>> thanks for coming. i think we're going to get started. my name is john, i'd like to welcome you to today's panel, feminism and legacy. a discussion about women in power and writing. it's on the occasion of the launch next week of the new issue which to the f. word is feminism. for those of you who are not aware, tranforty and one of the oldest literary journals in the world. we started as a literary magazine. that's what happened when you say granta. of cambridge university. it was in print for about 100 years. went out of print and into americans on the back and it's been going ever since. we have been everything from death to money the sex but we've never acknowledged within human life the matrix between women and power. it's long overdue for us to do

this issue. we could have done it every year but i'm happy we did it this year because we have the occasion of publishing two of the writers on the panel and hopefully the third will be publishing in granta again. what we'll do is have a discussion for about 45 minutes and then i will open it up to questions from the audience. i'm thrilled we have the writers gathered here today that we do. i'm going to introduce them briefly and then we'll start our discussion. to my immediate right is julie otsuka was born and raised in california, a graduate of yale university. her first novel, when the emperor was divine was published in 2003. she lives in new york city and is just about to publish her new novel which comes out in august. this is the second in a history with excerpted a novel in

back-to-back issues. the first time, the only other time was with martin. we are correcting the balance right now. to jewish right is karen russell whose work has appeared in the best american short stories, "the new yorker," oxford american, and zoetrope. karen was also recently chosen as one of the 20 best writers under 40 in "the new yorker." she is the author of lucy's home for girls raised by wolves. and she is also the author of a new brilliant novel which i'm sure you have read called swamp land via. finally, to karen's right is francine prose was the author for 25 books of fiction and

nonfiction, including bigfoot dreams, primitive people, how to read like a writer and most recently my new american life. sorry, here's my dana white moment. i have to do this for karen as well. pretty scary. since march 2007 to quite recently she was the president of the pan american center. she's recipient of a guggenheim fellowship and i sat on the board of their own award. she's also written nonfiction books about anne frank and gluttony. two different books. [laughter] and she's a distinguished professor. one sure announcement before we get started. condition today's panel we have a party tomorrow night at paragraphs which is a wonderful writing lab run by two very

great women. it's open to the public. so if you like what we discuss what you want to read more about the issue or buy it, you can get it there. but to start i thought we go backwards in time. a woman is not born, a woman becomes a woman. so wanted to ask your panelists, beside chromosomes, what made you a woman that you are? and what sort of events made you the women you are today? that can include parents, people, books, amusement park experiences. i'm going to assign. julie, go ahead. >> well, i feel like in some ways i forgot to become a woman. i kind of skipped over motherhood. it never happen. i've never married. i am 49, and i think i must have

inherited something from my mother, just kind of a distrust of the world. and i think for a long time i thought that she didn't want me to marry. i'm not sure why i absorb that, but i did. and so i feel like i don't really know what i came into womanhood. i mean, it's a very strange concept. i feel like there's puberty when you physically become a woman, and then all of a sudden the world looks at you very differently. as young womanhood. then as you age, begin to become more invisible to the world. and innocent i think a lot for your. so i think actually as i've gotten older in my 40s i feel very much more of a woman that i think i was when i was younger. there's just a sense of freedom that i feel now that i didn't have earlier. but i don't know, that's a very hard question. i feel like sometimes it's a

thing you inherit from your mother but i feel like that's never really explained to me. i grew up with brothers. i thought that best friends, but it was not really clear to me how i was supposed to become a woman. i'm still not sure if i'm doing it in the right way, but i'm doing it in my way. >> yeah, thank you so much for the introduction. 1997 was probably like the grounds are forming of the hell that is puberty. coming of age, that probably was just a hallucinatory and terrifying time. and that is, that is such a hard question. i grew up in house where my mother was sort of the primary breadwinner. so i had models for me. she's most intelligent woman that i know. so they're sort of were not a lot of easy out.

i sort of assumed i would go to college. her father was from this generation where he still to this day, you know, is a wonderful person but he doesn't understand, my sister and i are not secretaries and teachers. you can see the needle kind of going, so you're a secretary. we try to explain what we do. she was sort of the first female partner in her law firm, and i'm sure that i really absorbed this idea that education was paramount and that you had to be, you had to be self-supporting because you could not rely on anybody, you know, on anybody else, that you need to have your own set of resources. but then as a consequence of the first sort of thing out of the house, there's a beautiful essay that talks about the confusion right now and sort of the pain and resentment that can be felt on both sides if you're sort of a nontraditional family.

