When I became a feminist, when the movement started in the late sixties, I started writing because I had something urgent to say. My first novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, is the product of that urgency. Alix Kates Shulman More Quotes by Alix Kates Shulman More Quotes From Alix Kates Shulman I am a feminist. I'm trying to show the relationships between men and women, always the structural relations, not individual villains. I'd never make a husband a villain. I try very hard in my work not to - because if I made one man a villain, the rest would be off the hook. I'm interested in the system of oppression. Alix Kates Shulman feminist husband men I think you get mentally ill being homeless. Most of the bag ladies wind up mentally ill pretty quickly - what people would call paranoid - because they are in such danger. I don't know if it's really paranoia because they are in great danger. Terrible things happen to them, and they lose everything. How could they not become at the very least severely depressed? Alix Kates Shulman wind people thinking The movement for women's liberation was about an emotional transformation, an explosion, a feeling all over the country that things must be different, and ideas about how they should be. I think fiction can capture that kind of thing better than other genres because in fiction you can explore the feelings of your characters - the before and the after. Alix Kates Shulman emotional character country I did not intend to be a writer. I first wanted to be a lawyer, like my father. Then I got bit by the bug of philosophy and wanted to be a philosophy professor. I went to graduate school and quickly discovered it was impossible for a woman in those days - this was the early fifties - to be a philosopher, so I gave that up. Alix Kates Shulman philosophy father school Ever since Freud, being alone has been considered something of a psychological failure. The point, according to Freudian theory, is to be able to love and connect. But I don't believe that at all. I think that being alone and being coupled and being in a group are all natural states in which people can thrive. Alix Kates Shulman believe people thinking Solitude offers a lot that being coupled or being in a group does not. It helps us learn what we are capable of. Alix Kates Shulman groups solitude doe When you witness the end of a life up close day by day, you begin to understand time and mortality in profound ways. You see time's relativity, death's necessity. Alix Kates Shulman mortality profound way For many decades my relations with my parents constituted unfinished business. I had dealt with them through sheer avoidance and guilt. Alix Kates Shulman unfinished-business guilt parent It's always difficult to write honestly of one's deepest feelings, particularly without the protective veil of fiction. But the more difficult, the more rewarding if one succeeds. Rewarding not only to the work but to one's peace of mind. Alix Kates Shulman mind feelings writing For two years I watched my parents' lives wind to a close. This made me aware of old age as a one stage, the final one, of a long journey. Alix Kates Shulman journey wind years
