A Nostalgic Return to Tales of the City

"Mary Ann in Autumn" (Harper, 2010), by Armistead Maupin, is a nostalgic update of the iconic "Tales of the City" novels of the late 1970s and the 1980s, about an eclectic mixture of young characters, gay and straight, in San Francisco. I well remember when the stories were first serialized in the San Francisco Chronicle, and what a huge hit they were then. Readers, including this one, would eagerly look forward to each day's installment. The stories were current, eccentric, charming, and refreshingly different. What wonderful characters there were in these stories: the young gay man Michael Tolliver; the wide-eyed recent import to the city Mary Ann Singleton; Anna Madrigal, the pot-smoking landlady of the charming little apartment building, who we later found was transgender; the socialite DeDe who realized she was a lesbian; the sweet straight guy, Brian, whom Mary Ann fell for; and many more. The stories captured the excitement of the city, the sexual freedom, and later, the sadness of the AIDS epidemic. Most of all, they captured the caring and camaraderie among the characters, as they became each other's family. In 2007, Maupin published a novel updating us on Michael's life, "Michael Tolliver Lives." Now in this new book we have a similar update on Mary Ann's life, as she returns to San Francisco after 20 years in New York, running away from some personal disasters in her life, and seeking comfort and support from her old best friend Michael and his young husband Ben, as well as from her dear landlady and friend Anna. Various reunions and events ensue, including some suspenseful although a bit peripheral subplots, but again, the main point is the enduring closeness of the friendships made in the characters' youth. The plot and writing are a bit formulaic and even clunky, but the goodwill and the nostalgic appeal, as well as the easy forward movement of the story, overcome such shortcomings. This new novel, like the older ones, is probably of most interest to those of us who live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and who remember the earlier "Tales," but the facts that all the books sold well, and were the basis of a very popular TV mini-series, attest to their much wider appeal. Maupin himself still lives in San Francisco and is a beloved and respected local figure.

Pride in the Acclaimed Writers at USF

David Vann, a faculty member in the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco, where I teach, has just won a very prestigious French award, the 2010 Prix Medicis etranger (for foreign writers), often compared to the Pulitzer Prize in the U.S. He won for his novella "Sukwon Island," published in the U.S. as part of the book "Legend of a Suicide." Vann is just one of the USF's faculty's prize-winning, acclaimed writers. In February 2010, poet D. A. Powell, also of the MFA Program, won one of the top awards in poetry, the Kingsley Tufts Award, which comes with a purse of $100,000, for his poetry collection, "Chronic." Poet and English professor Dean Rader recently won the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize for his first book of poetry, "Works and Days." Just a couple of months ago, MFA professor Catherine Brady won the 2010 Northern California Book Award in Fiction for "The Mechanics of Falling and Other Stories." Other well-published and frequently honored USF writers of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction include Aaron Shurin, Susan Steinberg, and Lewis Buzbee. I am proud of these very talented USF colleagues.

Taking the Mystery out of Tipping

A couple of years ago, I ran across a blog titled "Waiter Rant," and started reading it semi-regularly. The author was, at the time, anonymous, and thus able to tell engaging stories from his life as a waiter. His voice was humorous, tough, and philosophical, and his observations were detailed and entertaining. It was not a surprise to find that he was a former seminarian and psychiatric worker, and seemingly quite well read. Soon after, he wrote a book based on his blog, also called "Waiter Rant,"and upon its publication, quit his job and "went public" as Steve Dublanica. I enjoyed that book, which was quite successful, even appearing on the New York Times bestseller list, so when his new book, "Keep the Change: A Clueless Tipper's Quest to Become the Guru of the Gratuity" (Ecco, 2010) appeared, I read it as well. The author frames his information on tipping -- its history, social contexts, and appropriate amounts for different situations -- with his "quest" to learn about tipping through interviewing people all over the country: waiters, of course, but also taxi drivers, doormen, hotel workers, beauticians, barbers, valets, pet groomers, deliverymen, movers, and more. The raciest sections of his journey take place in Las Vegas, where he observes and interviews strippers and sex workers. His framing the book through his own journey gives a structure and interest to the book that a simple list of appropriate tips wouldn't have. His stories are often amusing and even occasionally touching, but the humor of this book is a bit more forced, a bit more jocular, even somewhat crudely so at times, than that of his blog and book. Yet Dublanica is obviously also a thoughtful person, despite his efforts to seem "tough" at times. In any case, this book is a quick read, with some entertaining stories and some helpful information and guidelines about tipping. There are also useful appendices about tipping during the holidays and tipping wedding employees, as well as a thoughtful, sensitively written appendix on the fraught topic of tipping and race.