so i spent a lot of time with my brother and my father and felt like i was missing the boat a little bit in terms of etiquette, dance is terrified me. makeup, i still don't know what to do with. so they're some sort of, some skill sets i think i just probably would have missed anyways. i still don't i'm playing catchup with some of that stuff because i really spent a lot of time with my foul mouth x. navy dead, and my brother and his friends. i remember i ended up writing about these sort of male adolescence and these tribal geometries and i was envious that my brother and his friends had such, they were just different systems. like we're living under different regimes. my sister and i had a curfew. my brother would take the car to mexico and come back with a bunch of water. just different systems. this is a very long winded way to say that it sort of now, i

love your answer, it's not that i'm sort of to feel like i'm coming into my own. a little bit as a woman. i think you make it through your early '20s and adolescence, just with a confusing time, and now i'm starting to feel like i'm on the tarmac. >> i was sort of shocked to discover i was a woman because although i was growing up i just thought i was a kid. and i didn't realize anything else. when i was growing up in brooklyn actually, it just so happen and it was really an accident of demographics i guess, that i was the oldest kid on my blog and i was the oldest kid of the kids who were playing together all the time. and at that age, at least for us, age was everything, and ginny was nothing. i could run faster and hit a ball further so it didn't occur to me that i was inferior in any way because i could essentially beat the boys on the block.

and also my parents were both doctors. my mother was a doctor and my father. so it never, again it never occurred to me that i couldn't go to school, that i could have a profession, i wasn't as smart as my brother, for example. so i was really kind of appalled when i turned 11, 12, 13. and suddenly started discovering that i was stupider than all the boys i knew. it hadn't crossed my mind and i was less capable, and i feel i've been kind of struggling with that peculiar realization ever since. i now am a grandmother. i've had two kids, long marriage, blah, blah, blah, and i still feel like an old woman except for very few moments in my life. giving birth shortly was one of them. i couldn't have done that otherwise. >> actually, arnold schwarzenegger did it in one movie. >> we are changing that, right? certain intimate moments, it's

such a big butt women sitting down to write, let's say, i don't think i'm a woman sitting at my desk sitting down to write. i think i'm just a person with a brain and a certain flair for language. sitting down to write. so all that, you know, what comes from the outside which is you're a woman, this or that because you're a woman has been very alien to me and very foreign to me, and i should say a big source of shock and disappointment. >> francine, i want to stay with you. your book, reading like a writer, you write perhaps my taste in reading have something to do with the limitations i was discovering day by day, the walls of space and time to say nothing of the messages i was picking up from the culture. i like novels and pb longstocking, daughters and little women, girls who resource list and intelligence don't exclude them from the pleasures of male attention. and i wonder if the panelists could talk a bit about the way

that you have become a reader growing up as a woman and as a cruel and then a woman, and how that conditions, if it does at all, how you right? >> i'm shocked that i use the word talkie. in the cab ride over karen and i were talking about how much we word lucky, especially as you discuss women. oh, no. mortified. spoke i liked it. >> it is true those children's classes, pb longstocking, i remember reading little women and thinking joe, don't marry the professor, what are you thinking? but literature is great that way and incredibly useful. now when i look back there are plenty of books that i loved because i was a kid with no idea what they were about or what was in them, that for example, now when i read jane eyre which i

like even better now than when i was a kid and i liked it a lot when i was a kid. i realize that it's one of the great representations of female adolescent anger and resentment that's ever been written. but at the time i just thought for jane eyre working in this horrible school. you know, trying to -- but i think, i think that kind of reading you learn, one of the advantages, you learn that i'm not alone in feeling a certain way. even if you don't know what you are reading, that there are other girls out there who have feelings similar to your own. >> i remember reading that exact paragraph from "reading like a writer." because that was, for me that's exactly how literature worked. and it's true. we were talking about plucky as being this agenda that is just not apply to like huck finn. that plucky young man made his way down the river. what you are saying is, spirited

or something, courageous. and i think i learned so much about the world through books. that was my artery out, and just generally so sort of anxious as a kid and shy. so suddenly was a good conversation. the safest kind of intimacy you can imagine. you were talking to this dead voice. i remember everybody in my grade, reading the stories about girls with horses, you know? or there's a lot of that, like your babysitters club, there's 1000 of these books. they are so boring, it's a bunch of girls babysitting. i was like oh, man, you better pay me to read this, you know? or sweet valley high. these girls having romantic dramas and that could've not been less interesting to me at that time. so this was a wonderful to find people like to be longstocking or like a little women, secret garden, anything with a female

