery of Meg Wolitzer, but as my list would remind me, I shouldn’t read five Wolitzer novels in a row; that’s not very eclectic of me.  A few weeks later, still burdened with the guilt of the unfinished Woolf novel by my bed, I reached for The Moviegoer. I read a few pages, and the next day I went to Powell’s and got a few new releases I had been eager to read. I guess I’ll see you later Walker Percy, I thought as I ignored another layer of self-induced reader’s guilt. Last month I picked up The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, a book that I have heard my favorite professors reference too many times to not want to read it. Again, I devoted about a week and a half to this book as I tried to lose myself in it. And again, I found Netflix. I didn’t read anything for two weeks because I didn’t want to read what I had deemed the next book I must read for the sake of feeling like I was well-rounded.

Maybe this post isn’t relatable, but I am mostly writing this post to convince myself of something I’ve long needed to hear. It doesn’t matter what you’re reading, as long as you’re reading and not watching reruns of 30 Rock. (Reruns of 30 Rock are also important, but reading should also be happening regularly.) I don’t want to read Joseph Conrad or Virginia Woolf right now. I spent a lot of time with them in the past, they’re dear friends, I love them. But right now I want to read 21st century female authors’ perspectives on adolescents and 20-somethings navigating adulthood, and that’s ok.

There are plenty of instances when I am drawn to books that are deemed more “respectable”, the classics, if you will. I’m not rejecting them, but I don’t think an elevation of these books should lead to a mindset that says modern literature isn’t worth reading. This is what I’ve been reading all summer, and not for one second do I believe any book I’ve read in the past few months to have been a waste of time. Right now, I want to read Meg Wolitzer, Jennifer Egan, and Pamela Erens (I’m still working on you Karen Russell), and I’m going to keep doing that. When I hear the voice of Virginia and Flannery beckoning me, you guys will be the first to know.

Opening up my horizons to more modern literature as I continued to read the classics was exactly what I needed. The novels assigned by my professors are important works, and I will always be glad I read them, but they’re not the only important books. If we perpetuate a mindset that only the classics are worth our time, what happens to the voice of our generation? It’s important that that voice is formed through not just what we read on blogs, twitter, and satirical websites. We need literature. So whatever you’re reading, just keep reading it, even if your roommates, friends, and past professors may be silently judging you. Just don’t read Twilight. (I’m kidding, kind of.)

Kansas

The Virgin Suicides, Miley Cyrus and the Panopticon

Please accept our sincere-ish apologies for our absence. We moved, Kansas started her new internship, and some other things also probably happened. We’ve been very busy. But we both have posts going up this week, and we also filmed a video with our friend Alex last night in which he asks us questions about books. We’ll link to that as soon as it’s up. Now, to business.

Let’s talk about the subject that’s been on everyone’s mind: the decimation of America’s libraries by budget cuts, misguided efforts to keep up with rapidly advancing technology, and this guy sitting across from me who has been smacking his gum the whole time. Ugh. But seriously, let’s talk about Miley Cyrus at the VMAs.

I was, at some point in the last few years, introduced to the idea of the panopticon, which is a structure in which people are constantly watched. Or, rather, the idea is that if people are constantly aware that they could be under watch, they will behave as though they definitely are. Prisons are often constructed around this concept, which helps lighten the load of the security staff by creating the impression that a watching eye is omnipresent, regardless of whether it actually is. I was introduced to this idea by Frankie Landau-Banks, whose tale, should I ever write a post on “The Best Books to Give a Teenage Girl to Turn Her into a Feminist,” will be #1 on the list.

Miley Cyrus was raised in the panopticon. We all are, to some degree, but being the daughter of a celebrity and starring in such a money-making franchise since before puberty puts Miley in a special class she shares only with royalty (hello, Prince Baby George!) and fellow child stars. I cannot imagine the toll this takes on a child’s psyche, and so I won’t pretend to understand it (please read this if you want to hear the perspective of someone who does). I will say that it’s an incredibly unhealthy way to grow up, and that the need for privacy and independence is not an indication that something shameful must be happening when doors are closed, as so many seem to assume by burdening our young starlets with the responsibility to lead our children well. In fact, I find it so much more frightening to see celebrities who want every detail of their lives broadcast on TMZ.

