Every festival has its themes, and this one has a few. One of the big ones, getting comments and replays all over the shop is Feminism (note capitalisation). As you can imagine, Miriam has some thoughts on what she tends in her trademark minimalist style of articulation to call 'that whole thing' and no doubt she'll be gearing up to put some thought-through thoughts on paper at some point. But like many women, she experiences a conflict when these subjects are in the air. She's of the generation separated from the kind of fight for equality that Germaine Greer and Anne Summers were fighting - those women were at university at the same time as Miriam's mother, and so their names and their thoughts were part of Miriam's bringing up, as a girl and a young lady [was she ever that?]. Miriam's grandmother was a single mum bringing up two girls on her own in the fifties - something a little bit unheard of at the time. She feels ambivalence about the idea of Women's anything. The Women's Jazz Festival, Women's writing prizes... she'd rather believe that it isn't necessary. That that fight has been fought and won and now we're just getting on with being human beings.
Which is why the address by Anne Summers AO at the launch of The Stella Prize was a bit of an 'oops!' moment for Miriam. It sent her away thinking... Summers talked about the state of play for women writers in 1975 when Damned Whores and God's Police was first published. And how much improved it was when she wrote an introduction to th 1994 edition. And now, she says, we've taken some steps backwards. You know those moments when you realise you've been wandering around, not really looking at reality, but relying on some previous version that you were comfortable with and forgetting to check whether anything's changed? That's what Miriam's been doing [which I could have told her if she'd bothered to ask]. We'll be keeping our ears peeled for updates.
No comments:
Post a Comment