that resembled my own. was intoxicating to me. and i felt like so many of my interactions in the real world were sort of so scripted or i villages flattened or just like i lost a dimension because i was so shy. to have these conversations with a book was really crucial. >> yeah, i loved also harriet's by. you have this secret notebook that nobody else would see. but also lot of science fiction, a lot of ray bradbury. and for some reason there was a very good book, and i just can't remember the name. i've been trying for years to remember it, it was about a young girl and she would paint the walls of her room with watercolor and make it beautiful world's, and then it would rain and everything was washed away.

that we might have been kind of prophetic because i feel that's what happened to me when i began to paint. i create these beautiful world's and at some point i begin to destroy them. i don't know where that came in. there's a sudden loss of conference activity for many years very strong and as if i could really do anything. i don't know why that doubt sets in with one, or with someone who's trying to be an artist. but for some reason that was kind of debilitating for me as a painter. it feel somehow like that has something to do with gender. i'm not sure why, or at least with me, but for whatever reason didn't happen with writing. i didn't become self-conscious and self obliterating in that same way, but that was a book i read at a very, very early age. it's hard to be the years, and it's not a good model certainly, the kind of artist one would want to be. that for some reason it's locked somewhere deep inside of me.

i think they're both disturbing as well as inspiring stories about girls after. i don't think is necessary a bad book for me to read but it did stay with me. >> at one point did you come across them isn't as an idea, as an intellectual moment in history? >> it was, actually i was at yale and an art major. i do know a lot about contemporary literature but i took a class on contemporary women poets. and it was great. we read mostly lesbian poets. there was a woman named joy whose poetry i just love. there was a collection, i was looking at it today and she does repetitive thing which i'm doing now that i had realized that but we had horses, each line starts with we had horses. beautiful and intense story. is something about her work and how she incorporated the

landscape that i find myself doing now. also a very wide open since of the world. do something, i had never read poetry like that. there was also a remember a japanese-american woman poet, and she had a book of poems which refer to the world war ii camps with the japanese were sent to gaza first place i'd seen the camp that my mother had been sent to that her family had been sent to, written about. and that was very kind of eye opening, you can write about this stuff and it's all right. so i think that's were i was first exposed to it. i remember also it was a very different time but at the end of the class would always, there was a restaurant in new haven, a feminist restaurant, and only women were allowed in and it was a vegetarian. it was great. we went as a class at the very

end. i don't know, sir that was my introduction to feminism and i tried my hand at writing some poems. it was just time it was a very, it was a very freeing experience to take the class and exposed to that stuff because that's so not what i heard growing up. also i think the japanese americans, we tend to be very, very reticent. you don't talk about your troubles. you kind of paint a happy face and everything and there was a lot of, you know, i think in every family just a lot of anger and pain but it was rarely addressed. so i felt like poetry action was a weird kind of accessing these hidden worlds in my own family. >> karen, wish yours also in university or did you stumble into a library? >> i wish it had been sort of that, that sophisticated is by some picture book about elizabeth cady stand, you know? i was coming of age at time with

take her daughter to work day, a lot of these kind of consciousness raising efforts, a lot of lip service that was paid to this idea, but i also felt like in the way it was something you were not supposed to talk about or we take for granted now that women can equal, like we're all for this and we don't really need to discuss it as much. so it was really i think where those discussions have and probably was university level. i remember the most popular class at northwestern was called gender and society. and it really was shockingly transformative. it was just a vocabulary to talk about, sort of stuff you're so, the fabric of your life. but i do think that it was, for me, virginia woolf for somebody i took a seminar and we did sort of all her books are getting a

new new way to kind of think about the intersection of gender. so i suppose that was my introduction to but as i mentioned my mom, too, just i don't think we've had those conversations explicitly, but watching her work these insane hours to support our family was also very come and watch a sort of have to do more, you know, really i think she was one of few women at her law firm at this time so she sort of, the message that i got that you have to do twice as much. you had to really prove yourself in this olympic way. >> francine, did you discover it intellectually in school, or were you -- >> my essay in granta is with us about that. i was a young woman during the heyday of so-called second wave feminism. so this is an early 1970s. and what i wrote about was

joining one of those early women's consciousness raising groups. as i've said, the essay is partly about my misadventures with a crew. but i can still remember, you come in those days, feminism and the simplest things about equal rights for things, culturally, were a big shock and big news. i can still remember my astonishment at realizing that i had never seen my father wash a dish come and my boyfriend didn't know how to make toast, and all those things that i just take for granted. [laughter] but that was really big news in those days, and it was transformative but then again swept through the culture. as i say in the essay, people would talk about these things on talk shows. and, of course, those problems haven't been solved. they have been solved at all but somehow no one bothers to talk about it anymore because the presumption is, problem over.