I’ve spent the last couple of days rereading The Virgin Suicides, because, hey, have we mentioned we love Jeffrey Eugenides? Yes. We have.

What makes TVS so interesting right off the bat is that it’s told in first person plural. A group of neighborhood boys tell the story, collectively, of five sisters they knew growing up, all of whom committed suicide. Immediately, Eugenides creates the story with a narrator who is literally the male gaze personified, describing the sort of intense observation the boys direct toward the Lisbon sisters. It’s interesting for about a thousand reasons, not least of which is that the story is about two groups of young people, both of which are a hive more than individual people. In this reading, I took the time to see if Eugenides makes any effort to distinguish any of the boys telling the story from the others, and I think it’s safe to say he does not. In fact, he gives them equal page-time, as far as I can tell, and it’s never clear which of the myriad of young men mentioned are the ones telling the story as adults. I topped out my list at 56 names. Such a crowd couldn’t possibly all be developed characters, which is, of course, not their purpose. They are the panopticon to these girls.

In return, the sisters themselves are likewise interchangeable to the boys, which is shown at several points throughout the book. One young man asks Lux, the second-youngest, to a school dance, and her father agrees to let her go on the condition that he bring along other boys to accompany Lux’s sisters. They fight among themselves over who will get to go, never once thinking of who will go with which sister, because it makes no difference in the boys’ minds. They are the Lisbon girls, differentiation be damned.

The boys place their expectations, assumptions and dreams onto the sisters, who are no more real to them than television characters, except in their geographical nearness. After the events of the dance, the girls are restricted to their house by their mother, and the boys never get another chance to know them more thoroughly. They are banned from school, church, and all social activity-- for their own protection, in the eyes of their mother, after the first suicide.

One article I read posited the idea that, since the basic outline of the story is all that’s known for sure (five sisters killed themselves using methods x, y and z during these men’s adolescence, for reasons largely unknown), and the rest is mostly conjecture, the girls themselves are presented as virgins sacrificed to the narrative of the men telling the story. These were incredibly formative events in their lives, signifying the surreality of youth and the innocence they all felt themselves losing. But as long as they tell this story as their own, they continually reject more qualified opinions in favor of the narrative they prefer: that these five young women needed saving, that they killed themselves to put their watchers in the same kind of prison they were escaping, and that they died preserving their perfection. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the men telling this story firmly believe that the girls and their actions belong to them and them alone. The Lisbon sisters are exclusively objects, with no agency of their own, only allowed to be what the boys want them to be.

Which brings me back to Miley.

The danger of imposing our own narrative on real people is that they are only ever given the chance to fail us. The Lisbon girls killed themselves, and it cemented the idealized version of them the young men insisted on having. We’re left without ever really knowing what they were thinking or feeling, because no one was interested in finding that out. And when we look at Miley Cyrus, or Mary-Kate Olsen, or Amanda Bynes, and we’re only interested in reinforcing our beliefs that “she’s a slut,” or “she’s crazy,” or whatever, we take away any chance of knowing what their story actually is-- what message they might be trying to communicate, or what new thing they might be trying to do, or that they might actually need help that doesn’t come in the form of tweets. We sacrifice them as real people in order to preserve the narrative we hold so dearly.

            "But this is all a chasing after the wind. The essence of the suicides consisted not of sadness or mystery but simple selfishness. The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind...They made us participate in their own madness, because we couldn't help but retrace their steps, rethink their thoughts, and see that none of them led to us... It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling..."

           -Lemon

Eggers is the New Miller

“He could not pay her tuition because he had made a series of foolish decisions in his life. He had not planned well. He had not had courage when he needed it.”

So here it goes, The Vandenburg Rewrite’s second post of our Dave Eggers Week (by week I mean about 8-9 days). If I were more intelligent, I would have insisted that I post first because I’ve been experiencing a bit of a block all week figuring out how I was going to follow Lemon’s last post. I’m definitely not going to try to live up to Lemon’s subject matter, and though I love the book I’m going to be writing about, this book for me was not life-altering, it’s not my favorite book in the world, but it’s great literature that I believe is important.