Thanksgiving Day Thanks for Books and More

Today, Thanksgiving Day in the United States, I am very thankful for health, family, friends, interesting work, living in a beautiful and congenial locale, and much more. And -- on the topic of this blog -- I am exceedingly grateful for books (a special thanks for Jane Austen's novels!), magazines, newspapers (especially the San Francisco Chronicle), academic journals, books-on-tape, publishers, libraries (especially the USF library and the Mill Valley Public Library), bookstores (especially Book Passage, Books Inc., and Green Apple), my reading group, my reading friends (C, M, B, S, and many more), my good fortune in having been able to publish books and journal articles of my own, the opportunity to write about books and all things book-related on this blog (special thanks to Mary, who urged me to start the blog), and you, the readers of this blog!

Who are the "Best" Living American Writers?

The publication of Jonathan Franzen's new book, "Freedom" (about which I posted on 11/8/10, 11/11/10, and 11/13/10) brought about a flurry of articles and reviews speculating on whether Franzen is the new best American writer, now that Bellow, Updike, and others have died. Those who read my posts know I do not agree with this assessment. But the ensuing discussion did make me wonder who could be considered the "best" now. I don't really believe there can be one, or even several, "best" writers, because different great writers pursue different themes, employ different styles, and have different strengths. Also, who is the "best" of a generation may not become clear until all the writers of that generation have died and enough time has gone by to get a clearer perspective. But for fun, I looked around the internet to see which names are most often listed in the category of "best"; I found about 30 names that are consistently cited. Most often mentioned are Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Toni Morrison, John Irving, Joyce Carol Oates, Marilynne Robinson, and Thomas Pynchon. Others frequently mentioned include Tom Wolfe, John Irving, Louise Erdrich, Lorrie Moore, Jane Smiley, Colson Whitehead, Jonathan Lethem, T.C. Boyle, Jonathan Safran Foer, Michael Chabon, Anne Tyler, Richard Russo, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jennifer Egan, Barbara Kingsolver, Nicole Krauss, and Jhumpa Lahiri. Readers, what do you think?

"The Widower's Tale"

The title of “The Widower’s Tale” (Pantheon, 2010), by Julia Glass (author of "Three Junes" and "I See You Everywhere"), is reminiscent of Chaucer's writings (but, don't worry, in modern English!), and the novel has the same stuffed-with-overflowing-humanity feeling as his "The Canterbury Tales" does. The Chaucerian theme of pilgrimage is also present: there are geographical, personal and political journeys aplenty. Further, there is plenty of plot, there are plenty of characters, and there is plenty of engagement with current events and social issues. There is much engagement with the question of whether the end justifies the means, when dealing with political and social issues. There is family, there is romance, there is illness, there is suspense, there is drama. There is nature, there is attachment to houses and land. There is pride, loneliness, betrayal, love, friendship, loyalty, caring, and fierce attachment. The reader is pulled into a full, busy life of a community full of intriguing and sometimes quirky characters. One of my favorite things about this book is the easy mixing of characters of various ages, from pre-school to post-retirement. Percy Darling, the 70-year-old widower of the title, lost his wife Poppy in a sad accident some thirty-plus years before, and lives a fairly solitary life in the big old farmhouse outside Boston that he and his late wife had fallen in love with and lived in as young marrieds. He has loving but guarded relationships with his two grown daughters, Clover and Trudy, and is closest to his grandson, Harvard undergraduate Robert. After all these years, he begins a tentative romance with the much younger Sarah, who has a four-year-old son, Rico. Other characters include Robert's politically activist roommate Turo; Ira, a teacher at the nursery school recently opened in the barn next to Percy's house; Ira's life partner Anthony, a lawyer; and Celestino, an immigrant gardener with a past romantic attachment that still haunts him. The stories of all of these characters, and several more, form strands that come together in a dramatic ending, followed by a low-key but healing postscript. We are left with the feeling that -- despite spectacularly bad behavior on the part of a couple of characters, and bad decisions on the part of some other characters -- most people are basically good, and want to do the right thing. This is a life-affirming and thoroughly enjoyable novel.