the problem is totally not over. but, you know, likes him and other problems once we think it's a thing of the past there's no point, there seems to be no point in talking about it anymore, unfortunately. >> one of the things i like about francine's piece is perhaps and very funny observations about not the excesses, but the ridiculousness of some of the fringe elements of feminism including what happens in your group. but you do point out all the things which haven't changed, and are you, as a writer, you're a humorous writer. are you ever worried about making fun of things that have to do with second wave feminism at -- because it could come at the expense of the movement as a whole? >> you know, every time i make fun of everything, of anything i have horrible regret afterwards, so yes. [laughter] it's like a bad idea that i

can't seem to -- yes and no. i mean, you know, as far as i'm concerned there is no -- how can you use the word fellow craddock and i think it's a less? how users to talk about that. or the fact that there were these debates about makeup as an antifeminist like that's what people are worried about, makeup? that was the issue. so there were these excesses which i still think our focus on the other hand everything about that movement came out of something very real and very painful and very persistent about women's lives. and that's the thing that i wouldn't make fun of, and can't imagine making fun of it because it's important. >> karen, within the office would quite a debate because this issue has only women writers and it was a prophecy of the because it pointed out the vast majority of writers writing for littering magazines --

literary magazines women. we decide at a point refer enough for men, why don't we see what happens when you put all women together. one of the debates also had to do with whether younger readers would identify with this, because several women in our office didn't identify as feminists. they thought as feminists as lesbian poets in a humorously clichéd way. and this world of francine parsley describes, did you ever have any reservations about declaring yourself as a feminist? >> i think that's what the class made possible for me. there was confusion as to what that term it a bit. as francine is saying the problem is not so. it's quite a cute but there's a way in which it is impolite i think some of the stereotype that came down to my generation is just it's humorless. thank goodness people are making fun because the idea that the site stridency, this humorless,

so serious antiquated movie or the movement accomplished its goals so we can move on. and i remember people very, doing these things of self-conscious hedges were there like well, i'm not a feminist but i do think that she should get paid the same as, you know, wait a second. something's gone awry, ladies. so i think there was kind of a confusion a little bit and it continues to be about what that term means. and i feel so comfortable identifying as a feminist, but i do think there's some resistance. and i often think, i take these teenagers abroad on these cultural tours and a member talking to a couple summers ago identified as a feminist, and some other objectives to the term were just as i do exactly what i don't know what they're thinking, hairy armpit, having -- >> yogurt eating? >> ride.

wearing male coveralls. so, -- >> nothing wrong with coveralls. >> i own a pair. great for buffets. [laughter] and i think when she sort of, it's difficult, it doesn't seem like very controversial, women deserve equal protection under law and and what it's like sure, you know. but i shave my armpits. there's a general general confusion still sometimes. >> julie, while we were putting this issue together we thought about calling it the dirty work. which raise all kinds of problems and we decide on the f. word because there has been historical precedents for calling feminism that. and i wanted to do -- went into two different books jobs and talk to different booksellers. she is over 40 and she neatly at the pic i talk to another bookseller on the other side of town who was in her 30s and

she thought the f-word? are you talking about fq? -- f.u.? when you're in school, students, did they ever have any qualms about when you took a feminist class or started reading, identifying as a feminist? >> no. i think it is generational. when i got to yale, it had been going for 10 years it was kind of new to have women there. and i think you could say you're a feminist with pride. it wasn't something to be embarrassed about, but, you know, everything was kind of influx. were figure out what it meant to be, what it meant to be a woman, what it meant to mean, in the same dorm. often on the same floor. we were thinking these things out, but no, it was new to us. and i think nothing was really