In his latest novel, A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers presents what I have interpreted as a modern day Death of a Salesman. The protagonist, Alan Clay, is a struggling divorcee trying to maintain a veneer of success, keep his house, and pay for his child’s education amidst the economic crisis. Similar to Arthur Miller’s work, Eggers strikes a chord with far too many Americans at the time of the novel’s release last summer. The novel does well to point out the complicated struggles of many Americans during this time in our history, but the motivations of Clay and his reflections on how he got to this point reveal issues within the American concept of success. It is, by and large, a criticism of the American dream.

Clay is introduced as a distraught character for numerous obvious reasons. He can’t pay his bills, he can’t catch a break, and he can’t give his daughter what she needs. Ultimately, Clay is a character who sees himself as a failure, and he has one chance to redeem himself. He must put on an impressive hologram presentation for King Abdullah, of Saudi Arabia, that will persuade the King to hire his firm to equip the country’s latest up-and-coming urban development, KAEC, with the necessary technology. Hence, the book title.

Again, it would be easy to explain Clay’s feelings of failure by crediting to his lack of professional and financial success, but, again, just like Willy Loman, (I can’t stop seeing comparisons you guys) his feelings of inadequacy are deeper, a more complex issue within the fabric of our American culture.

Eggers is bringing attention to the same old America that authors were talking about 60 years ago. We’re still obsessed with living up to one generalized definition of success. To be a man, for an American, means to be depended on, to feel needed, to be the foundation of a household, the provider, the backbone. To be a man means to be successful in every aspect of the word. Most importantly, to be a man means to be strong, to never be weak, and to never admit your own failure. That’s Alan Clay’s greatest sorrow; he can no longer ignore his weakness, his failures, or his inadequacy according to his culture.  It’s this definition of success that leads to his feelings of worthlessness rather than his actual mistakes. Though we all make mistakes, it’s our perspectives that influence how we weigh those mistakes and the significance we place on them.  

At different points throughout the novel, Clay recognizes the problematic thinking ingrained in him by his culture. He places the goals society has deemed acceptable as his ultimate priority which essentially dooms him from the start. Despite this reflection, he is never able to break free from those expectations. It’s the great lie of the American Dream, displayed for the reader in a modern yet familiar setting. To expect that the possession of a family, a home, and a socially acceptable profession will bring you happiness will only render disappointment sooner or later.

The shame of Clay’s failure drives him, quite literally, to the other side of the world, and his continued failure causes him to never want to face the picture of success he failed to live up to. At the end of the novel, despite Clay’s momentary reflections, we see that obtaining success is more important than the non-material life he has created, mainly his relationship with those in his life he is close to. He opts to stay in Saudi Arabia, despite further rejection, rather than returning home to his family empty-handed.

Sure, he doesn’t literally take his own life to provide for his family, Willy Loman style, but he does so in a sense. He cuts himself off from his former life to exercise every attempt to put his daughter through college and maintain the same comfortable home she has grown up in. In both works, you see the motivations of these men not being out of love for their families (though I don’t doubt they have love for their families). Rather, their greatest motivation is the American definition of what it means to be a man, their sense of duty. Eggers is pointing out that we really haven’t come so far in the past 60 years. We maintain the same damaging standards in our culture, and it’s not doing anyone any good.

Put Eggers on your shelf next to Fitzgerald, Miller, and O’Neil. He is, for me, a constant reminder that modern literature is in no way inferior to our classics and our literary cannon. Though he is by no means the only important voice among contemporary writers, he is a great one.

-Kansas

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Timing is a bitch.

Kansas and I talked about doing a Dave Eggers theme this week, which I’m only too happy to do, since he is one of my favorite living human beings. The plan is for her to write about Hologram for the King, his latest book, for me to write about A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, his first book, and for us to film a video about our experience meeting him this spring. So. Here goes.

I first read Mr. Eggers’ semi-maybe-fictionalized memoir when I was seventeen. My mother had just died, and two days later, the book appeared on my chair at church, given to me by the sister of one of my friends. I hadn’t known my mother was going to die, because no one did, because she wasn’t. Until she was dead.

So I read the book, because I was happy to take any help I could get, as long as I didn’t have to ask for it. And our pal Dave happened to be exactly what I needed.

The book is a chronicle of the years following his parents’ deaths. Both died in the span of a month, leaving 21-year-old Dave as the primary caretaker for his 7-year-old brother Toph. It’s self-aware, ridiculous, honest,  and absolutely lives up to its title.

