"Daddy," by Emma Cline

The characters are ordinary, but with an air of disappointment. They are passive, feeling that things happen to them without their will or control. They limply hope that things will get better, but don’t do much to change things. To be clear, though, these are people who are basically OK – safe and healthy and with enough money. Nothing truly bad is happening to them, just a sense that life is not living up to their expectations. These are the people in Emma Cline’s short stories, in her new book, “Daddy” (Random House, 2020). Cline’s name may be familiar to readers, as her 2016 novel “Girls” was a bestseller. Rachel Kushner’s back cover blurb compares Cline to Mary Gaitskill and Joy Williams. It happens that although I have respect for Kushner, Gaitskill, and Williams, all of whom I have read, I have not really enjoyed their work. There is something chilly about the work in each case. Yet although I understand Kushner’s comparison of these writers’ work with Cline’s stories in “Daddy,” the note of sadness (often inchoate) in her stories ameliorates some of the aforementioned chill. I should note too that there is a mildly tawdry feeling to some of the stories, as in the story (“Los Angeles”) of the middle-class girl who has moved to Los Angeles hoping to be an actress, knowing how predictable she is being, and who although she has a (low-level) job and some support from her mother, stumbles into selling her underwear to men to make some extra money. She distances herself from this scheme by taking an ironic tone; “It was that time of life when anything bad or strange or sordid happened, she could soothe herself with that thing people always said, ‘it’s just that time of life.’ When you thought of it that way, whatever mess she was in seemed already sanctioned” (p. 46). Many of the other characters in the other stories in this collection reiterate this passivity and acceptance of “fate,” this avoidance of responsibility for their own lives and decisions, as I commented at the start of this post. Thus the stories claim our attention but somehow end up dampening that interest.

RIP Florence Howe

I was very sad to hear that Florence Howe, one of the founders of the field of Women’s Studies, and the founder of the breakthrough publisher The Feminist Press, died earlier this month (September 12, 2020), at the age of 91. She was a great pioneer and, although not as famous as some other feminist icons, had a deep and wide influence on the lives, intellectual and otherwise, of many, many women, even many who have never heard of her. She taught at Goucher College and realized how little attention was given to women’s lives and women’s literature in colleges and beyond. She practically founded the field of Women’s Studies. She tried to persuade several publishers to publish more work by women, but they declined, saying that it would not sell. So she started her own press, The Feminist Press, in 1970. There she published work by authors out of print as well as by contemporary authors. These included Zora Neale Hurston, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Grace Paley, Paule Marshall, Ama Ata Aidoo, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Tillie Olsen, Marilyn French, Alice Walker, and Barbara Ehrenreich, along with several anthologies. Note the diversity timewise as well as in race and ethnicity. The Press especially focused on marginalized voices. Gloria Steinem stated that the Feminist Press “created an opening for hundreds of women writers and thousands of readers.” I was and am one of those readers; I am old enough to remember when women writers were much less published, and when literature classes were bereft of works by women (except for the very few “classics”). Early on I found and read many of the Press’ books, often, and gratefully, “discovering” writers new to me through the Press. I also took one of the first Women's Studies classes offered by my university. (Note: Years later I taught several Women's Studies classes, especially Women's Literature classes.) I hope Florence Howe knew how many, many women (and some men too!) appreciated what she and The Feminist Press, along with the Women’s Studies field she helped to found, did for women and for all who care about equality and inclusion. Thank you, Florence Howe! You made a huge difference in the world!

"In the Land of Men," by Adrienne Miller

When I read descriptions of Adrienne Miller’s memoir “In the Land of Men” (HarperCollins, 2020), I knew I would enjoy reading the book. Miller started off her adult life in New York City in the mid-nineties working as an editorial assistant at the magazine GQ, and in a few years, improbably at her age, became the literary editor of Esquire, then one of the most important publishers of fiction, among other features. There she got to know many literary figures, experienced various forms of sexual harassment, and became involved -- literarily and personally -- with the very well-known and controversial (both idolized and derided) writer David Foster Wallace. So we have the following enticing (to me, definitely) elements: a young woman starting off her adult life; immersion in the publishing, literary world; revelations about various famous writers and editors; discussion of sexism in the publishing world as well as the larger world; and plain old good gossip. As I expected, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this memoir.

"Under the Rainbow," by Celia Laskey

The novel “Under the Rainbow” (Riverhead, 2020), by Celia Laskey, begins with an unlikely plot device: An LGBT group sends a “queer task force” to live for two years in a town that has been billed “The Most Homophobic Town in the U.S.” Their task is to try to change people’s minds. Of course it is hard, and they suffer many setbacks, but – and this is predictable, right? – they start to make some inroads. First, there are of course closeted queer people in the town (“Big Burr, Kansas”), and they gradually, tentatively, make contact with members of the task force, and some even start to join in on the group's work. Second, some townspeople are won over as they get to know the visitors. Although this plot could go very wrong, in seeming too predictable, it manages to approach that state but not go over the line. The characters seem genuine, and the artificial original premise yields real-feeling situations and relationships. The novel is in fact heartwarming, and that is OK; the author has not taken the easy way there, and therefore has earned the book’s emotional status.