taken for granted. >> feminism can be defined it believes, equality between men and women and the desire for clinical action or cultural change to make that happen. and that in some ways is an imagining of a future world, and part of what you all do as fiction writers is imagine possible worlds, alternate universes. also you have written novels recently. the buddha in the attic, encountering all kinds of hardship and having to rely on themselves and each other in order to raise their children to take care of the families. that is what is is a story about that hasn't been told so at least it hasn't been told as good as you do in the novel. do you think and our interaction with the ideas of feminism makes it possible for you to believe that telling a story which has

been told, doesn't make that kind of story more important? is your decision as a fiction writer purely artistic? >> no, i mean, i feel like especially among, i think an asian-american literature, sometimes you don't hear a lot about the feminism voices from the past. i feel like i read very little about the kind of pie anyone who can own this country in early 1900s. when you think of an asian woman you think of a denver, petite, tiny woman, and very feminine. these were tough women who were working as migrant laborers in the field and working as domestics. and i feel like i hadn't, when i started doing my research, they were so many fascinating stories out there, and i don't know why they haven't been told yet, but i am for whatever reason very interested in women's lives. and what it's like to come to a new country to meet a man you've

never met before, a menu of exchange photographs and letters with, and also i'm interested in state. these women were basically a signed husbands, and many other marriages were unhappy. but most of these couples soldiered on. and also the idea of sacrifice. these women did sacrifice their own lives for their children's lives, because it was very little they could do in terms of realizing their own dreams but within the own life. but there is this great silence after about this earlier generation, and i felt like somebody had to tell the story. so i gave it a shot. >> karen, the narrator as one of the most intelligent, energetic voice i've come across in fiction and very long time and get she come out of the strip correct but she feels a bit like an okie in florida who is living

in a swamp land park which is one do. she has to make her way herself. that in some was detraction some of the stories you read as a child, but in another what if you want to break down cultural and social logically that's not a bush you probably hear in fiction all the time. when you were writing it we simply follow the voice and see where it lead you? or were you feeling like this is telling a story, that hasn't been told? >> it's so funny, francine and i were talking about the myth of the origin story, so you sort of want to greatest genesis. in truth what i was drafting it i probably was just following the voice, wanting to know as a reader what would happen next. but i do think, anyway, it wasn't any kind of conscious statement i was making, or sort of revision, with these plucky young men that i had grown up reading.

but i do think that, you know, that must've been in the back of my ground at it because i really wanted this child to go on a true underworld quest. one of the books i was assigned, sort of frightening young age for some reason was antiquity. and i love the idea of this young woman sort of thwarting the king to do something, you know, to save her brother's soul, essentially. so i think somehow i really wanted it to be a true adventure story which would come up against a physical limit. it wouldn't be just kind of emotionally i'm dealing with my grief. there was going to be a journey narrative. and one movie i saw recently that i choose thought was so shocking, shockingly refreshing was winters bone where there is sort of this weird, kind of this mythic, why am i clicking on the word? this appellation community, and

you follow this young girl who is 16 who is incredibly courageous, is the only word for it. and that is, it's true, there are not many of those stories i think. is rare to sort of see, i think oftentimes it's sort of like a twilight, what seems like the central drama is about romantic choice, will she pick this supernatural boat without supernatural bo comments less about changing an action or you are the catalyst of her metamorphosis. i was talking about, do you ever watch increase? this was my favorite movie when as a kid. all my lord in heaven. the metamorphosis. liked you better shape up some which i was so great and now i hope of a stud and all the hits for the rest of the afternoon. so, sorry. it's sort of believe in newton-john has undergone, sort of like a bad year, i guess that's like an evolution but it's all in the service of being a tractable to john travolta. so this is like a very long

winded way to say that it was exciting to me to try to have a female protagonist, and she's actually not. she's invoking her mother's strength to save her sister. >> francine, in my new american life, touring new york city, she gets a job as a caretaker to someone in new jersey. this is not a character we often see in fiction. her three brothers are lurking around menacingly. were you writing this as you were writing this, are you realizing this was a political fiction in some ways? >> well, i did begin, after a while i did begin to realize it was political i in the sense its about immigration. i never start writing fiction from an idea to they always are from a character or observation of reality. and so it just so happened that

the woman, the heroine, is smarter and plucky or and more savvy than any of the men. >> that's usually true anyway. >> it does happen. it doesn't happen all the time but haven't some of the time. at least i felt there was some basis in reality for what i was doing. >> i just want to wrap back around to the detailed findings that came out. as graphical as they are, i charged him always tell us the whole store, as you pointed out, francine, once when we're talking, the imbalance starts a long time for kids to the point of publication. what are those -- what you the finest tell you? as writers, as female writers, did those two words together every day anyway of doing something you want to keep you? >> well, no one ever says male writers. why is that? >> i'm a male moderator. like a male nurse.