Young Dave, raising his little brother in the late 1990s, thought a lot about how other people thought of him and his grief. He viewed himself as a tragic hero, struck by fate and watched by all. Which made sense to me. It felt like the world was watching me. I think Dave did a better job managing his image than I did, though, because mostly what I did was nothing. I didn’t want anyone to see me cry, so no one did. I didn’t talk to anyone about how I felt. People assuming I would be sad or upset felt like an insult to me, so I decided to show those people they were wrong.

But weird shit happens when someone close to you dies. Normal things, too, like people bringing you meals and sending cards, but also definitely weird things, like giving you money and telling you they know what message your lost loved one is trying to send to you. People don’t know how to handle the situation, or you, so even if they mean well, it doesn’t always come across that way. And you have so very little control over yourself in those moments that containing the anger and sadness and lostness inside you seems a worthy goal, and if the people around you can’t even handle not screwing up a condolence card, how can you expect them to handle what you feel right now? Especially when you can’t handle it yourself, because no one told you it would be this way. No one told you that even in the middle of all that loss, all those parts of you that are gone or buried or numb, part of you feels good. Part of you knows you were born to play this role, the tragic hero, the chosen one, the one who was assigned this lot in life because you are special. No one told you how good it feels to be watched, to be scrutinized for any signs of falling apart or looking for relief in the wrong places or anything that could be pitied, and give the watchers nothing. No one told you that. Except Dave Eggers.

And here I am now. That Friday was five years ago this week. This Friday I got the news that my dad has cancer. That Sunday, this book came to me, and today, this Sunday, I’m thinking about all the ways it’s changed me since then.

I’ll be honest: I’m sure there are betters paths through the journey of loss than the one in this book. Repression and manipulation are very real dangers, ones that my poor little Anglo-Saxon heart couldn’t always defend against, and ones that this story sort of glamorizes.

Regardless, I will never stop recommending this book. “We read to know we are not alone,” and no book has ever made me feel less alone than this one. I think that’s why I write about books, too. Whatever I’m facing, whatever you’re facing, there is nothing new under the sun. Someone else has faced it and they’ve probably put it into a book.

“I can tell you more. I have so many stories... I can do it any way you want, too-- I can do it funny, or maudlin, or just straight, uninflected-- anything. You tell me. It’s all there, all these things at once, so it’s up to you-- you choose, you pick... I was born of both stability and chaos. I have seen nothing and everything. I am twenty-four but feel ten thousand years old. I am emboldened by youth, unfettered and hopeful, though inextricably tied to the past and future by my beautiful brother, who is part of both. Can you not see that we’re extraordinary? That we were meant for something else, something more? All this did not happen to us for naught, I can assure you-- there is no logic to that, there is logic only in assuming that we suffered for a reason. Just give us our due. I am bursting with the hopes of a generation, their hopes surge through me, threaten to burst my hardened heart! Can you not see this? I am at once pitiful and monstrous, I know, and this is all my own making, I know-- not the fault of my parents but all my own creation, yes, but I am the product of my environment, and thus representative, must be exhibited, as inspiration and cautionary tale. Can you not see what I represent? I am both a) martyred moralizer and b) amoral omnivore born of the suburban vacuum + idleness + television + Catholicism + alcoholism + violence; I am a freak in secondhand velour, a leper who uses L’Oreal Anti-Sticky Mega Gel. I am rootless, ripped from all foundations, an orphan raising an orphan and wanting to take away everything there is and replace it with stuff I’ve made. I have nothing but my friends and what’s left of my little family. I need community, I need feedback, I need love, connection, give-and-take-- I will bleed if they will love. Let me try. Let me prove... I could die soon. I probably already have AIDS. Or cancer. Something bad will happen to me, I know, I know this because I have seen it so many times. I will be shot in an elevator, I will be swallowed in a sinkhole, will drown, so I need to bring this message now; I only have so much time, I know that sounds ridiculous, I seem young, healthy, strong, but things happen, I know you may not think so, but things happen to me, to those around me, they truly do, you’ll see, so I need to grab this while I can, because I could go at any minute-- Oh please let me show this to millions...

And that will heal you?

Yes!"

