Somehow I missed it but Gender Across Borders points out that recently Publishers Weekly put out it’s list of the top ten books for 2009 which does not include a single woman author. Not.One.
According to HuffPo, “PW admits that they’re not “the most politically correct” choices — the list doesn’t include any female authors — but, to the editors, they were the best among the top 100 that they had chosen.”
BTW – only 29 women made it into their top 100. In my view, the point is not being “politically correct” but just being plain old balanced. This hardly seems balanced.
Poet Amy King looked into the content of the top ten and concluded, “Simple to observe that the content that “stood out from the rest,” according to PW, is all about mostly male protagonists and their realities: war, adventure, science, boyhood adventures, taming the wilderness, the male writer’s life, etc. In other words, the novels that deal with women’s realities simply “don’t stand out”. Her comments on each book are biting while being deliciously amusing.
Women in Letters and Literary Arts has started The WILLA List wiki specifically to document great books by women that PW, ummmm, missed? Yeah, that’s it – all the great books they missed. Anyone can create an entry to add their favorites. The list closes at the end of the month.
