Reading From The Margins

I've been thinking about this project for ages, and to be honest the content of my reading material won't change massively anyway, but I was given the final push by two things that happened recently. Firstly the  post "The Year I stopped Reading Men" or more accurately, the comments on the post. I am always astonished at how people loose their shit when you tell them you don't read or are going to stop reading men. Theres accusations of sexism, of imbalance  (because our culture isn't saturated by men's creations, men's assumptions, men's viewpoints, or anything),of the fact that women don't understand and can't write men any better than men can write women (are you kidding me? Women understanding men is a survival skill under patriarchy.) Comments about missing out on good writing (which assumes that women don't, can't routinely write as well as men.) that women's viewpoints are "biased"

And the other reason is that I have really got into nature writing recently but finding nature writing by women is really, really hard. Men  make up most writers in most genres but it seems that nature writing is even more male heavy than most so I want to read, review, and make a list of Women nature writers in case anyone else is looking for nature writing by women

As is happens I'm not entirely going to stop reading men. I'm going to stop reading mainstream male writers and then take other stuff writer by writer, which means I will be reading some stuff by queer men, disabled men, and men of colour.

I do have some books by mainstream male writers in my bookcase that I want to read eventually but I want to do this project for at least two years to see how it changes the way I think about myself and the world.