Authors: Shelly Fisher Fishkin

Silences (40 page)

A Sampling of the Ratio of Women Writers to Men Writers in Anthologies and Textbooks
^*

Fiction—Anthologies, Ethnic (CODA, Poets and Writers Directory, classification)

Poetry Anthologies

A recent
New York Times
reviewer (April 1976), making the prevalent (unexamined) assumption, chastised Ellen Moers, author of the superb
Literary Women,
for limiting her subject matter to women and “exiling the other half of the writing race.” As these figures establish, women are the exiled. By the most generous estimate, simply the percentage of fiction of all manner and kind published,
men are three-quarters of the writing race; in the more selective and indicative estimates, they are 88% to 98%.

*
These are round figure, rough estimates that include both the 1971 findings used in the original talk, and 1976 ones which confirm. As only the conclusions remain from 1971, most titles herein are 1976 work, in or on what was readily accessible in limited time.

▴
ONE OUT OF TWELVE, P
. 24

*
Among their titles:
Adversity and Grace: Studies in Recent American Literature; Beyond the Wasteland, A Study of the American Novel in the 1960s; Contemporary American-Jewish Literature, Critical Essays; Literary Disruptions: The Making of a Post Contemporary American Fiction.

**
The proportion would have been more accurate had the number of pages in books concerned
only with male writers also been figured in.

*
I am looking forward to the anthologies (and works of criticism) which, though including women writers only, will be titled:
The Major Young Poets; Innovative Fiction, Stories for the Seventies; American Literature, 1950–1975;
or:
Critical Studies in Recent American Literature.
Or conversely, when only men writers are being discussed,
The Male Imagination
or
Literary Men.

**
The percentage figure is misleading. Page space accorded women writers is considerably less than that given to writers who are men; on rough estimate—one out of eighteen.

Especially in view of some of the men included, the omission of women writers whose work is far more vital, substantial, important is indefensible. Noticeably absent are black women writers. (Even among women
authors chosen for inclusion, several of the directories—in disadvantageous contrast—have a preponderance of popular, genre, “fluff” women writers.)

*
Most of these titles listed in Poets and Writers Directory.

The leeching of belief, of will, the damaging of capacity, begin so early.

THE BABY; THE GIRL-CHILD; THE GIRL; THE YOUNG WRITER-WOMAN
^▴

Little put-upon sisters . . .

What keyhole have we slipped through,

What door has shut? . . .

Everything has happened.
^*

[Baby]
Bess who has been fingering a fruit-jar lid—absently, heedlessly drops it—aimlessly groping across the table, reclaims it again. Lightning in her brain. She releases, grabs, releases, grabs. I can do. Bang! I did that. I can do. I! A look of neanderthal concentration is on her face. That noise! In triumphant, astounded joy she clashes the lid down. Bang, slam, whack. Release, grab, slam, bang, bang.
Centuries of human drive work in her; human ecstasy of achievement, satisfaction deep and fundamental as sex:
I can do, I use my powers, I! I!
Wilder, madder, happier the bangs. The fetid fevered air rings with . . . Bess’s toothless, triumphant crow. Heat misery, rash misery transcended.
^**

Was the beginning sexual?

I remember a girlboy in one

(Although haunted by father pain)

Sexless like tree shoots, roving

Along seemingly flowerless trees

So sensual, she lay on tree trunk

Or quick-changed, burrowed into

Silts and banks. I remember her bridling

In the sex of a stallion (never the mare)

Driven along by string reins, mouthbit.

Did He draw She? (In her sleep

She heard them argue, never in her