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You
go to the bookstore.
You see the array of books on the “this just in” or “new
releases” shelves—and what might you notice? There’s a certain word that seems
to appear again and again.
And
Elizabeth Zelvin has one word for that word. She says: Enough. And her new short
story anthology is not just an illustration of her frustration—she hopes it’s the
beginning of a solution.
The
Girl Book Conspiracy
I’ve
had a revelation about the spate of Girl books
in the crime fiction market: Gone Girl,
Girl On A Train, Girl in the Window, The Girl Next Door, The Lost Girls of
Paris, gathering momentum ever since The
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I don’t think it’s simply the marketing ploy
that many have called it, with publishers jumping on the bandwagon of one
megahit with more of the same.
As a Second Wave feminist—“Really? I studied you
in school!” an awed young person told me recently—I remember how hard we had to
kick and scream to get everyone to stop calling those of us who weren’t fifteen
and under “girls” and start calling us “women.” Yet all of a sudden, on the
covers of books in airport bookstores and big box stores—which as every author
knows, means hundreds of thousands of copies sold—they’re calling grown women
girls again.
Oh,
but they didn’t mean it that way! They’d never do that! As a brilliant
therapist, (not me), once said, unconsciousness is no excuse. So what’s the big
deal? For one thing, books are culture bearers, or in the pop-up vernacular,
influencers. And the titles of bestselling books have exponentially more
influence than the books themselves, because, through word of mouth and the
media, they reach so many people who never read the books.
I’ve never read Gone Girl, because even its greatest
admirers assure me I'll dislike the protagonists. I don’t do unlikable
protagonists, not if I see them coming. But I’ve heard the book mentioned
hundreds of times and participated in dozens of conversations about it, each
reinforcing the concept that a grown woman is a girl, girl, girl.
But
why does “girl” vs. “woman” matter? What difference does it make? I say it
makes a huge difference in our unconscious assumptions and biases, which is why
we fought so hard to change it in the first place. Girls are—supposedly-- immature. They’re naive
and weak. They don’t know much. They need things explained to them. They can be
dismissed and patronized. They can be manipulated. They need authority figures
to make decisions for them. They need to be protected, i.e. controlled “for
their own good,” --which I think we figured out fifty years ago was how the
patriarchy disempowered us while feeling good about themselves. Some of those
generalities may work if the girl is ten years old and the adult responsible
and ethical. But it’s not right to make such assumptions about grown women.
I'm
not asking anyone to abolish the word “girl,” of course. Just use it when
you’re talking about real girls! When I planned Me Too Short Stories: An Anthology, I was looking for stories about
women. But girls as well as women showed up. The cycle of abuse is ongoing
unless we find ways to break it. Some of the girls whose voices you can hear in
these stories have experiences that may seem unimaginable to women who were
nurtured and protected during childhood. Yet others may hear such voices and,
as in the #Me Too movement, recognize parts of their own experience that they
have never dared to examine. These are girls whose stories we need to tell, so
readers can hear and believe them.
As
a therapist in my "other hat," I know these stories are common in
real life. Yet they seldom show up in short crime fiction, even in the darkest
e-zines. Maybe they don't realize that young survivors can change the story. When
I myself wrote a short story about such girls and the women they grow up to be,
I couldn't think where to submit it. So I created a market of my own and
invited other women writers to join me.
What
do you think when you see “girl” on a
cover?
HANK:
I will confess to loving my title THE WRONG GIRL—that book came out in 2013. It is, however, about an infant daughter.
What
do you think, Reds and readers? Is "girl" more than a word?
Me Too Short Stories: An Anthology—crimes
against women, tales of retribution and healing—is editor/ author Elizabeth
Zelvin's plan to strike a blow for abused and intimidated women and girls in
short crime fiction, making them the protagonists of their own stories. Fifteen
women mystery and crime short story authors created fictional sisters who take
charge of their destiny.
Elizabeth Zelvin, three-time Derringer & three-time Agatha
nominee
OUT NOW!
Crimes against women, tales of retribution
and healing
Editor, Where Crime Never Sleeps:
Murder New York Style 4 