>> they never have, you know, a know, three male writers. it just doesn't happen. so that tells you something i would think. >> we were worried about this when we're putting this issue together. we thought we we ever have an issue called -- we would do an issue called masculinity which i think would be possibly comparable to feminism because masculinity is as much an idea of feminism as an idea about who a woman is. >> you should do an issue on masculinity and only have female writers. [laughter] >> that's an issue. [laughter] >> karen, did you ever think about going as kde russell? >> i was just thinking, it's tough to imagine, if i get young female writer quite frankly, i suppose there's young male or. i don't know. really not, write? you wouldn't hear that as often.

young writers, what they would think. but i haven't -- coming, i feel very fortunate. i feel like the beneficiary of this movement that came before me, he to keep mentioning my mom but i do feel like the actual eras of like a great, the ones benefiting from the woman who came before me, and i felt pretty generally supported by people like granta, like other journals. >> they don't exist. [laughter] in this universe. >> so i don't know that it's ever stopped me. and the way that i feel it, you know, just sort of in book tour's isn't adjectives come most readily i think the way that it impacts the most directly is maybe gendered adjectives that i don't know. truly i don't know how a story about a 13 year old alligator wrestler written by a man would

be received but i think it would be an interesting experiment. if anybody out there wants him any fellow wants me to take him up on. i think certain adjectives come up, plucky. talking about whimsical is one, where corky. and to me sometimes can feel a little patronizing. but that's the way that i probably, you know. >> have you ever been called quirky? >> quirky? i think i have been. i started out writing comedy before i got to series steps of some the characters were a little quirky. i think for me it's not, the adjective is a fema, it's a japanese-american. so i feel like i would be first called a japanese-american writer before i am called a female writer. and often if i look at writers, i think actually i think i look at race before i look at gender. so i feel like i'm caught

somewhere in between. >> one less question and then we'll open it up to the audience for some q&a. if you're going to write a feminist novel and set it in any period of time, self-consciously feminists, when would it be? >> i think, i mean for me i think now, for some reason i'm very, i mean, i've been working on something new but i'm fascinated by the politics out of the pool and politics in the locker room. >> which locker room? >> no, women's locker room and the men's locker room. the book goes on in the segregated roles. so, i'm kind of interested in what is going on now.

>> man, i want to just say the thing i'm working on because i dread research. and appeared i've been researching. >> did you wrestle alligators for your book? >> i've been working on this new novel set during the dust bowl. it's funny you mentioned okies, i think i'm going there next. and i was using, in my research, francine wrote a beautiful introduction, the sort of female photographers who work for the farm security administration, and sort of, you know, party to support, to grinder support for the new deal we going document people's lives. it's sort of an amazing come is just an amazing. they were two artists at the time when it wasn't always the easiest thing to do. sorters talk about strong women

whose lives are not always document, these pioneer women who like made it through seven seasons of just biblical plagu plagues. >> i'm not sure what a feminist novel would be exactly, but i was thinking the other day, maybe this is not an answer, which is, i was thinking about margaret, the handmaid's tale, and i was thinking everyone thought that was a book about the future. but the closer we get to it the more it seems like a book about the present. so i think, actually the best sort of science-fiction which turns turns out to be about now and not tomorrow. >> i think we should open up to questions now. does anybody have anything there like to ask anyone on the panel? if you just come to the microphone to ask questions, that would make it easier for

them to have it on tape. >> hello. i'm a fan of all of yours. hello again. i'm also very nervous. do you think that there is a grown up version, and which book do she reside in for each of you? >> i'm not sure -- >> like and bring cables or a strong adventure female character. i have a lot of trouble with adult books because i don't feel there's a strong signal presence. that always getting rescued by someone. >> i have won the sort of off the grid but i, one of the books that was incredibly influential to me was dick love. -- geek love.

