The other day, I was telling my friend how I excited I was to start reading Brandon Sanderson and get into his work (Emerald Sea, Mistborn series). She straight up told me she doesn’t read books written by men. My internal reaction was super confused.
There are so many male authors out there that have created staples in genres I love, especially fantasy and sci-fi. Heck, I grew up reading amazing YA series written by male authors like Percy Jackson and Maze Runner!
But the more I thought about my friend’s comment, the more I kind of understood. Men can sometimes have a bad perspective when writing women. The only prime example I can think of is in classic literature such as The Great Gatsby. However, a great deal of classic literature was written by men if you think about it. Back then, women could not publish their books publicly.
I think as women, we unintentionally or not chose books written by women because we desire a well-rounded female protagonist and a female perspective. Not saying all men don’t get women. I think part of it is readers want more representation especially for BIPOC or lgbtq+ which may be written by women.
What do you think the reason is? And should this matter for future readers? What are your thoughts?
by Effective-Airport-83
5 Comments
Brandon Sanderson did an AMA here [you might want to take a look](http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/) 🙂 [Here’s a link to all of our upcoming AMAs](http://www.reddit.com/r/books/wiki/amafullschedule)
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I think it’s a thoughtful question but the real answer would be found by asking your friend why she in particular doesn’t do that. The reasons some women don’t will vary widely. I think you gave some really good examples of potential reasons.
I think also men authors get more visibility (reasons why women used to use male pen names or just their first initial and last name in order to get published) so this may be an attempt to turn that trend.
99% of my bookshelves are women authors apart from Stephen King. I just feel more drawn to stories written by women. They are more interesting and the characters more well rounded to me!
I feel like this is a super stupid rule when it comes to reading. How would you interpret it if you overheard a conversation between two men saying they won’t read a book written by a woman? Just because many men write women badly doesn’t mean that there is not worthwhile literature written by men.
I can understand being *interested* in woman-written work but to close yourself out to 50% of all writing is really unhinged. To be clear, I am a very progressive person, I’m not just being shitty or not understanding where the basis of this sentiment lies. I just think it’s really, really stupid.
I can’t really offer my perspective on this because I’m a guy, but I’ll just say that it’s clear that many people feel like your friend — that in general they prefer to consume works made by people they identify with.
It’s not just in books: for example we’ve seen how movies are heavily marketed as being made by the group the movies are representing, so clearly at least some section of the audience appreciates this.
I personally don’t think that an author needs to be similar to their characters in order to write them well. It’s like saying that that a screenwriter needs to be a superhero to write a marvel movie.
**But** it’s totally fine to appreciate that some people simply prefer to consume works by creators who have more similar life experiences to them.