-Lemon

Because You Don't Always Have to Read Novels

I love novels for a lot of reasons. I love the sense of accomplishment you gain from finishing a lengthy and dense book; I love how attached you grow to the characters you’ve spent days on end with; I love the way storylines can become disjointed and chaotic only to come around in the end after dozens of suspenseful chapters. Reading a novel is a unique experience, but as much as I love them, some of the most memorable and impactful stories I’ve read haven’t been novels. I love short stories. I love the way that in order to create a good short story, every sentence is crucial; a writer has to be precise. I love that because there aren’t hundreds of pages to communicate what you want to say as an author, short stories usually deliver a singular, complex, and often convicting message. I love that so many things remain unanswered in a short story. It’s frustrating at times, but that’s one reason why I find them so haunting, and in turn, life-altering.

I took a short stories class two years ago where we studied short story writers and their form. It brought me a new appreciation for the genre, and one of the stories I read in that class I’ve never been able to get out of my head. Ursula LeGuin’s story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” is my favorite. The narrator speaks candidly with the reader throughout the brief, four page story, forcing the reader to examine their own behaviors and the value they place on human life. LeGuin paints the picture of a town that knows no suffering, no pain, no law (because it would be unnecessary) and a life that meets the conditions of happiness for every individual living there. When the narrator has adequately described Omelas as the most perfect place on earth, they reveal the qualifying factor. In the middle of town, in an unspecified location, below the street level, there exists a suffering, ambiguously gendered and aged child. As long as the child continues to suffer, continues to fester in its own filth, and continues to deteriorate from malnutrition, those in Omelas can continue life as they have always known it.

Perhaps the most interesting detail of the story is the fact that all of the citizens of Omelas know this child exists. In fact, most of them, at least those old enough to go, have seen this child. The narrator then begins to divulge the convicting layers of justification that the citizens engage in daily, bearing an eerie resemblance to the type of arguments Americans assign to an array of topics all the time. LeGuin brilliantly leaves the details of the child’s identity and location vague, forcing the reader to determine the scapegoat in their culture or situation. The reader must assign this child’s identity, and the reader must decide if they will continue on, enjoying the life they’ve been enjoying as a result of the suffering of another, or choose to live differently altering every aspect of the life they’ve known.

Everytime I read this story I am astounded by how much so few pages affects me; I am taken aback with completely new conclusions and convictions; I am amazed by LeGuin’s thoughtful and precise writing, and I am reminded how important it is for us to engage all areas of literature, how reading short stories is not lazy or only for those who “don’t do” novels. I am humbled by a writer and a story that can do so much with so little.

Kansas

Lemon's Top Five Strong Female Role Models for Young Women, Fictional Category

When you’re complimented on something, how do you take it?

I haven’t been paying much attention to how my guy friends do this, but among the ladies, it’s very common for them to say thank you and accept it, but very uncommon for any of us to believe the nice things that are said about us. We hear them, but for a lot of us, actually incorporating them into the way we view ourselves doesn’t even really seem like an option. Everything bad or mean we hear or think about ourselves gets stored away forever, but the nice things don’t stick for more than a few minutes.

I should note that when I say “we,” I mostly mean everybody else, because I actually have no problem with this (most days). I take compliments as confirmation of all the awesome things I already think about myself. There’s a whole other set of problems associated with that, of course (borderline arrogance?), but I have to say that I think it’s incredibly important to teach young women to view themselves as deserving of the praise they receive. They need to know that the good things have just as much validity as the bad things, and even if they want to choose to filter them a little, it is an absolute outrage that so many young women are incapable of believing anything truly good about themselves. The constant comparison to other girls, celebrities and images in the media, as well as the overwhelming cultural emphasis on appearance make it so that no compliment about looks ever really rings true, and no compliment about anything else matters.

I credit a lot of my skill in this area to books. Find characters you relate to, respect them, and it gets easier to respect yourself.

I was recently home in Seattle after surprising Papa Lemon for Father’s Day, which meant that I was with the half of my books that don’t live in Portland. And it seems like as good a day as any to talk about some of the books that made it possible for me to believe that I am smart, funny, and deserve respect. I will also credit my parents, of course, because they probably have more to do with my self-image than the books do. But I do consider these books influential, and I think it’s maybe even more important for young women than for anyone else to be able to find themselves in books. It helps them see themselves as valuable, and gives them something to relate to in a positive way. So. Here are my Top Five Strong Female Role Models for Young Women (Fictional Category).

