2 women writers and essayists worth reading

I’m always on the hunt for good women writers and essayists, particularly non-fiction as I spent my career as a journalist. Here are two I’ve found this summer and recommend:

How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran:

 

Moran is a British columnist whom I discovered when I listened to this laugh-out-loud  interview with Terry Gross on her public radio show Fresh Air. Moran talks in a fast, clipped way and her British accent makes everything she says seem pretty funny. Her writing is the same. In How to Be a Woman, Moran chronicles her life from adolescent womanhood and well into adulthood, going into all the stuff that females talk about as they try to make sense of their changing bodies and lives. Two-thirds of her chapters begin with “I” as in “I Need a Bra!” and “I Am in Love!” and “I Go Lap-Dancing!” She’s not afraid of exclamation marks, to be sure!

In the Fresh Air interview, she read part of the chapter “I Am A Feminist!” She talks about when she was 15 and read Germaine Greer and how she realized she was a feminist. And she mocks women who don’t know if they are feminists. “We need the word ‘feminism’ back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29 percent of American women would describe themselves as feminist — and only 42 percent of British women — I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? ‘Vogue,’ by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good s*** GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF SURVEY?”

See what I mean? Hilarious.

Related: Summer Reading for Writers: 4 Recommendations

Bukowski in a Sundress by Kim Addonizio:

 

I found this book when I was perusing the “New Non-Fiction” shelf at my local library. I didn’t know of Addonizio, but I did know of Bukowski. And the image of a woman dressed like a biker chick drinking a glass of wine while sitting on her kitchen counter gave me an idea of what to expect. The subtitle, “Confessions of a Writing Life” got me. Turns out Addonizio writes both poetry and prose and has written writing guides for poets. The chapters in this book have intriguing titles like “How to Succeed in Po Biz” and “Children of the Corn” and “How to Try to Stop Drinking so Much.”

The content ranges from the sharing the desperation of trying to be a writer who earns decent money to the equally desperate search for a soul mate and the guilt of two marriages that didn’t work out. Her prose made me laugh out loud a few times, shake my head and roll my eyes in disgust at others. Her chapter titled “Space” about her mother’s decline into Parkinson’s disease and dementia is painful to read, tears in my eyes at one point, laughing just a few paragraphs later. Addonizio’s life is a lot racier than mine is or has ever been, but her struggles resonate. Like all of us, she’s trying to do the best she can.

Her essay “What Writers Do All Day” starts out: “Most writers I know avoid writing. We bitch and moan about time to do this thing we’ve been called to do, and when we finally wrestle that time from the maw of errands to be done and loved ones to be dealt with and actual paid work, like waiting tables or lawyering or reading other people’s writing, we avoid it like mad.”

After chronicling what her Facebook friends say they do to avoid writing, and chronicling how she spent the last 90 minutes — checking email, making toast among other things — she concludes: “So, most days I spend a few hours trying to make something happen in language…Whatever the effects on the larger world, writing is a record of one consciousness trying to make sense of it all or at least to transcribe some of the mysteries. It comes from showing up to the blank page, the empty file with its blinking cursor, and hoping the Muse will honor her end of the bargain and keep the appointment. What do writers do all day? Eventually we get down to our true work, and keep at it.”

By the way, the title of this book is actually what a book judge once called Addonizio. (Not to her face, but she found it in a transcript of a meeting of contest judges.) She doesn’t think it was meant as a compliment (I don’t either), and her book didn’t win that particular award. “But this is what happens when you put your work out into the world–if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, no one says anything at all, because no one knows that your slim little volume of poetry or your novel ten years in the making even exists.”

Amen.

What writers have you discovered lately?