Super serious question. Of the 278 comments that have been posted to this thread in the last 8 hours, has anyone suggested a single female author? I looked for a while and saw exactly zero. Isn’t that kind of notable?
Gotta put both these on my list.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/l...
- "Immersion" by Abbie Gascho Landis
- "Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube" by Blair Braverman
- "Sleeping Naked is Green" by Vanessa Farquharson
- "There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather" by Linda Akeson McGurk
However, there are some "popular" examples. Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Kate Chopin (literature), Rachel Carson, Ayn Rand, Annie Dillard, Joan Didion (nonfiction). They aren't as fashionable today as they were in earlier generations, but that's fashion.
For me, Svetlana Alexievich (born 1948, in modern Ukraine) has been a revelation. I haven't read all of her works yet, but they're on my lists. I can give a strong firsthand recommendation for The Unwomanly Face of War (which recently got a P&V translation: https://www.amazon.com/Unwomanly-Face-War-History-Women/dp/0...).
Her work incidentally illuminates how we systematically lack certain accounts of history. The implication is that we miss pretty much everything "important", when we read history through the traditional lenses of the armed conflict and politics. The literary motif of giving voice to the politically voiceless is an everpresent theme in Russian literature (going back through Turgenev's treatment of serfs), and in the late 20th century it was brought to nonfiction, through Solzhenitsyn and Alexievich.
Statistically-speaking, most people do not spend their lives in the politburo, or in the general staff of the army, but those statistically-significant people do not usually write the history we read. It seems obvious in retrospect, but it's a revelation, and it tends to change one's perspective on the relative costs and utilities of war. As a culture, we're obsessed with the "individual", and we're typically obsessed with the "wrong" the individuals (i.e. the ones whose lives are exceedingly uncommon).
I think her work should be required reading for those seeking to become public servants, whose personal lives are often significantly detached from the consequences of the decisions they make in their professional lives. I don't know if I would call it life-changing, but it's up there.
It's similar in that it offers a somewhat unconventional lens to history, this time applied to the Cold War. As Americans, we often think of the East-West German divide in terms of Soviet and American interests, politicians, and international intrigue.
Yet, for "normal" Germans living in otherwise "normal" towns, the arbitrary partitioning of their country along hastily-drawn lines was an event that had to be integrated into their daily lives. We often think of history in top-down ways (i.e. FDR and Stalin decided that X would happen, and so it did). This book really subverts that narrative, and instead presents a brilliantly-researched and significantly chaotic reality. You come away thinking that the iron curtain was not an inevitable thing, but rather the result of frequent misunderstandings and breakdowns in effective communication, and the inability of distanced leaders to assume good intent.
For me, it changed my default perspective on how borders and bureaucratic systems work, and what role law and top-down decision making (good, bad, influential and negligible) has in everyday life, especially in moments of big change.
It's tangentially relevant to the coronavirus, where big bureaucracies are trying to flex into everyday life. It gives you some intuition of where we should expect these efforts to succeed, and where we can expect it to fail.
A common thread with these books seems to be exploring consciousness and definitions of self.
As a bonus it does stuff I find more from women authors, like quietly question gender roles without making a scene about it, question slavery, ownership, etc.
Similar a bit to the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells but on a whole other level.
Its a wonderful trilogy of three books. Strongly recommend it.
I can also recommend N.K. Jemisin, not really mind bending, but very odd
Generally I dislike it when authors patronise me, banging my head against their genius, and I find women authors tend to do that less (Disclaimer to sensitive people : this is my personal opinion)
Ursula K. Le Guin also appears down below; The Left Hand of Darkness was a profound read.
Not mind bending for someone who spent some time trying to imagine a anarchist society (but still quite enriching), but maybe for others.
That 'identical demographics' part is perhaps a tautology? They're mostly male, because they're mostly male?
Of course we understand there are 1000 reasons for the disparity, discussed elsewhere.
Male tech startup people -> Male HN users -> Male-dominated interest areas -> Male author recommendations
Wilding - Isabella Tree. Changed how I think about what nature needs, away from the simplistic “more forests! Less agriculture!” viewpoint.
The Female Man - Joanna Russ. Forget all the ‘makeup is empowering!’ Twitter feminism. Russ has a different idea. “For years I have been saying Let me in, Love me, Approve me, Define me, Regulate me, Validate me, Support me. Now I say Move over. If we are all Mankind, it follows to my interested and righteous and right now very bright and beady little eyes, that I too am a Man and not at all a Woman... I think I am a Man; I think you had better call me a Man; I think you will write about me as a Man from now on and speak of me as a Man and employ me as a Man and recognize child-rearing as a Man's business; you will think of me as a Man and treat me as a Man”
Stone Butch Blues - Leslie Feinberg (if we count Feinberg as, at least, a female-at-birth author). A complex exploration of what gender and transgenderism and sexuality mean to people depending on their class, subculture, etc. What should we call Jess? Trans, a man, a lesbian, non-binary, something else?
I also want to say Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, but I can’t easily explain why.
There's an interview with the author on NPR https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/09/04/6444982...
We are looking for ideas to bend our mind. I'm happy to keep the authors gender, race, religion, or nationality out of that. The same applies for HN comments.
Going through all 278 comments to find a female name is more notable to me.
Religion is socially constructed, but its differences still matter to people. Someone could legitimately ask why there were no Catholic US presidents prior to JFK.