The Women Writers' Handbook

The Women Writers Handbook is a fascinating look into our history. I started with one of my favorite writers: Sarah Waters. Her interview takes us into her writing process and gives tips for those writing and for future writers. Waters also comments on how writing has changed during her lifetime and how technology has affected it. I found myself nodding my head several times as many of her observations resonated within me.

I meant to move on to Philippa Gregory next when Sian Evans words caught my eye and I started “Let The World Burn Through You”. Evans writes a thought provoking and questioning look into the past and family dynamics. Evans describes her writing history and along with it the history of women in theater writing and society's reaction to it.

I knew that I was not going to move on until I read Djamila Ribeiro's “Considerations of Amefricanity”. Ribeiro repeats a truth I have learned over and over again in regards to how Black women are viewed versus men and versus white women:

“...we have never been treated as fragile. We are a part of a group of women who have worked for centuries as slaves on plantations or on the streets, as saleswomen, greengrocers, prostitutes....”

Black women are not looked at as needing to be taken care of or as part of the myth that women cannot take care of themselves. Black women are consistently overlooked even today. Ribeiro is writing about Brazil, but she may as well be writing about the United States too. The statistics are not all together that different as I have written papers on this within the last five years.

There is more than history in The Women Writers Handbook. In the back of the book is a writing workshop which covers developing characters to finding your voice. Between the workshop and the interviews with the authors throughout the book there are plenty of ideas to help a writer get started, keep going, or push through that block. This is a handbook you will keep by your bedside, writing table, or thesaurus.

I received an ARC of this book and I am writing a review without prejudice and voluntarily.

20% of profits to go to the Virginia Woolf statue campaign.1