BJ Epstein, University of East Anglia
If you think back to your childhood, what sticks with you? For many people, it’s those cosy times when they were cuddled up with a parent or grandparent, being read a story.
But bedtime stories aren’t just lovely endings to the day or a way to induce sleep, they are also a safe way to experience and discuss all sorts of feelings and situations. So even when children think they’re just being told about an adorable bunny’s adventures, they are actually learning about the world around them.
We know that children’s books can act like both mirrors and windows on the world. Mirrors in that they can reflect on children’s own lives, and windows in that they can give children a chance to learn about someone else’s life. We also know that this type of self-reflection and opportunity to read or hear about different lives is essential for young people.
Research on prejudice shows that coming in contact with people who are different – so-called “others” – helps to reduce stereotypes. This is because when we see people who initially seem different, we learn about them and get closer to them through their story. The “other” seems less far away and, well, less “otherly”.
But while it may be ideal for children to actually meet people from different backgrounds in person, if that isn’t possible, books can serve as a first introduction to an outside world.
Despite knowing how important it is for diversity to be represented in our day-to-day lives, many children’s books are still littered with white, male, able-bodied, heterosexual, cisgender, nominally Christian characters. And research suggests that over 80% of characters in children’s books are white – which clearly doesn’t reflect the reality of our world.
All of these reasons are why the We Need Diverse Books movement was set in motion in 2014, stemming from a discussion between children’s books authors Ellen Oh and Malinda Lo. The movement aims for more diverse children’s books to actually be created and for these works to be available to young people. And while we need people to actually write them, we also need publishers to produce them, and bookstores, libraries, and schools to stock them.
As someone who researches children’s literature, I think we’d have fewer conflicts in the world if we all read more diverse literature and lived more diverse lives.
I like to think that if we had more diverse children’s books, featuring a broad range of characters in many different jobs and situations, as well as more diverse role models in the media, young people would feel empowered, and they’d believe that when they grow up, they could be anyone and do anything they wanted. And they’d look at their friends and think the same for them, and they’d grow up respecting and appreciating everyone’s talents.
With this mindset present, issues such as race or religion wouldn’t even play a subconscious role. And it would mean that within a generation or two, we wouldn’t read articles about appalling and depressing statistics, and we wouldn’t need campaigns to increase diversity in literature, academia, or anywhere else.
But books aren’t just about “others”. When we see people like ourselves in the media, including in fiction, we get a glimpse of who we might become, and we feel validated. We can gain role models and inspiration through literature.
Perhaps partly in response to people’s growing awareness of the need for role models – whether in person or in literature – one young black girl, Marley Dias, started a campaign to find 1,000 “black girl books”. Dias recommends works such as Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia, Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson and I Love My Hair by Natasha Anastasia Tarpley.
But I wonder how many of those “black girl books” feature black girls in prominent roles, such as working as professors, doctors, teachers, or even as presidents of nations. I have a suspicion that the percentage would be disappointingly low.
Just featuring a minority character isn’t enough to create quality diverse literature, but it is a first step. And while there are some useful websites that recommend diverse children’s books and even literary awards dedicated to promoting such works, much still needs to be done.
Along with the increased worries today about immigrants, refugees, and general “otherness”, some societies seem to be headed towards a sense of false nostalgia about a time when the world was controlled by whites.
Given this is not how the world is or should be, we owe it to young readers to show them reality in the books they’re reading. Perhaps then the next generation will be less frightened of the “other” if they get to meet them and learn about them from an early age.
BJ Epstein, Senior Lecturer in Literature and Public Engagement, University of East Anglia
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Caroline Magennis, University of Salford
Arlene Foster, the first minister of Northern Ireland, faced calls to resign over the “RHI scandal”, a renewable energy incentive scheme which failed. Allegations of mismanagement cost the public purse almost £500m. Foster labelled the pressure for her resignation “misogynistic” and suggested that a man in a similar position might not face such opprobrium.
Doubtless, much of the language aimed at female politicians has a deeply sexist dimension, but writers were quick to point out in the New Statesman, The Belfast Telegraph and The Irish News that Foster’s own Democratic Unionist Party has an ingrained culture that fosters inequality.
There is an acute lack of female voices in Northern Irish politics, undoubtedly a legacy of decades of militarised conflict, that has left the region with the lowest amount of women of the devolved parliaments. Of the 18 MPs for the region, only two are female. But the recent appointments of Michelle O’Neill (Sinn Féin) and Naomi Long (Alliance) to lead their respective parties suggest things might be slowly, gradually beginning to change.
