June 17, 2012
The trouble with lesbian literature and other tales…
Image created by Angela Brown
It is true to say that I have been out of the bookselling trade for a few years now, but both as a reader and a bookseller I always found the gay and lesbian section really uninspiring.
Usually these ever decreasing sections are a mixture of erotica, and well, erotica. And (when I was a bookseller) the few people who shopped in that section to buy the… lesbian erotica… tended to be men with a penchant for something a little bit naughty. There are of course some fantastic authors out there who cater for the lady-loving market – Sarah Waters, Ali Smith, Val McDermid, Jeanette Winterson, Jackie Kay, Stella Duffy… But where are the new young lesbian authors? (And must they write about being a lesbian?) This week, Radio 4 Woman’s Hour asked the same question. Surely they are out there, but why are they not getting published?
Both Stella Duffy and Suzi Feay (guest editor of Mslexia magazine) expressed their thoughts on the matter. But it was Stella Duffy who really resonated with me. “I’m not calling both of you ‘a straight’ but I do get called ‘a lesbian’ and it so reductive.” Thank you Stella Duffy and I agree. It is reductive. I am interested in characters who take me on an exciting journey and it matters not to me whether they are lesbian, bisexual, transgender, heterosexual or in fact not interested in sex at all. Write me a good story and I will read it. But I do not rush out to buy the latest book of lesbian content, because more often than not… they are just not very good.
‘Tipping the Pages’, Newcastle’s book group for lesbian and bisexual women, seems to agree with me. The first time I went along to one of their meetings I was told that they had given up on reading ‘lesbian books’ because after the canon texts it all just gets a little bit awful. So they had moved onto ‘good books’ and were feeling a little better about things. There is a practical reason however for why we may not be seeing so much ‘new stuff’ in the market place. (Warning, slightly dull paragraph on economics to follow.)
According to an article on the Guardian, although the sale of eBooks rose in sales last year by a massive 366%, the sales of physical books are still on the decline. The eBooks do not quite compensate the loss; figures from the Publishers Association reveal that book sales were down by 2% last year and seem to be declining still in 2012. So for all we can want, desire, hope for more books, more literature, more Sapphic loving ladies hitting pages everywhere, we also should be realistic and put this into an economic context. The book industry is having a battle of its own which makes publishers even less likely to take risks and bookshops (pray let them not become dinosaurs for my children whenever they arrive – I miss you Borders) unable to justify carrying diverse titles because the sales figures of ‘lesbian books’ are for the most part, marginal. This does not perhaps explain away why these books may not appear in eBook form, and actually maybe the new generation of digital print will lead to a new generation of writers?
So in other words, it isn’t all doom and gloom and there is hope out there for the optimistic writer. Speaking on Radio 4’s, Woman’s Hour, Suzi Feay put a shout out for writers who identify as lesbian to enter the Polari First Book Prize next year, “We’re looking for memoirs, poetry, novels, and we’re just not getting the submissions from women”. The entry date may have passed for this year but this gives you just enough time to get your debut novel published (self publish even) in time for the 2013 competition. Thoughts from Stella Duffy on why those submissions may be low, “There’s two things going on, one is that we’re just not seeing that many younger people getting published … We still live in a world, and this is a very Woman’s Hour point, where we didn’t really have the goals of feminism, we’re not seeing women in the front benches let alone many in the back benches, there’s going to be commensurately fewer lesbians”. Although, Duffy then goes on to say, “We’ve only been writing our own names for 160 years it is going to take a while to catch up.” In other words, actually women are doing okay given the fact that men have been chronicling their history for much longer. This writing thing is kind of new for us. That said, surely ‘lesbian authors’ are not yet set to become a protected species? Appearing only in some David Attenborough type documentary and to be seen only from the other side of a camera lens…
Another part of the problem is identity. Stella Duffy claims that she is taken more seriously as an author when she writes about men as oppose to when she writes about women. I am reminded here of a little unknown author going by the name of Mary Anne Evans aka George Eliot – not because George Eliot was a closet lesbian (don’t get excited ladies) – but because she changed her name to George so that people would think she a man and actually go ahead and buy her books. Stella may be onto something here and it ties back in with the economics of the publishing industry in general and risk taking (or lack of).