1. Ella, from Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

This story is a retelling of Cinderella in which the protagonist has been cursed since birth with obedience. The fairy who made her this way meant it to be a good thing-- girls were supposed to be obedient. But of course this can be abused, and Ella spends her whole life finding ways to be herself in spite of it. Of course eventually she falls in love and has to figure out how to break the curse so she can be with the Prince (which involves saving the kingdom, in an entirely relational sort of way).

It wasn’t until thinking about this recently that I realized how incredible this story was. When I was a little girl, I loved it because it was Cinderella. Now I love it because it’s about a young woman who knows she needs to make her own choices in a situation where she can’t, and she fights to be able to do what she wants, which is to protect the people she loves.

2. Cimorene, from the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede

Also a sort of twisted fairy tale set-up. Young Lemon was not as widely-read as adult Lemon.

In this quartet, Cimorene is a princess who just wants to do things that are interesting. But princesses, in this world, are typically beautiful, vapid and constantly plotting ideas to put themselves in harm’s way so they can be rescued by a prince or an industrious knight. Cimorene wants more than that. She wants adventure, which she gets, of course, and ends up saving her true love, their son and entire kingdoms in the process. She’s badass, and these books are hilarious.

3. Hermione Granger, from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter would have died in book one if it weren’t for Hermione. Everyone knows that. At the very least he’d be stuck in that chamber with the logic puzzle and the potions until someone else came and rescued him. She’s the brains and nothing would get done without her. Still, she has to go through a process of learning to accept herself. She’s always been smart and hardworking, and her fellow students kind of hate her for it. But everyone grows up and moves on to worrying about more important things, like Voldemort living inside her best friend.

Oh, and that’s another thing: Being with Harry and Ron all the time puts Hermione in kind of a boys’ club, which is fine, but she keeps up healthy female friendships as well, which completely baffle the boys.  Hermione is the only one among them who completely understands the importance of how someone feels, which is something they learn from as the series progresses-- they wouldn’t have been able to find the Horcruxes without Hermione’s ability to empathize. I’m going to stop now. Don’t let me talk about Harry Potter.

4. Anne Shirley from the Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery

Not typically feminist, I’ll give you that. Anne’s story includes the fact that at the time she couldn’t be married and have a job, among other forms of oppression. But here are a couple of things that put her on my list:

1) She goes to college. Lots of her friends went to school so they could be teachers, which is all well and good. But women, for the most part, were not going to college then. She was the first girl from the Island to get a B.A., and she didn’t let anything get in her way-- not lack of money or gossipy old women or homesickness.

2) She doesn’t let anybody stop her from being who she is. Her caretakers expect a boy, and the girl she turns out to be is entirely overwhelming to nearly everyone around her. But she stays who she is, with her insane imagination, her exuberant love for everything and everyone, and, of course, the hair. She’s unapologetically herself, and she finds her place because of it.

3) During a recent reread, I was struck by the emphasis on Anne making her own way. She’s repeatedly told by the most important women in her life that it’s important for her to be able to make her own living and not rely on a husband, that she is capable of as much as any man, and that even though falling in love is a wonderful thing, she is loved and valued whether she gets married or not.

5. Meg Murray, from the Kairos series by Madeleine L'Engle

Most popularly, Meg is the star of A Wrinkle in Time. She’s brilliant in some ways and an idiot in others, and she grows into a capable, confident woman as the series progresses. But she does not start out that way, which I think was my favorite thing about Meg growing up. She gave me hope.

Meg has to rescue her father in her first installment, her brother in the second, and the world from nuclear war in the third, all with help from friends, family and various fantastic creatures along the way. She’s one of my favorite fictional protagonists of all time, exactly because she’s so relatable: her failings and strengths are both very real. She never quite knows exactly what to do or how to solve the problems in front of her, but she knows that it’s important to value every person, to love, and to encourage a sense of worth and purpose in everyone she meets, which always gets her there eventually.

There are my recommendations, if you’re looking for books to suggest for your sisters, nieces, young friends, etc. Happy reading!

  -Lemon

Meg Wolitzer, Where Have You Been All of My Life?

