More New Writing Canons

 I published Canons - One for Women Writers back on March 18, so this is a bit of a follow-up.

Politico published France’s feminist literary revolution which makes some interesting points for France and maybe for us:

According to analytics company Livres Hebdo, between 2017 and 2020, there was a whopping 72 percent increase in feminist books sold in the well-being and health genre, a 44 percent uptick in feminist children’s books and a 15 percent increase in feminist non-fiction books.

A growing number of feminist titles have been bestsellers in France too, with Titiou Lecoq’s “Le Couple et l’Argent” (2022), Mona Chollet’s “Réinventer L’Amour” (2021) and Virginie Despentes’s “Cher Connard” (2022) topping the country’s charts for consecutive weeks in the past two years.

Meanwhile, specialized bookstores have popped up in Lyon, Paris, Toulouse, Nantes, Nice and Lille, and a feminist book festival — Salon du Livre féministe — that launched in 2021 was held for a second time last October, boasting 3,000 daily visitors in Paris.

“It’s great to see women — young and old — and men reading up on feminism and educating themselves,” said Juliette Debrix, who opened a feminist bookstore called Un livre, une tasse de thé (A book, a cup of tea) in Paris in late 2020. “There’s a real buzz going around. More people call themselves feminist and bring issues of gender equality to the fore.”

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“Books can open people’s minds and change things. There’s hope that all this work can impact the world of politics and that institutions will start redressing gross gender inequality in the country” said Geffard.

And feminist books have helped launch political careers now too.

Lesbian activist and politician Alice Coffin’s book “Le Genie Lesbien” helped raise her profile; and eco-feminist Sandrine Rousseau’s 2019-release “Parler,” a book about sexual violence, helped boost her female electorate during her campaign for president last year.

For all the progress, however, one issue remains: Feminist books about minorities and race are still considered marginal or sectarian by many publishers in France.

The Guardian's 'Open the doors and let these books in' - what would a truly diverse reading list look like? collects suggestions from a variety of writers, with an emphasis on decolonizing English school syllabi. I think it applicable to this country, too. I like this passage as a guide to us in the States:

 Pankaj Mishra

To decolonise the English syllabus is not to claim racial victimhood or assert superior virtue; it is to expand the imagination of students of literature. Our experience of the world grows ever more complex; any syllabus, whether of history or literature, has to engage with that complexity. That this imperative has to be argued at all is one sign among many of the political and intellectual derangement induced by an imperial fantasy of self-sufficiency and proud isolation.

Of the books mentioned, I have read only Toni Morrison's Beloved and The Bluest Eye, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie ( who offered up her suggestions) and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient. Two writers mentioned I have read are VS Naipaul and Arundhati Roy, and another writer who I have read and who also makes a contribution is Arundhati Roy. Ms. Roy makes an important point in her recommendation - one very applicable to America:

For an English literature syllabus in Britain to entirely or at least radically “decolonise” itself would be an ambitious enterprise. But an argument for there to be greater diversity in the canon of what is considered “great literature” is surely unimpeachable.

If there are still institutions of learning that want their students to remain innocent of the myriad new ways of looking at old histories, at our fascinating present and our uncertain future, God help those young people.

Oh, what the children of Florida have to deal with!

But we can do like the more curious of Floridians: go to our local libraries, go to Thrift Books, or go to Amazon, and get the books mentioned in the above two articles. 

We can only blame ourselves for our ignorance.

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