"America is Not the Heart," by Elaine Castillo

There is a fairly large body of Filipino-American literature, but it doesn’t seem to be as well-known as other Asian-American literature, such as Japanese-American and Chinese-American fiction. And many of the Filipino/a authors have only become published and somewhat well-known in the past couple of decades. I remember that in the early 1990s when I taught a class titled “Contemporary Fiction by Nonwestern Women” (now I would probably not use the Western-centric term “Nonwestern”), I taught a novel by one of the rare (in the U.S.) well-known Filipina writers at the time, “Dogeaters,” by Jessica Hagedorn, who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and was also a performance artist at the time. I have just read an intense, vivid, bursting-with-life novel by the born-and-raised San Francisco Bay Area writer Elaine Castillo: “America is Not the Heart” (Penguin, 2018; paperback 2019). This is the author’s first novel, but you wouldn’t know it: it is a take-no-prisoners tour de force. It is over 400 pages long, but the reader is swept into and out of it with the author in complete control. The novel is set in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in particular in the suburb of Milpitas, where many Filipino-Americans live. The main character is a woman named Hero, who has recently arrived in the U.S., after starting life as part of a prestigious and wealthy family, then joining the rebels living mostly in jungles for ten years; she has been imprisoned and tortured. We also learn about her extended family, both in the Philippines and in California, as well as the community of friends in which she is caught up. She falls in love with a woman, takes care of and dearly loves a younger relative, and is constantly caught up in the conflict between her past and present lives. One realistic aspect that I appreciated was the characters' easily going back and forth among Filipino English, Tagalog, and other Filipino languages, as well as “standard” American English. There is little in the way of explaining words or terms; the author trusts readers to figure them out for themselves if they don’t already know. The novel is crammed full of intrigue, violence, love, sex, caring, friendship, work, and just plain getting on with life and dealing with what has to be dealt with. Highly recommended.

"Saint X," by Alexis Schaitkin

Many readers will remember the sad case of the young American woman, Natalee Ann Holloway, who disappeared while on a high school graduation trip in Aruba in 2005. Her body was never found, and the leading suspect was never convicted; he was, however, convicted of the murder of another young woman in Peru five years later. Alexis Schaitkin’s novel, “Saint X” (Celadon, 2020) does not explicitly refer to that case, and the facts and details in the real-life case and this imaginary case diverge in many ways, but Holloway’s story is clearly the inspiration for this novel. College student Alison Thomas disappears while on a family vacation on a fictional Caribbbean island called Saint X. The novel shuttles back and forth between the story of that vacation and the story of how Alison’s younger sister Claire, only seven years old at the time of the tragedy, spends much of the next many years, well into her adulthood, focusing on -- one might say obsessing about -- her sister’s disappearance. In a huge coincidence, she sees one of the suspects (who has been exonerated by police) in New York City, and becomes fixated on him. Finally she actually meets him, and strangely they develop a sort of friendship. This is a story of the longlasting effects of family tragedies, as well as of the effects of age, gender, and race in every aspect of life. It is a compelling story, compellingly written. Despite the huge danger that the novel will seem exploitative, it does not feel that way; the author tells the story in a very humane way, slowly revealing the complexities of all the characters. There is a resolution which readers may or may not find satisfying, but which in any case brings a kind of closure to this sad, very readable and well written novel.

"Rodham," by Curtis Sittenfeld

Curtis Sittenfeld’s new novel, “Rodham” (Random House, 2020), is very timely, as the upcoming U.S. presidential election reminds us of the 2016 election, and of the sad loss of that election by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Some of us older feminists have been waiting for decades for a woman (not just any woman, of course) to win the U.S. presidency for the first time; it is disgraceful that there has never been one. We were crushed when Clinton lost. And we know that she would have done so much better a job than the current incumbent, especially during this deadly pandemic. This novel – and it is fiction -- is an artful and compelling blend of true biographical facts, especially in the first half of the novel, and the author’s imaginary story of what could have happened. I don’t want to give too much away. But the plot of “Rodham” is not the main point; the novel is full of the kinds of details we would all want to know if we could know more about the character. The over 400 pages allow a leisurely (and very engaging) laying out of the different stages of the main character’s life, and of the context of the changing political and social landscape of the U.S. over those years. Sittenfeld, the author of several other novels, has written about politics and the presidency before, in her novel “American Wife,” which is based on the life of First Lady Laura Bush. I read that novel, despite my disinclination to be interested in the Bush family, and found it almost riveting. Actually, Sittenfeld had me at her first novel, “Prep,” about life in an exclusive boarding school. I have read most of her novels since then, and will keep doing so.