"Let's Take the Long Way Home"

"Let's Take the Long Way Home" (Random House, 1010), by Gail Caldwell, is subtitled "A Memoir of Friendship." It tells the gripping and touching story of Caldwell's close friendship with fellow writer Carolyn Knapp (author of "Drinking: A Love Story"). They met in the Boston area in midlife, initially drawn together by their mutual love of taking walks with their dogs in a beautiful wooded area. They immediately "clicked," and became inseparable; their commonalities included their writing, their dogs, their athletic endeavors, especially rowing on the Charles River, their shared status as recovering alcoholics, and their fierce independence. Sadly, a few years later, Knapp was diagnosed with and soon died of lung cancer. Caldwell, along with Knapp's fiance and a loyal group of friends, attended Knapp during her illness and deeply mourned her after her death. There are many novels and memoirs about family and about romantic relationships, but not enough about the depth and power of close friendships and the great support, joy, and profound enrichment of one's life that they can bring; this memoir provides a reminder of the enormous gift provided by close and sustaining friendships.

Writing is Hard

Yesterday (11/18/10) I posted “An Ode to Composition.” That post was heartfelt. But after a long, hard writing session later that day, working on an academic book project, I have to acknowledge the more difficult side of writing. My post on composition didn’t negate the difficulties of writing, but it certainly skipped over them. So let me say outright what most people know: writing is – for most of us – hard and even sometimes painful work. My colleagues and I spend much time discussing this: Why is something we want and love to do still so hard? Although I have been writing and publishing for many years now, and although at times and in some ways I enjoy and am excited by the process, I still find that large parts of it feel like climbing a steep mountain. It is also a satisfying process, and there are moments of joy. But I can't deny that creating something from nothing -- getting from an idea to a finished article, essay, or book -- is a huge undertaking. Figuring out what one wants to say, formulating a statement of that intent, finding and including the proper support, organizing the text into a clear, logical, and readable form, is all hard work. In addition, because of the emotional component of writing, especially writing that will be judged (e.g., articles and books for publication), the writing process is also full of tension, unease, and fear of failure. And then there are the ways we work against ourselves: procrastination, distraction, doubting ourselves, giving up. All of these have to be fought and overcome, in order to get back to the hard work of chipping away at a writing project until somehow, miraculously, if we work very hard and are very fortunate, it gets finished and into print.

An Ode to Composition

My university recently switched to an institutional version of gmail. One small but significant detail that I noticed and like about it is that for creating a new message, it asks us to “compose message.” I like the idea that it uses the word “compose,” which reminds us that all writing requires composing. Even if we only take a minute or a few seconds to think about how to word an email message or a text message, we are composing. We are putting words together in a particular way; we are framing our messages; we are thinking about our various audiences and purposes for our various messages. These are all the things that those of us who teach writing tell our students, which is why writing classes are often called composition classes. Often people think of writing as a skill, and in a way it is, but not in the way typing or programming or gardening are. Most of all, writing is thinking, and then composing those thoughts into effective combinations of words to form sentences, of sentences to form paragraphs, and of paragraphs to form letters, emails, memos, essays, chapters, and books. When I hear the word “compose,” I am also of course reminded of composers of music, who put together notes, sounds, and instructions about orchestration and about volume, in order to create glorious music. Both cases -- composing writings and composing music -- are marvelous, complex processes that create something new in the world, something unique and valuable. Obviously some writings, and some musical offerings, are better than others, but all are worth celebrating, even if only for the good intentions and the effort. And when the composing succeeds, what wonders are sent out into the world!

"By Nightfall"

“By Nightfall” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010), by Michael Cunningham (best known as the author of “The Hours”), is a strange, intriguing, and at times faintly creepy novel. It is set in New York City’s artsy Soho, and features a very odd trio of main characters. Peter owns an art gallery, loves his wife, and ponders the place of beauty in his life. His wife Rebecca edits a literary journal. Ethan, Rebecca’s much younger brother, breathtakingly beautiful but lacking direction, with a history of serious drug-taking, comes to stay with Peter and Rebecca for a while. Peter finds himself drawn to Ethan’s beauty and his resemblance to Rebecca when she was younger; this attraction, and Ethan’s casual duplicity and self-protection, combine to cause a major upheaval in the lives and marriage of Peter and Rebecca. Interwoven with this story are Peter’s meditations on art, beauty, love, aging, romance, and more. Cunningham captures the contradictory desires that often appear at mid-life: on the one hand, the enjoyment of a comfortable, happy, reasonably fulfilling life, and on the other hand, the yearning for something “big” and dramatic – a passionate romance, a huge, brave yet somehow effortless change in one’s life – to happen before it is too late. He understands the mid-life fear of having allowed life to pass one by, the fear of having “settled.” These are all serious issues, obviously, but Peter's sudden preoccupations with them seem rather superficial and even melodramatic. “By Nightfall” certainly keeps the reader’s attention, but there is something a little too facile, a little too self-indulgent in the character of Peter that put this particular reader off a bit.