This lack of political representation is mirrored in the arts where, for years, women were anthologised and written about as exceptional cases in a literature that was overwhelmingly concerned with literary responses to violent events. In her pivotal work, The Living Stream (1994), Edna Longley detailed the distinctly male atmosphere that hangs over Irish literary coteries. But, as with the political changes noted, women’s voices are increasingly being heard in this sphere, too.
Generations of female novelists have written about Northern Ireland since its inception but have been largely ignored. This writing spans genres and all shades of political opinion since the 1920s, and has offered glimpses into lives that rarely make the evening news. Janet McNeill wrote a number of significant novels in the 1960s which capture this “in-between” period with a sharp, sympathetic eye for the dissatisfaction of some women with home and hearth. The reissuing of her novels The Small Widow, As Strangers Here and The Maiden Dinosaur show a continue appetite for and relevance of her novels.
But despite this history, 2016 was a landmark year for Northern Irish women’s fiction – short fiction, in particular. It saw the digital reissue of the vital anthology The Female Line (1985) and the publication of Sinéad Gleeson’s award-winning collection The Glass Shore, which features both classic stories and newly commissioned work from some of the north’s most vital writers. 2016 also saw new collections of stories from Lucy Caldwell (Multitudes), Jan Carson (Children’s Children) and Roisin O’Donnell (Wild Quiet).
Northern Irish fiction has often been criticised for relying on realism and not being as formally experimental as its United Kingdom or US counterparts. But recently, women have been leading the way in offering depictions of Northern Ireland that are ripe for critical speculation.
The work of Jan Carson, in particular, is marked by a playful, experimental sensibility as her writing plays with the possibilities of the short story genre. Her strange, deft prose is a much-needed counterpoint to the wealth of weighty Troubles tones. An equal tonic is Roisin O’Donnell’s magical work, which spans continents and species to continually surprise and delight. Bernie McGill’s sensual, visceral writing brings the body back into Northern Irish writing in her painful, beautiful writing.
And Lucy Caldwell has never been afraid to write about complicated topics, such as the Troubles and mental health (Where They Were Missed, 2006), missionary work and sexuality in the Middle East (The Meeting Point, 2011) and double lives (All the Beggars Riding, 2013). Her recent short fiction has seen this impulse continue, as she directly confronts the taboos of “post”-conflict Northern Irish society, such as racism, abortion and homosexuality.
Northern Irish women’s voices have been largely overlooked by critics and readers in favour of novels and short stories which centred male experiences of being perpetrators and victims of violence. But the new political moment has cleared space for new fictional representations.
Looking to the future, there are several exciting works for 2017. Following her heart-wrenching debut, Ghost Moth (2013), Michele Forbes will publish Edith and Oliver in March 2017. And the scapel-like wit of June Caldwell can be revisited in Room Little Darker, published later this year. We await new work from the women featured in The Glass Shore across genres and forms.
If all you know of Northern Ireland is the turmoil of political institutions, you could do worse than to pick up some of this fiction. For decades, Northern Irish women have been writing about their lives with bravery and skill but they have also been imagining different worlds and stretching their imaginations in the most trying of circumstances. To see these generations of women continue to resist established ways of writing and thinking has been galvanising as we seek to find stories outside of the standard narratives of truth and recovery.
This writing does not simply conform to the Troubles narrative so often replicated in fiction and film. Rather, it challenges it, sometimes directly, but often in subtle, wry acts of fictional insubordination.
Caroline Magennis, Lecturer in 20th and 21st Century Literature, University of Salford
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
The link below is to an article that looks at how to read more – in fact, how to read 200 books a year.
For more visit:
https://qz.com/895101/in-the-time-you-spend-on-social-media-each-year-you-could-read-200-books/
Elizabeth Reid Boyd, Edith Cowan University
Taking up a sheet of paper, he propped it against the easel. With a stick of charcoal in his hand, he flexed his muscled arm, and began to make strong, bold strokes, glancing back and forth at her all the while. She became transfixed by the way he held her in his sights, put his head down to draw, then came intently back up again, in a single movement, like a breath…
You think you’re watching me, Mr Benedict Cole, when in fact I’m watching you. She smiled inwardly.
~Enticing Benedict Cole: Eliza Redgold
There are not many literary genres as loved and loathed as romance fiction. For all its millions of female readers for hundreds of years, it’s been dismissed as sentimental, sappy and trashy, as well as mad, bad and dangerous to read. Yet romance fiction, written by women, published by women, read by women, and researched by women, remains one of the most popular and powerful genres on the planet.
I’m a romantic academic. I teach and research in gender studies. Under my pen name, Eliza Redgold, I also write romance novels, published by Harlequin (Mills and Boon).
Romance novels and I began as childhood sweethearts. I didn’t know they were a form of fairy tales, but they worked magic on me. In my twenties I flirted with romance fiction, but we drifted apart. My desire re-emerged when women’s studies, my adored discipline, fragmented in the academy.