So where do we go from here? Well if you are disheartened, uninspired and feeling a little forgotten about, why not put your laptop where your mouth is and get scribing? Personally, I believe that although ‘coming out’ tales and lesbian chic lit still has its place on the shelf, a time for more diversity within our own writing is upon us. I don’t know about you, but there is more to me than my sexuality… I’m also ginger too… and I would love to see some fresh new fiction about interesting characters who just happen to be gay, or from authors who identify as lesbian and happen to be about well… anything.
Are we now finally in the privileged position where we can demand more from our literature and raise the bar of expectation? I hope so. Let me know how you get on.
KJ signing out until next time…
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August 17, 2012
I’m not sure what this is trying to say… So it isn’t that there aren’t great lesbian authors, because you listed off some of the greats at the beginning. They are still writing, so it’s not that they aren’t writing new books. There’s a lack of “new young lesbian authors”? Why? Because the good lesbian books being written now have authors that are too old? Is the worry that there are no new lesbian authors? That makes more sense to me.
I think people don’t recognize new authors because they are new, because they haven’t hit the mainstream yet. Where are the new authors in general? Just because Nora Roberts and James Patterson (etc) dominate the best sellers doesn’t mean that there are no new writers, just that they may not have been noticed yet. And once they are, they won’t be defined as “new writers” any more, so they won’t count.
There is definitely a lot of bad lesbian books, but that’s because there’s a lot of bad books. Most likely, you don’t like the majority of any category of book, but you seek out your preferred ones. I’m not sure what standards that book club was selecting its books after the “classics”, but I’m guessing it wasn’t the most effective at weeding out the bad books. That doesn’t mean they are all bad.
As for new lesbian authors, Emily M. Danforth’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post is amazing and has gotten tons of mainstream attention. (Interviewed on NPR, blurbed by Sarah Waters, reviewed in Cosmo Girl, Publisher’s Weekly, etc). And she’s writing two other books at the moment, both of which I am really looking forward to. Some other new authors I’ve been enjoying are Dayna Ingram and Madeleine George. What about the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for debut lesbian fiction, Laurie Weeks? Or the winner for lesbian fiction, Farzana Doctor? And there’s more, but I’m not sure what the standards are. Sarah Schulman is not a new author. And really, judging by the authors listed, I think you really mean “literary” authors, so I guess since A M Dellamonica is sci fi/fantasy, that doesn’t count. And that rules out all romance authors (I like Rachel Spangler, but I guess she isn’t “new” either?) And Ivan Coyote isn’t new enough. Actually, what about all of the authors nominated for debut lesbian fiction, not just the winners? (http://www.lambdaliterary.org/awards/current-submissions-2/) Including M Craig.
Also, if you don’t want/need lesbian authors to write about lesbians or define themselves as lesbian authors, exactly how are we supposed to spot them? There’s nothing wrong with not defining themselves as such, but you can’t declare there are no new [good, literary, mainstream, well-reviewed] lesbian authors when you also acknowledge that lesbian authors may never mention their sexuality or write about it.
Basically, I don’t see this crisis that keeps being written about.
Also, to “Well if you are disheartened, uninspired and feeling a little forgotten about, why not put your laptop where your mouth is and get scribing?”
Why would anyone, when you begin the article saying you don’t buy lesbian books because you’ve already decided they’re all terrible?
Have women only been writing in their own names since 1852, though? Women were early adopters of the novel, as both writers AND readers. Charlotte Lennox, Maria Edgeworth, Fanny (no relation) Burney, Jane Austen… I concur most lesbian novels are cack though.