On Reading More Male Writers Again

I just realized that the last three novels I read were all by male authors. That realization made me reflect on how I have fluctuated over the years regarding the gender of novelists whose works I have read. Like everyone else of my age (Baby Boomer), in school and in college days I read mainly male authors, with a few notable exceptions (Austen, Bronte, Eliot, Woolf, Cather, and a few more recent female novelists); they were the ones considered the “best”; they formed the “canon.” Not only were most of the novelists male, but most of their main characters were male as well. I, like most female readers then, had to do what some feminist literary critics later described as suspending reality in order to identify with the mostly male main characters of most novels. But along with the women’s movement of the late 1960s and the 1970s came a glorious increase in novels (and short stories and poetry and plays) by women writers being published. For the avid reader I was, this development was manna from heaven. For many years afterward, I read mostly works by women, with women as the main characters. Now that there are as many women writers being published as there are men (although there is still the issue of how seriously women writers and “women’s topics” are taken; see my posts of 8/26/10, 9/4/10, and 9/15/10), I have gradually, in the past few years, begun reading more novels by male writers again. This has not been a conscious decision, as much as a natural evening-out process. Also, I give much credit to the women’s movement, not only for the increased number of novels by women being published, but for the fact that the worlds of women and men are now less separate than they were, and therefore the subject matters and styles of novels by males and females are less different, more overlapping than they were. I still read many more women writers than men, but the proportions are less starkly different than they were for a long time.

"The Rain Before It Falls"

I just finished listening to “The Rain Before It Falls” on CD (BBC Audiobooks, 2008), by Jonathan Coe (one of “The Jonathans” that I posted about on 11/2/10). It is a family saga, about a dysfunctional but -- mainly, although at times tortuously -- loving family over many years and many (mostly sad) events. The conceit of the novel is that the elderly Rosamund, who is dying, dictates her own life's story and the family story, and the ways in which they intersected, onto cassettes for Imogen, the long-lost but much-loved granddaughter of her cousin and best friend. Beatrix. She organizes her memories by choosing and describing 20 photographs taken at various times in her and the family's lives. Her taped narration is framed by the narration and stories of her niece and grandnieces, who when they cannot find Imogen after Rosamund's death, listen to the tapes themselves and add their own stories, thus creating a story-within-a-story effect. Consequently, the novel is somewhat schematic, but the structure mainly works. Rosamund’s voice, and some of her digressions, sometimes grow a little wearying, yet most of the time the story is compelling. Rosamund is and always has been neurotic and needy, but is nevertheless a sympathetic character. Overall, I enjoyed the book, not surprisingly, since this kind of character-driven, relationship-enmeshed, psychologically intriguing story is exactly the kind that I most like to read. Added attractions are the English setting, and -- for those listening on CD as I did -- the lovely English accent of the reader, actress Jenny Agutter.

Finally (Foolishly?) Finished Franzen's "Freedom"

I did it! I finished Jonathan Franzen's 562-page novel, "Freedom." If you read my interim reports on 11/8/10 and 11/11/10, you know that I was not enjoying, and was not impressed by, this novel, but because of all the critical attention it was getting, and at a certain point because of all the time I had already invested in it, I felt compelled to continue to the end. So I won! I wrestled the novel to the ground! I was able to leave Walter, Patty, Richard, Joey (although I kind of liked Joey), Jessica, Carol, Connie, and Lalitha behind with relief and no regrets! Hurray! On the other hand, I spent many, many hours on a novel that was pretty unsatisfying and that I had to struggle through, so maybe I actually lost? In any case, maybe I have saved some of you from spending time on this vaunted but disappointing novel.