"People usually thought we were a 'good' couple, and I suppose that once, a long, long time ago, back when the cave painting were first sketched on the rough walls at Lascaux, back when the earth was uncharted and everything seemed hopeful, this was true. But soon enough we moved from the glory and self-love of any young couple to the green-algae swamp of what is delicately known as "later life."

A few weeks ago when Lemon and I were at work (we work together, live in the same room, write this blog together, and we still choose to hang out with each other everyday) we were perusing our respective Amazon accounts (Where do we work?! It’s fine, we really do work), and Lemon brought up a new book that sounded awesome: The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer. As we read some of the reviews we concluded that Wolitzer was probably a literary soul mate of ours and we couldn’t figure out why we hadn’t read anything by her before. We took to reading Amazon reviews of her other novels almost immediately and learned that basically every single one sounded fantastic. Lucky for us, we had a planned book-buying date the following day where we both purchased multiple novels by our soon-to-be favorite author of the moment.

Lemon read The Uncoupling first, which I can’t wait to read myself, while I read The Wife. I debated whether or not I wanted to review this book because it focuses on the relationship between two people who have been married for forty years. Seeing as how I am currently unmarried (at least for another 123 days), I wasn’t sure I would have much insight to bring to this topic because I obviously know nothing about being married. As I thought about the book more I realized that there was a lot more to the plot and the themes were not mutually exclusive to those in a marriage relationship.

I don’t want to reveal too much about the novel in this post because there are some pretty major plot twists, so I’m going to be fairly general here. The novel begins with a woman, Joan Castleman, deciding, on an airplane, flying over the ocean, sitting next to her husband of forty years, that she wants a divorce. As Joan recounts the past forty years, the humiliation and betrayal she has suffered at the hands of her husband’s actions, the stifling of her own dreams and aspirations that have come as a result of her marriage to this man, I was reminded of the Kate Chopin’s tragic novella, The Awakening. Side note: I adore The Awakening, so the similarities were enticing, but I digress. There was a huge difference between Chopin’s story and Wolitzer’s. Wolitzer’s suffering housewife was married in the the late 50s with the early parts of her marriage being largely in the 1960s. That being said, unlike Edna in Chopin’s story, Wolitzer’s protagonist had other social options than to get married. She didn’t need marriage to secure her place in society, and she didn’t need it in order to be successful in the eyes of her culture. She chose marriage, and she chose her husband, yet at 40,000 feet in the air, after years of a difficult marriage, Joan has an awakening of her own.

As Joan’s perspective of the past forty years are described in the novel, the reader can’t help but root for this strong and brilliant woman to leave this man who is uninterested in monogamy or anything else self-sacrificing. The reader, like many other characters in the novel, see her potential that has been squelched by this “terrible man.” I found myself guilty of this surface-level reading up until the novel’s end when Wolitzer’s forces you to look at the situation, at the Castleman’s, more complexly.

Sure, Joan’s husband could’ve, in a lot of ways, been a better husband, but she concludes that this situation she has found herself in, this marriage, was not something that happened to her, it was something she chose. The treatment she endured within her marriage was also something she chose to approach passively, the decision to not pursue her dreams, to ride on the laurels of her husband’s success thinking it enough to satisfy her own ambitions, was a mistake she made. She recognizes the responsibility each individual has in their current situations. Obviously, we all come into contact with people who are selfish, or self-absorbed and aren’t looking out for our own best interest but if that person gains significant influence and say in our lives, that is, most often times, our own doing. We are never innocent in our situations because we are all broken humans who fail to love others and love ourselves as much as we should.

At the end of the novel Joan concludes that she is going to make up for the past forty years, leave her husband, and finally begin her life, ousting him for all the wrong he’s done in their marriage. The thought of such an action is completely satisfying, to both Joan and the reader, but the time comes for her to act on this and she doesn’t follow through. One could conclude that Joan is simply following the trend she has set for the past forty years in her marriage, a natural passivity and desire to remain neutral in her husband’s actions, but this is not the case in her final act of the novel. She recognizes this satisfaction is fleeting and would never make up for the fact that she has fault in the situation. In the greater scheme, revealing her husband to be the man he truly is wouldn’t really satisfy the disappointment she feels for not pursuing her dreams and her talents.

