I wanted to become the right kind of person: savvy, culturally literate, respected by the metropolitan elite that might assume by default the cultural illiteracy of someone from Virginia.
I'm not trying to accuse the writer, but what I mean is. The main question I wanted to ask was why not having read something must be linked to insecurity. How to distinguish between recommending as condescension and recommending as genuine interest and exchange? It got sort of philosophical, running to the question of why people recommend things to other people in the first place. Marissa and I had a Facebook conversation about this article* on DFW, joined by other women who've experienced the same phenomenon of Men Recommending DFW. Some of the articles, like this one on the Post, even include helpful lists of women's books, because Lord knows no one can independently find women writers, hidden as they are behind vacuum cleaners and under changing tables.) The article I remembered best about it was this one on (cringe) XOJane, but you can also find work about it on Flavorwire, Medium, and elsewhere. (A number of other writers have done this year-long project. She metaphorically (or literally?) tossed it at the wall and went back to solely women writers. She can correct this memory if I've screwed it up, but I think it happened that she spent a year reading books only by women, and then when she finished the year and started a book by a man, it reminded her of all the crappy qualities of male writers and the reasons why she did the project in the first place.
These things combine to make her spurn books by men in a way I admire. Marissa is one of my favorite people for too many reasons to list here, but here are two relevant to this post: she is an exuberant feminist and a beautiful reader. Some weeks ago, I read this article, and I got into a conversation with my friend Marissa about it.
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