With fiction, the works of women are often over-interpreted as autobiography, especially when the main character is a woman, especially if she is seen as privileged.

Kate Zambreno

Categorized in : Fiction Character Autobiography

The biographies of the great men see their excesses as signs of their greatness. But Jean Rhys, in her biography, is read as borderline; Anaïs Nin is borderline; Djuna is borderline; etc. etc. Borderline personality disorder being an overwhelmingly gendered diagnosis. I write in Heroines: “The charges of borderline personality disorder are the same charges against girls writing literature, I realize - too emotional, too impulsive, no boundaries."

greatness girl writing

I think so often, especially if the work is perceived of as being drawn from life, the woman, not her book, is reviewed.

ifs book thinking

She smoked because she craved something to do with her hands, that delicate interplay of light and cup and first inhale. Craved the repetition of it. It was so difficult sometimes to be still in a room, alone with oneself. To bare oneself to the lonely.

lonely light hands

I think the key to writing the truth of our existences, so much of this is being incubated online, is examining the conflicts and the messiness, our sometimes dividedness, dealing with gender and other hierarchies, and also our identities outside of them, deeply personal and yet somehow critical and circumspect.

keys writing thinking

I do think that memoirs by women are reviewed differently and considered somewhat outside of the canon.

canon memoir thinking

I think the female first-person is still dismissed, demonized, especially if the book does not end on an empowering note, especially if the main character is perceived as unlikeable, or too privileged.

character book thinking

I have almost never been compared to male writers in any review.... by Kate Zambreno

I have almost never been compared to male writers in any review. All women.

I don't think men experience the embargo on channeling the autobi... by Kate Zambreno

I don't think men experience the embargo on channeling the autobiography in their literature.

literature men thinking

I am worthy of being read. I mean, one has to be convinced of one... by Kate Zambreno

I am worthy of being read. I mean, one has to be convinced of one's genius.

worthy genius mean

The concept of "girl-on-girl crime" is perplexing to me, and it happens in many ways. There are those, who refuse to identify with women as a group, preferring the shade of the mythologized men, who want to keep up the status quo.

groups girl men

Patriarchy is having the power to name. by Kate Zambreno

Patriarchy is having the power to name.

patriarchy names

I think genius can have a lot to do with nerve. And permission. by Kate Zambreno

I think genius can have a lot to do with nerve. And permission.

nerves genius thinking

I do teach fiction and non-fiction, and usually I'm interested in works that confuse genre, but I'm very new to teaching creative writing, I don't have an MFA, or a PhD, I tend to approach it just through my own practice.

teaching practice writing

The memoir by women, read by female readers, is considered a mark... by Kate Zambreno

The memoir by women, read by female readers, is considered a market form, not "great literature."

female form literature

The nonfiction novel or literary memoir as authored by women is usually given a much harder time in mainstream criticism.

mainstream nonfiction criticism

I always remember my childhood as traumatic, for various reasons;... by Kate Zambreno

I always remember my childhood as traumatic, for various reasons; I always felt alienated, outside.

childhood reason remember

For years I lived rather medicated and muted - I did not possess language to describe my vague feelings of unhappiness, to politicize it, to attempt to transcend it.

language feelings years

One of my moments of coming to writing, of needing to write to attempt to create myself, to attempt to absolve and understand my past passivity, came when a girl I loved very much, who I had been estranged from for some time, killed herself.

girl writing past

I hope what I do when I draw from other people's lives is pay tribute. To try to understand what it means in our society to be silenced. To try to understand how class and gender intersect with that. To try to understand how being named and classified within the context of psychiatry can intersect with all that, as well.

class mean people

The hope in literature is that we are allowed to be imperfect, to write of our imperfection, without being overly critiqued for being unlikeable.

imperfection literature writing