incredibly strong. not a pleaser. and she's sort of is part of this carnival, gothic carnival world. and in the same book there are the siamese twins to auction off their own virginity. there are people are making dramatic choices and sort of thwarting conventional gender roles. if nothing else, very strong-willed. >> i mean, i would say kincaid if you're looking for strong female protagonists and. i have been a big fan of the work for a long time. but it's also, i feel like i see them and a lot of the fiction that i read. >> well, i would go back and read middlemarch. [laughter] i mean, yes, she marries this completely inappropriate guy,

and has an affair with another inappropriate guy, but the moral center of that book is dorothea is a woman character. and it really is, in a sense, doesn't matter that her life is not particularly adventures one, but she is so complicated and so intelligent and so complex that she seems like a model, or that seems like a feminist novel to me. >> any other questions? approach the mic. >> this concerns book reviews which is my province, and another francine a few years ago wrote about women writers not getting reviewed enough, which sent me scurrying to our archives to see whether we were relatively compliant. but i want to know, if you were to read reviews of your books, this is for all of you, blindly, would you be able to do whether you are reviewed by a man or a

woman? >> i feel like, you mean after, if you could see through the tears of the drama that would come from that experiment? i think after vomiting into a trashcan or whatever sort of visceral response that would provoke to try to do that, no, you know, i don't think i would be able to. >> i don't think so. >> no. i would say no. >> i think more and more i could tell something about the politics of the reviewer, more than i could tell about the gender of the reviewer. >> are i think you might be able to tell if they themselves are writers. sometimes i think that can kind of intellect how a reviewer reads. if you are being reviewed by a fellow fiction writer i could someone who is a professional critic spent i want to ask one follow-up to that question because both francine and ken, you have reviewed a little bit

here and there. >> no, i'm afraid to. >> the incentive for francine. you have reviewed a wide range of books. are you given a type of book have you noticed, or are you simply i like what i like and i will go to bat will go against something? >> not so much anymore. for example, years ago, 20 years ago, the times book review somehow got into their heads that i had kind of a soft line on misogyny sergeants they could only get books to review from misogynists. so i don't know why that was. as it turned out it was a wider niche than you might think. [laughter] >> touché. another question? >> hello. i was wondering what your opinion was in terms of male authors writing e-mail protagonists? and if you have any favorites,

or just ask him going to keep the question really broad, so if i could hear your thoughts are. >> the question is, do the panelists have any opinions about male writers writing the note protagonist and are there any favorite? >> i just finished this book i thought was fantastic old the diviners tail. and he is writing for the point of view of the female bouncer and as i thought a fantastic job. the only thing is for looking at the book jacket and sing this quite large, tall fellow, you know, that can kind of, it made it all the more astonishing to me that he really i think makes this leap of apathy into this single mother. and i don't think that, i think, you know, in francine's new book, she adopts the voice of an albanian immigrant to this country. like i don't think there should be those boundaries.

i think that's the beauty of fiction, that you can make these leaps. >> i thought the whole point of fiction was to be able to imagine someone who wasn't you. that's really the point. so it always makes me sort of crazy when i hear that female writers should write for male point of view or vice versa, or whatever. that just seems absurd to me. >> i agree. i mean, writing is an act of the imagination. i think men can write as women, and has been. non-japanese americans could tell the stories until just as well as i myself could. >> yes? >> i teach college freshmen and sophomores, and so when you said about not wanting to call yourself a feminist, that's something i do with a lot with my students. like if you ever bring that would update automatically shut

down. and i watch, i don't know if you guys are fully with the normal heart, i just watched this for a couple of days ago. and it's about the aids epidemic in 80s, like you had this character who was an activist and isn't afraid of offending people. and you have the ones who are on the side, sort of want to do it quietly. and i guess as a teacher, as a writer, as a reader, do you think that's something that is such a turn off that we should sort of shy away from the term, or if it's important enough that we need to say no, i am a feminist and here's why, and here's what's important about that? and i guess that's kind of the same question, but just your opinion. >> i mean, just personally i think i would go with the latter. i think that it's incredibly important to have a conversation with your students. and i think that is what i was trying to do in my roundabout

way. i think there's just misconceptions about, try to figure where the aversion to the term is coming from. and i think that more people can just sort of, for you to say i'm a feminist, because it's about, you know, core quality between the sexes, i think that's something most young women can get behind pretty easily. >> well, i have great sympathy for young women who are afraid to say that they're feminists, because i think the decider for male approval or mail validation is a deeply ingrained in, anything that might lose a is a problem. when i say to young people as they do nothing essentially say fine, go out in the world and if it turned that you're being paid the same amount of money as the guy working in the next cubicle, bless you, i hope it all works out. but i feel confident unfortunate