We all make choices; we can blame those involved with our choices when our lives don’t turn out the way we thought they should, or we can recognize our own hand in it. Taking responsibility in our circumstances allows for real change and self-examination rather than fleeting self-satisfaction. I don’t yet know the weight of what it means to weave your life into another’s for the rest of your life, and there are many things within this book that I don’t feel I can speak to, but I know that marriage is a decision made by two people, and we can’t live our lives in blame of the other and expect to grow.  

Kansas

We Can Do Better: Zadie Smith's On Beauty

All right, let’s talk about beauty.

I can’t come close to claiming authority on how black women feel in a culture full of white beauty standards, but I can talk about how it feels to exist as a white woman in a culture full of impossible beauty standards. Part of me doesn’t want to write this because it feels like beating a dead horse, but Kansas and I had a conversation the other day that made it clear the horse isn’t dead yet but definitely deserves to be.

We were talking about cellulite, and how there’s an insanely large industry built around getting rid of it. Companies who have a profit to make have successfully convinced us that a) cellulite is unattractive, b) having it is something to be ashamed of, and c) getting rid of it is possible. And none of those things are true. As far as we can tell, all women have some cellulite, no matter their weight or build, and not a single product has ever been proven to get rid of it. I’m five feet and seven inches tall, solidly above average, and whether I weigh 100 pounds or 130 pounds, whether I am solid muscle or haven’t exercised in a year, I still have cellulite. Which, I will be honest, has never bothered me, because of my superhuman self-esteem, probably, but that doesn’t mean that seeing celeb beach bods on tabloid covers denounced for something only Photoshop has control over doesn’t drive me a little up the wall.

So I read a book like Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, and while there are a lot of themes at play other than beauty, I am drawn to the universal insecurities that all women have from being constantly told they are not, physically, good enough. The novel tells the story of a family in the aftermath of the father’s affair. Howard is a white, English college professor, and his wife, Kiki, is black and less educated. Their three children embrace varying sides of their heritages. Race, class, education and belonging are all explored, but noting that Smith chose to title her work On Beauty, passages like the following stuck with me the most:

“This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn’t be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a woman’s magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki’s knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies-- it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.”

I think most women feel the same way, when they stop to think about it. It’s Barbie’s world, we’re just living in it. It’s a dangerous way of thinking: we should be perfect. If we aren’t, we deserve nothing more or less than hate, from ourselves and from others. Affairs like Howard’s, then, are to be expected, and when they happen it’s only a confirmation of what so many women already believe about themselves.

Claire, the woman with whom Howard had the original affair, is interestingly optimistic about the future of women’s self-image (long quote coming, but stick with it, I promise it’s worth it):

“And were they still like that, [Claire} wondered-- these new girls, this new generation? Did they still only want to be wanted? Were they still objects of desire rather than desiring subjects? Thinking of the girls sat cross-legged with her in this basement, of Zora in front of her, of the angry girls who shouted their poetry from the stage-- no, she could see no serious change. Still starving themselves, still reading women’s magazines that explicitly hate women, still cutting themselves with little knives in places they think can’t be seen, still faking their orgasms with men they dislike, still lying to everybody about everything. Strangely, Kiki Belsey had always struck Claire as a wonderful anomaly in exactly this sense... her beauty was awesome, almost unspeakable, but more than this she radiated an essential female nature Claire had already imagined in her poetry-- natural, honest, powerful, unmediated, full of something like genuine desire. A goddess of the everyday... For Claire, Kiki was proof that a new kind of woman had come into the world as promised, as advertised.”  

But while Claire’s optimism is encouraging, the overall conclusion is that it’s unwarranted. It is clear from the rest of the narrative that Kiki doesn't think of herself this way at all. She sees herself now as overweight, undesirable, unworthy in comparison with the women her husband is surrounded by. Her daughter Zora is nineteen and the inevitable heir of the same cycle. She is beautiful now, but won’t always be, and her intelligence and force of will make men react negatively to her, choosing other beautiful women whose personalities offer less resistance to their single-minded goal. Kiki knows that there is always beauty to be found, but never will it stay with one woman for her whole lifetime. Claire's idea of the "essential feminine nature" is a wonderful one, relying on the best characteristics of humanity rather than anything stereotypically feminine, and it is something for all of us to pursue. But until our value is found outside our beauty, that ideal nature will never be possible. 

-Lemon