What is it that writers offer to society? One belief is that they offer a means for understanding our world – the people and relations that mould much of it. For instance, reading Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice can help one understand how relationships tend to work. The broad picture it gives is of the way our actions can directly affect people’s perceptions and behaviour. Austen belongs to the minority of women authors who are published, reviewed, promoted and read. Figures here from Vida, a women’s literary organization, reveal this as self-evident. And this is from the alleged cream of literary publishing. One can only wonder what a similar study within the murky layers of the Nepali publishing world would reveal.
The gender disparity in publishing is self-evident but largely ignored. At a poetry programme at the Seattle Town Hall on 9th April, Hedgebrook Rising: Carolyn Forché & Local Poets Raise the Roof, I came closer to articulating what I had been thinking about in Nepal as I listened to and observed young women poets. The gender disparity is not a question of aesthetics. In other words, it’s not a question of literary merit. It precedes the aesthetic. It is a loss in terms of the unique spheres and perspectives that women writers come from. It is a loss in terms of our ability to access the different ways we can know our world.
While literary merit comes from a standpoint beyond gender, the sensibilities and approach (dare I say intelligence?) of the writing is writer dependent. The writing is unique to the writer. The Hedgebrook event featured eight women poets, each with their own sensibilities in terms of how they handle relationships, how they handle their mothers, daughters, friends and families. The power in their words came from within them, and they have the power to inspire, nurture and change.
The event attested to the work Hedgebrook has done. A literary organization that runs a literary retreat for women, the event marked its 25th anniversary that day. Since its inception, it has hosted over 1400 women writers in its six cottages on a 48-acre plot of woodland by the sea. Out of the retreat have come Pulitzer winners, PEN/Hemingway winners, and numerous critically acclaimed books. Hedgebrook’s vision is to nurture the voices and work of individual women writers.
It is apparent that gender disparity, wherever we live, is a part of the world we inherit. The challenge for us is to address this and come up with creative solutions to address the imbalance and redefine our inherent social biases. It is in the construction of new sensibilities that society will find the most value in its writers.