that it's not going to work out and that sooner or later if young women are older women are smart and decent looking for the explanation of why this exists, that's going to be the most obvious and logical explanation. >> to go out into the world, yet. i worked in construction management industry for about 15 years, talk about male dominated. so i think the minute you leave school, i think you meet some of these young women find myself becoming more adamant about calling themselves feminists. it can be rough out there. >> learn the history to understand yourself, to realize the context in which all of your choices are made. you can trackback to a very recent movement, you know, how much we owe that movement. i think i was really instructive for me. >> this is kind of related to

that last question. i wonder, and i have since i first saw the addition, you know, it feels to me kind of like again to fear of acknowledging the word being called the f. word. was there a discussion about that to decide on the going to ask is the title of the word feminist? or do we keep it kind of as something else? >> the only reason we didn't call it was feminism, i did want to be a preconceived notion that this was an anthology of essays and articles and arguments about the women's movement, arguments within the feminist movement, historical essays about, granta is most about narratives can whether it's fiction or memoir as francine has written. so we wanted something that came out from an angle that acknowledge the world in which that word exists now. and i did want is to be confused

on the bookshelf with an anthology of essays about feminism. so we decided to do it for that reason. that reason alone. sorry, one in the back. >> i came in just a few minutes late, so forgive me if this was covered, but has it been talked about how many come about prejudice -- that's not the right word. but our women's books, books written by women reviewed as often as books by men? is that something that anybody has noticed or wonders about? and i wonder if there any statistics on that? because of the times i have the experience of picking up, i think feminist bookstore in chicago, so the role women writers, you know, that women writers are getting their due credit is something that is

always on my mind and i'm always looking for. and there's some me time to feel like i have to pick up an issue of "the new yorker" to see how many articles are by women, how many books that are being reviewed are by women, the same for "the new york times," et cetera. i just wondered if other people track that or is there any statistics on it, or if that's of interest to you as writers? >> once the new survey? >> the survey, a group that is trying to get women in writing put out, shows that it's largely tilted towards men in terms of contribute. and i believe there was one survey of the new york times book review, both of readers and the books they reviewed, both of which were tilted, maggiore towards male writers and male reviewers. which is the opposite of readers as you know as a bookseller, most readers are women. and i think the question about

whether this interest as writers i think is interesting. do you read this, and do you think dan, i should've got the gender reassignment surgery? >> my next life, believe me. yes, seriously. [laughter] yeah, circe. know, i mean we have talked about this. i wrote a piece for harper's end, what, 2000, called sense of the women's ink base in normandy at his that i can always sniff out the ink of the women because women are sentimental humor list -- humorless, before you men learned you were not supposed to say these things. and, of course, run the article, the statistics then were appalling. accident gotten better since then. but part of what i was interested in finding out was why they should be. and because of the things that

became clear was it wasn't only men who are making these decisions. in many cases the assigning editors were women as well as men. it wasn't as if it was purely -- so what i was trying to find out was what were the prejudices against work that had a woman's name on it and white to george eliot choose to call george ally and why did the sisters right under male names? for good reason. >> i was just thinking about your question about contracting, karen, into k. e. or something. of course it's a consideration and i think that it is still, you know, absolutely, there is a biased and things are not equal. those proven to me my friend wrote a beautiful piece about quantum computing in the recent new yorker, and somebody came up to me, and said he are friends with that guy, he must be a genius. so i do think that it's about

quantum computing picks i think those prejudices are still very much with us. >> i think even now when you think of the stereotype, the tortured writer, it's definitely a male stereotype. i mean, you could be, you know, i live male writer but how does that translate? are just crazy if you're a woman. like there's no real -- >> i was down in the south in oxford and it seems like if you write well enough in the south and male writers have license to do anything that they want to people like you is a hell raiser, a charmer, he broke the lamb. you know, he liked schama and in the face. he was a hell ridge. i think if you're a woman are doing that you would be arrested, you know? >> tina fey says every woman over 50 in hollywood is crazy. i want to work with her but she's crazy.

>> i would love to keep us going but i'm sure this room is needed, so i just want to wrap up. it's been really wonderful having these writers together. francine prose is very insightful and extremely funny. and my new american life is out now. karen russell was busy promoting the hell out of "swamplandia" which is fantastic. and julie otsuka, this is been for you. we're also running a piece by joachim at her her new novel, "the buddha in the attic" is coming out in august. it's been nice having a. i'm sure they'll be happy to answer any questions you have. [applause] >> you're watching 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on c-span2's booktv. ..