Forgive me if my dates were out a little, it was an eight or nine minute live piece in which Suzi and I were trying to right the wrongs of a lack of feminism, the category of women’s writing, the sub-section that is lesbian writing, and the fact that it’s a shame we have to categorise at all! I was referring to the Brontes writing in men’s names. Yes, women have written under their own names but only en masse much more recently. (And even then, that en masse, is a pretty classist masse, certainly few women of my mother’s and big sisters’ class and generations were writing or encouraged to do so …)
I stumbled across a really great up-and-coming lesbian fiction write recently via Amazon. Her writing was a breath of fresh air, essentially normalising the female-to-female love story in a way that is seldom done so well. She writes under the pen name Kiki Archer and her first novel ‘But she is my student’ is topping the amazon charts, with 5* reviews popping up regularly. As a writer, she ticks all of the boxes you talk of here and her first book tells the beautiful story of love and relationships (both gay and straight) without becoming too diluted with graphic lesbian sex (there is just the right amount of it in her first book, in my opinion). She’s on twitter and Facebook under Kiki Archer. Might be worth an interview with her as I know she does a lot of speaking up for gay rights as well. Definitely a name to watch for the future.
@Kikiarcherbooks
http://www.kikiarcher.com
Of course, there are a lot of lesbian works (both lesbian in content and lesbian-authored) appearing today–many of them very high-quality–in the realm of fandom. This is the way many people choose to self-publish because, though it isn’t monetarily compensated, they receive the immediate compensation of a passionate community of readers to whom they have direct access to discuss technique, receive encouragement, create together, and debate ideas. I wonder how this fits in to the future of the field of “literature” now that it’s no longer organized around printers.
I’ve popped in over at the Lesbrary, too, just to let readers know that I will be launching Book 2 of my novel cycle this summer, and doing a blog tour to go with it. I have all the fashionable rejection letters to prove that mainstream English-language publishing has been in a lesbo-phobic slump for years. My work was viewed as unpublishable not because it is bad, but because it is “triple-niche,” and there simply isn’t the money for that in NY or London publishing today. Plus, the majors are spending money reprinting backlists as the iconic authors age…Lillian Faderman’s excellent history “Surpassing the Love of Men” is a perfect example. So I am bringing the novel cycle out myself on eBooks, which makes good business sense. And we’ll all see what happens.
TABOU is pretty controversial: serious fiction with deep literary roots going back to the 19th century novel, where readers loved long sagas and didn’t read to “identify” with a single shallow character, because they felt their imaginations expanding into fictional worlds peopled by dozens of compelling characters. Today readers pack book clubs with Tolstoys, Forsters, Lawrences, Hardys, books that tackle multiple themes at once, from politics and religion to love and class divisions. but nobody queer has tried writing them. The clear message from the establishment was, if you want to win prizes, write to the formula. All the authors cited in The Guardian’s piece have become masters of the McNovel, however well-written: the “slim volume” of 178 pages with a protagonist, an antagonist and a love interest. That is what publishers have been selling readers for most of my lifetime. To answer your questions, I did in fact grow up reading the works of those writers, and the glove I throw down is…Tabou. Hope you enjoy it.
And if you don’t go for TABOU, I highly recommend turning to the Peter and Charlie trilogy by Gordon Merrick (1959) and The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrencee Durrell (1961), two novel cycles that have deeply influenced my own work.
“Show me the legacy of a lesbian couple.” That, to me, is the next wave of lesbian literature.
As a mere man, may I highlight “Notes on a Scadal” by Zoe Heller- shortlisted for the Booker prize and which was also made into an audiobook and a film starring Cate Blanchett and Dame Judi Dench.
Quite where obsession and a lesbian relationship start and end may be a moot point…..
But it is a brillantly written and observed book
that perhaps inspired Kiki Archer’s “But she is my stdent” although in same sex relationship the attraction between an older and young same sex person is as old as time!
Some of Vita Sackville-West’s work now looks slightly edgy but must have appeared scandalous at the time.
In our age of “handles” quite where the dividing line for the “L” word of a close friendship of two women who become life long friends, and admire each others qualities and prefer each other’s company, and a sexual relationship of short duration between two young women based on a mutal attraction, makes one see how ill conceived are these labels.
Well, there is always Stone Franks, although her only specifically lesbian stories (Taught and You’ll Learn)are like a lesbian Fifty Shades of Grey.(http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/eroticnightmaresofstonefranks)