Still Wrestling with Franzen's "Freedom"

I posted 11/8/10 about trying to get into Jonathan Franzen's new book, "Freedom," but having mixed success. However, I have persisted, and am now up to page 400 (162 to go...). My interest continues to be intermittent. The big chunks of prose about Walter's genuine struggle to do good, and the terrible compromises he is making, are of interest but somehow undigested and trying-too-hard-to-be-great-moral-struggles-of-our-time. I have the feeling that Franzen tried to write a great sprawling novel of ideas and full of interesting characters, like the wonderful nineteenth century novels of Eliot, Dickens, etc., but somehow just doesn't engage our interest on either level -- characters or issues -- as those novels do. As B. R. Myers writes in the October 2010 Atlantic, Franzen's characters are mediocre and uninteresting, and he seems to believe that "The more aspects of our society he can fit between the book's covers, the more ambitious he is considered to be." Myers concludes that "the novel is a...monument to insignificance." Now that I have invested this much time and energy in the novel, I will strive to finish it. It is, after all, the "big" novel of the year, both critically and saleswise, and has engendered widespread talk about Franzen's possibly being the greatest writer of the new generation; thus, I feel I should at least finish it before passing judgment. But it is not looking good....

Novels with LGBT Themes

Some good novels with LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) themes:

Alther, Lisa. Other Women. Kinflicks.
Baldwin, James. Giovanni's Room.
Barnes, Djuna. Nightwood.
Colette. Claudine.
Donoghue, Emma. Landing. (which I posted about on 7/31/10)
Forster, E. M. Maurice.
Grumbach, Doris. Chamber Music.
Hall, Radclyffe. The Well of Loneliness.
Holleran, Andrew. Dancer from the Dance.
Hollinghurst, Alan. The Line of Beauty.
Lorde, Audre. Zami.
Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice.
Maupin, Armistead. Tales of the City.
Miller, Isabel. Patience and Sarah.
Millett, Kate. Sita.
Monette, Paul. Halfway Home.
Renault, Mary. The Persian Boy.
Richardson, Dorothy. Pilgrimage.
Sarton, May. Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing.
Selvadurai, Shyam. Funny Boy.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple.
Waugh, Evelyn. Brideshead Revisited.
White, Edmund. A Boy's Own Story. The Beautiful Room is Empty.
Winterson, Jeannette. Oranges Are not the Only Fruit.
Woolf, Virginia. Orlando.

"Madame Bovary" Re-translated

I studied Flaubert's work in graduate school and was always gripped and impressed by his portrayal of Emma Bovary. A couple of years ago I tried to re-read "Madame Bovary" and found myself put off by Flaubert's realistic but in some ways misogynist view of Emma. It's true that he famously said, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi!" so any negative portrayal of her was, in a sense, a purposeful revealing of his own weaknesses as well.
Nevertheless, reading the novel many years later, although I still understood her yearning for romance and for "something more," I found myself impatient with Emma and with the novel. Now there is a new translation into English, by the well-respected author of unusual, very short stories and a translator of Proust's "Swann's Way," Lydia Davis. Davis feels that earlier translations strayed too far from the original, and lost the sense of Flaubert's style. According to a very informative New York magazine article by Sam Anderson (10/11/10), Davis "spent more than two years trying to create the closest possible replica of 'Madame Bovary' that would still make sense to an English reader." Anderson adds that "Flaubert's novel demonstrates the kind of perfect control seen more often in poetry...craftmanship so advanced that the craftmanship disappears....Davis admits that this is the one aspect of Bovary that will never survive translation: an almost superhuman cohesion." I think I will look for this new translation.

"Freedom": A Progress Report

I normally don't write about a book until after I have read it, or in a few cases, have decided not to continue reading it. But the novel I am posting about today is so long (562 pages) that I think it justifies an interim "progress report." Jonathan Franzen's new novel, "Freedom" (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010) is both a bestseller and (mostly) a big critical hit. As I said in my 11/2/10 post about "the Jonathans," I very much liked Franzen's earlier well-received novel, "The Corrections," and eagerly waited to get a copy of "Freedom" from my local library. Only slightly daunted by its length, I dived in. At first, the novel just wasn't grabbing my attention. Maybe I had read too many reviews ahead of time, so it all seemed a bit too familiar already. Maybe the characters just weren't that interesting. And then I read a very negative review in the Atlantic that almost discouraged me from continuing. But I pushed on nevertheless, and after about 100-plus pages, I found my interest picking up a bit. I am now -- at 295 pages -- just over halfway through the book. My interest waxes and wanes. I don't particularly like any of the characters, but I find them realistic, at times interesting, and occasionally sympathetic. I am a bit bored with the rather didactic parts about the environment and about one of the main characters' (Walter's) social conscience and the compromises he makes. In any case, now that I have gotten this far, I predict I will keep reading to the end. If/when I do finish it, I may post again about it, and about how I feel about the novel by then. If any of you have read it, or started to read it, or decided against reading it, please do let me know what you think about it, either by commenting here or by emailing me (vandricks@usfca.edu).

