-
A to Z challenge: Banana Yoshimoto
Today’s awesome lady author is Banana Yoshimoto. While Banana may share a common ethnicity with the ninja I wrote about on my ninja blog, her writing is about as far away from the battlefield fighting and violence as you can get. Oddly, Wikipedia classifies her as a writer of “pulp fiction.” I’m not sure that fits. I would describe her writing more as magical realism, surrealism or straight up women’s fiction, depending on the book. There aren’t any guns or dames or detectives in her books, much less fantastic amounts of violence (although the stories usually stem from some type of personal loss or death of a loved one), so…
-
A to Z challenge: Xue Xinran
You’re thinking I’m stumped for X, aren’t you? Well guess what? YOU’RE WRONG! X writers are not as insanely difficult to find if you’re not married to focusing solely on native English speakers. I hit the jackpot when I found double-X Xue Xinran (thank you, Wikipedia!), a Chinese-born journalist who currently lives in the UK. She’s written several books, including her magnum opus, The Good Women of China, which is a nonfictional work chronicling the daily lives of ordinary women during the Cultural Revolution. She’s also written a novel called Miss Chopsticks, which I’m very interested in reading, and a book that you absolutely MUST read called Sky Burial. Sky…
-
A to Z challenge: Inga Muscio
M is most definitely for Inga Muscio. If you’re a young lady of a certain age, you’ve undoubtedly read her most famous work, Cunt. Don’t be alarmed by its “cuss word” title; it’s all about how to reclaim this word for what it really means, and how the denigration of the words we use to describe women and their bodies has meant a denigration of women as a whole. (If you click the book cover, you’ll get a short excerpt so you can see what I mean.) Muscio’s book is a feminist call to action, as well as an excellent education in feminine history (or “herstory”), filled with personal musings…
-
A to Z challenge: D is for Duras
Marguerite Duras was a French writer born in Vietnam. Her major work, as English audiences know it, is a book called The Lover, which focuses on a 15-year-old girl’s affair with a wealthy Chinese man. (In French, the book’s title is L’amant.) I first discovered Duras’ work during a creative writing seminar on experimental fiction, where my instructor lent me a copy of the book because she found our writing styles to be similar. The book’s subject matter deals with the love affair between two people, exploring both the girl’s feelings (looking back) and the man’s decision to be dutiful to his family and break things off, but most reviewers…
-
A to Z blog challenge starts with Awesome Lady Authors
The A to Z blog challenge starts today, and I’ve chosen the theme of Awesome Lady Authors to keep this thing rolling. By my rules, I’m looking for authors with corresponding last names, but will cheat by using a first name that matches if I’m really stuck. (X Lady Author, you are still up in the air. Paging lady authors with last names that start with X…) Okay, so A is a pretty easy one to start with. You’ve got your Jane Austen, your Margaret Atwood, your Maya Angelou, your Kathy Acker. Apparently you’ve also got Frau Ava, who was the first female writer in the German language, which is…