I sought solace and attended my first romance writing conference. To my surprise, the scene was all too familiar: predominantly female participants and presenters, a collaborative leadership model, a supportive atmosphere, and lots of violet.
The rest is herstory. I progressed with my purple prose and discovered that the romance writing landscape had changed – roles and rules were being broken as women were engaged in reshaping the genre, along with a concurrent rise of “love studies” that emerged in the wake of women’s studies.
Romance brought me back to academia, full circle. In retrospect, this sounds unproblematic. In truth, the relationship between the two brought me face to face with my pride, and prejudices.
Her skin rippled as his all-encompassing artist’s gaze lingered over her. “Let me just say the painting will be somewhat – revealing. It will not merely be of your face; what I have in mind will require I make a study of … your form.”
“I see.” Her stomach gave another of those mysterious lurches. “To what extent would my … form … be displayed?”
Because I call myself both a feminist and a romantic doesn’t mean they are two hearts beating as one.
Romance has represented a dilemma. Scholars including Germaine Greer have considered it a form of deception that deliberately prevented women from recognizing their oppressed and subordinate roles in patriarchal society. Tania Modleski dubbed it mass-produced fantasy.
Still, postmodernists such as Diane Elam have emphasized its subversive nature.
Val Derbyshire of Sheffield University recently argued that Mills and Boon romances deserve literary attention as feminist texts. And Anja Hirdman writes that Harlequin
seems nowadays to construct a feminine viewing position once thought not to exist at all. Harlequin narratives produce a mix of femininity, desire and power by simultaneously using the familiar formula and making it unfamiliar, by re-writing its gendered implications and by turning the gaze around.
This is not without personal and political challenges. In a Gender and Society journal article entitled Sneers and Leers, Jennifer Lois and Joanne Gregson describe how outsiders apply stigma to romance writers in two ways “by conveying blatant disapproval through “sneering” and inviting writers to display a highly sexualized self through “leering.”
Writers interpreted outsiders’ sneering as slut-shaming rhetoric and responded discursively to manage the stigma; leering, however, sent a more complicated message that was harder for writers to manage.
I spent the publication day of my first romance novel, in 2013, in a darkened room.
It wasn’t possible to pretend I wrote it by accident, mistake, in irony, or to put it down to research. There are many things a woman can fake, but you can’t fake a Mills and Boon.
But consistency, wrote Emerson, is the hobgoblin of little minds. As I lay on my bed, dichotomies and dualisms crowded in – Bad/Good, Feminism/Femininity, Sexuality/Spirituality, Naughty/Nice – forcing me to confront my own freedoms, limitations, inconsistencies and desires, in the confines of my life and the page.
In an academic context, I made no attempt to hide my double identity, but wondered (a.ka. worried) whether the reaction might be disapproval. My expectations were confounded: most were supportive. “I’ve been reading the wrong genre,” said one female colleague. I also couldn’t predict responses based on gender – while a couple of female colleagues rolled their eyes, some male colleagues proved helpful. In turn, being a romance writer has informed my work as an academic.
Why do I write romance? Today, I can better answer that question. For the pleasure of readers, and my own. To reclaim my body. To explore my emotions. To expand my mind.
He stood up and pulled her into his fierce embrace. The feel of him, the strength of his powerful arms, would be home to her now. Deep within her, she knew he would hold her like this for the rest of her life, his kiss, sure and loving; never to fade.
In a world where women’s rights are under attack, it may seem that romance novels might be slapped again with a warning label. In a sea of pink pussy hats, does purple prose have a female part?
Freedom is created when we are liberated from oppressive thought. This is the most powerful freedom of all. It allows us to create new ways of thinking, being, knowing, speaking, writing, and belonging, of loving, and new kinds of relationships. Every act of bravery encourages another, whether it’s made standing up, marching, sitting-in, or lying down.
Romance fiction invites us to constantly recreate a language of love. It is the not yet said, not yet imagined relationship between and among women and men.
How do we create this language? We try something old, something new. We write. We revise. We share our sameness, delight in our difference. We philosophize, we ponder, we laugh, we discuss, we converse, we explore. We honour our bodies; we divine our souls. We stand beside. We turn to each other.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
In solidarity. With love.
Elizabeth Reid Boyd, Senior Lecturer School of Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
The links below are to articles that look at the new rereading feature added to Goodreads – something which I also felt was a major missing feature for the platform. Great to see it added.
For more visit:
– https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/817-rereading-is-here-let-s-say-it-again-rereading-is-here
– http://the-digital-reader.com/2017/02/12/goodreads-users-can-now-track-books-theyre-re-reading/
At the BookShelf 
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