My current class is another lit class, only this one is about women writers. I wasn’t entirely stoked about having a women writers class, but then I looked at it like this: like it or not, I am a woman writer. I’m not being bitchy or anything, but on some level, I object to the whole concept of “women’s studies” and whatnot, because damn it, it’s not like female authors are some rare and fragile subspecies of orchids that must be handled in a very careful homeostatic environment.
We’re writers. With vulvas. The end.
But then again, from a psychological perspective, like it or not, we’re socialized in a certain manner. Even parents who consider themselves feminists subtlety treat their girl children differently than they treat their boy children. I am, in all of my special snowflake wonder, the product of my environment, and if there are certain theories regarding the translation of those impacts onto any literature created by women, then it would behoove (god, I love that word) me to take a closer look and approach it with an open mind. Besides, can there be anything more opposite than the last lit class (I keep wanting to call it the clit class… I AM SO SORRY) which was regarding Sci Fi and filled with lots of men and some very alarming facial hair situations. And I did not do exceptionally well in that class (bitter) (still) so maybe a complete 180 with a class filled with women (oh my god, we don’t even have one token guy. Seriously, right now my ovaries hurt and I think it’s because my cycle has been reading the syllabus) would be just the thing. Right? RIGHT?! One can only hope. We had to go around the room and introduce ourselves and our plan (there are five plans in the program and whenever the creative writing people identify themselves, the rhetoric and lit people all do a little head tilt like they just watched a bear on a unicycle pull out its penis and jerk off) (wow, why am I so potty mouthed today?) and the reason I gave for taking the class was that I was preparing to defend my thesis this spring and wanted to be able to speak intelligently about similar themes in my own work. Which sounds really good, so let’s just go with that, also.
That and the “not sci fi” thing. Yes!
The theme is anger and so far, I’ve blown through two of the books on the syllabus and have already read the third (a million times, it’s Beloved and I had to keep from singing “PreDICTable!” when I saw it on the book list) and signed up to do one of the papers next week, so I’m hopefully going to be ahead of the game and not puking from stress around the end of April. Actually, who are we kidding? I’m totally going to be puking.
In other lit news, I will be reading a story at a bookstore to the people who show up. It’s in Milwaukee on the day after Valentine’s, and if you’re in Milwaukee or the area, you can come and hear me read the boat story, which I don’t know if I talked about on this page or not, but yeah, there’s a boat story, inspired by Mopie’s booze cruise (although it has nothing to do with frivolity nor the King of Nothing) and I’m going to read the shit out of it.