Some authors spend a lot of time and calories insisting they don’t write chick lit.  Some other folks spend a lot of time and calories putting down anything that remotely might fit into the chick lit category.  All that annoys me.  So, when I saw the cover of November’s Writer’s Digest, I picked it up. Melissa Bank is on the cover and the headline reads: Is "chick lit" an insult?  Melissa Bank talks about escaping the genre she helped create. 

Yeah, that got my attention.  See, many female writers complain that the being lumped in with chick lit is demeaning to their work.  I think Bank is saying something different  - that the need to find a category is the demeaning part.  She says:

I think that the book’s [Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing] success must be partly due to being categorized in some way, and I’m so grateful for that success.  On the other hand, I think the term "chick lit" sounds more chick and less lit.  It sounds derogatory to me - that it’s not serious or substantial or wouldn’t be of interesting to anybody who isn’t a "chick."  I feel like it’s a funny ghettoization, the way African-American or gay literature is classified that way.  It puts them in a  category that says, oh, you’ll want to read this if you’re one of "them" - that’s it’s not really for everybody.  It’s a code for limited audience or limited appeal.

That’s a frustration I can understand.  Reviewers and, frankly, some fellow female authors, like to categorize books so that they can then put down that category as being unworthy.  I’d say that, not the "chick lit" title, is the problem. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 25th, 2005 at 9:49 am and is filed under About Authors, About Books, About Publishing, About Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.