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words...

The October 18, 2010 New Yorker cover features a wall of books with mini-faces looking askance at a man sitting in a comfortable armchair in front of the tall bookshelves but with his back to them, completely absorbed in his laptop and i-pod. The books' spines have their own personalities, with various facial features (glasses, mustache, beard, mouth open, eyebrows raised, etc.) and with different facial expressions ranging from horror to sadness to helplessness to resignation. It's a humorous but sad evocation of the way technology distracts people from books.

W. S. Merwin on Reading for Delight

There is an interesting and inspiring interview in the November 2010 issue of The Progressive with W. S. Merwin, the current U.S. Poet Laureate. He talks about his poetry, of course, including his gradual dropping of punctuation from his poems. He also speaks of his progressive political beliefs. Toward the end of the interview, he speaks about the importance of "astonishment," of opening one's eyes and feelings to the possibility of being surprised, an "always marvelous" thing. When the interviewer, Ed Rampell, ends the interview by asking "Any advice?", Merwin replies "Read for pleasure....Read every kind of book....begin in delight and continue in delight."

The Jonathans

On 9/25/10, I posted about "The Alices" -- contemporary women writers named Alice whom I admire. Today, in a gesture of gender equality, I offer a list of "Jonathans" -- contemporary male writers named, yes, Jonathan. Unlike the Alices list, in which I only listed writers I have read and admired, from this list I have read novels by only four of the six Jonathans (Dee, Franzen, Coe, Tropper), and like the work of some of them better than that of others. Still, I can't resist pointing out (and I am not the first to do so) the abundance of Jonathans on the early twenty-first century literary scene. And, as it turns out, I am currently reading one of them and listening to another on CD, so they are prominent in my reading life just now. So, without further ado, here is the list:

-Jonathan Dee (“The Privileges," about which I posted on 3/31/10)
-Jonathan Franzen (“Freedom,” “The Corrections”). Franzen is perhaps the ur-Jonathan, the most famous Jonathan of all among contemporary writers (for our current purposes, we will leave out the great but long-dead Jonathan Swift), especially right now as his book "Freedom" tops the bestseller list AND is receiving rave reviews. I read and liked "The Corrections" and have just started reading "Freedom," which I imagine I will be posting on in the near future.
-Jonathan Coe. Coe is a British writer; I am currently listening to his book "The Rain Before It Falls" on CD during my daily commute to work.
-Jonathan Tropper (“This is Where I Leave You,” which I read and mildly enjoyed before I started this blog)
-Jonathan Safran Foer (“Everything is Illuminated,” which I halfheartedly tried to read at one point and gave up on; I hear that it is a great book, but it was not to my taste)
-Jonathan Lethem (“Chronic City”)

Feminist Fiction for Social Change

In 1993, I published an article titled “Feminist Fiction for Social Change” in the journal Peace Review. I argued that although nonfiction writing was essential for moving social change forward, fiction could also reach readers in perhaps an even more powerful way that would influence their feelings and actions regarding social change. I don’t mean that these novels are only “about” social issues; they all stand on their own as good or even great literary works, but the portrayal of important human social issues is part of what makes them great. In the article I focused on fiction that spoke to women’s lives and issues, although other topics were touched on as well. Here I list some of the novels (or, in a few cases, collections of short stories) I discussed in that article, along with a few more recent novels in the same vein; these are, of course, just a small sampling of all such fiction.

Aikath-Gyaltsen, Indrani. Daughters of the House.
Akiyoshi, Sawako. The Twilight Years.
Allison, Dorothy. Bastard out of Carolina.
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. (and just about all of Atwood’s novels)
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening.
Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street.
Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions.
Emecheta, Buchi. Joys of Motherhood. Second Class Citizen.
French, Marilyn. The Women’s Room.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. Herland.
Gordimer, Nadine. Burger’s Daughter. July’s People.
Hong Kingston, Maxine. The Woman Warrior.
Keller, Nora Okja. Comfort Woman.
Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible. Prodigal Summer. The Lacuna.
Lessing, Doris. The Golden Notebook.
Mukherjee, Bharati. Jasmine.
Naylor, Gloria. The Women of Brewster Place.
Russ, Joanna. The Female Man.
Shute, Jenefer. Life-Size.
Walker, Alice. Possessing the Secret of Joy.

For related lists, see my 2/28/10 list of (nonfiction) books on women’s liberation, and my 4/3/10 list of recommended women novelists.