Voice Lessons: On Becoming a (Woman) Writer

This was one of the books Martine Leavitt mentioned in a VCFA lecture on Voice. I found it interesting and, in some parts, incisive and painfully accurate. She straddles writing and academe in familiar ways, so I was sort of depressed about this also, since a lot is familiar: the hollowness of most academic writing and thought, the artificial distinctions between "real" inquiry and story-writing, etc. It was also a bit disheartening, though predictable, to see that some of the problems I think I face alone are really shared -- the quest to unify a life, navigate gender prisons, etc are largely structural (disheartening because they won't relent in my lifetime, I guess). Those insights are won my the fact that Mairs knows her theory, but show more also brings the passion of a writer determined to place her own life at the center of the writing, "keeping it real." show less

Gave up about 2/3 of the way through for reasons of "I am sick of reading about white women coming to feminism in middle age." And the French feminism herein is not written well. Moving on.