Things in Print Thursday :: an analysis of “Best-Coming-of-Age Books for Girls” part one

So this is a list of books that “investigate, address, or represent the female experience in some essential way.”  What does this mean, I wonder?  I’m doing this one in two parts.

1. Self-Help (Lorrie Moore): short stories, which seem to primarily be about heterosexual women.
2. Harriet the Spy (Louise Fitzhugh): white heterosexual female protagonist.
3. The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison): African-American heterosexual female protagonist.
4. The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath): white female clinically depressed heterosexual protagonist.
5. Get in Trouble (Kelly Link): short stories.
6. Weetzie Bat (Francesca Lia Block): white heterosexual female protagonist.
7. The Lover (Marguerite Duras): white heterosexual female protagonist.
8. Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert): white heterosexual female protagonist.
9. Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (Danielle Evans): short stories, many of which seem to be about women of color.
10. The Liar’s Club (Mary Karr): white heterosexual female protagonist.
11. Near to the Wild Heart (Clarice Lispector): Brazilian heterosexual female protagonist.
12. The Group (Mary McCarthy): white female protagonists with a variety of sexualities and details.
13. The Interestings (Meg Wolitzer): white female heterosexual protagonist.
14. I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith): white female heterosexual protagonist.
15. Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston): African-American female heterosexual protagonist.
16. Oranges are Not the Only Fruit (Jeanette Winterson): white female lesbian protagonist.
17. How to Be a Woman (Caitlin Moran): white female heterosexual memoirist.
18. Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi): Iranian female heterosexual protagonist.
19. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte): white female heterosexual protagonist.
20. Too Much Happiness (Alice Munro): short stories.
21. The Bloody Chamber (Angela Carter): short stories.
22. Bad Behavior (Mary Gaitskill): short stories.
23. Geek Love (Katherine Dunn): Albino female heterosexual protagonist.
24. Krik? Krak! (Edwidge Danticat): short stories with Haitian female protagonists.
25. The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing (Melissa Bank): short stories with a white heterosexual female protagonist.

Sigh.

–your fangirl heroine.

Advertisements