Reading more women authors

During Women's History Month, I read about an Ohio bookstore that decided to "silence men's voices" by turning around the spines of books written by men. And even though this was a feminist bookstore, the result was fascinating -- most of the books showed the white pages, rather than the titles on the spines.

Now, while I am not in favor of silencing anyone's voice, I am supportive of amplifying the voices of those from groups who are seldom heard. So, I decided to do a similar experiment in part of my home library. I choose the hardcover fiction section, because it was contained on one wall, and frankly, was easier to mess with.

The result was not encouraging.

                                                  Only the female authors can be seen

In fact, I was embarrassed and disappointed. Then I looked at part of my TBR Stack, and realized it had the same problem: Mostly books by men. Not much gender diversity. (I'm not going to even get into the lack of cultural diversity. That's a problem for another time.)

Now, in my defense, I do read and enjoy books written by women. Indeed, some of my favorite authors are women. (Yeah, I wrote that. But it's true.) There's Lisa Carey, Emma Donoghue. Barbara Kingsolver. Margaret Atwood. In fact, I realized, most of the books I have read that are written by women are by those few female authors.

So I am promising to branch out. I will make it a point to buy and read more books written by women. I will seek out female authors I have not read before. The next time I do this, fewer of the spines will be white.

                                        The same bookcases with all authors revealed

Just a small note about the above picture. Some of the female authors were moved to a new bookcase, dedicated to Irish novelists, poets, and playwrights.