Does the reader really care about the gender of the author when they read a book? Does knowing the gender of the author precondition the reader? When a book review mentions that it is a book written by a woman author, does it become easier or tougher to sell the book?It is true that I have read more books written by men. In Bengali, the writers I grew up reading were Tagore, Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, Satyajit Ray, Leela Majumdar, Premendra Mitra; Ashapurna Devi, Nihar Ranjan Gupta, Banaphool, Shankar, Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Sibram Chakraborty, Bani Basu, Joy Goswami, to name a few. The number of women authors were fewer. If I drew up a list of writers in English and Hindi, the list of women writers would have fewer entries. Maybe I never made a conscious effort to read a book because it was written by a woman.
Would the story be different
Could it be that a woman writer will tell a story very differently from a man? Take an epic like Mahabharata. Each writer who tells the story will highlight a different aspect of the story. Every writer makes one or more character the protagonist of the story and that matters. The story when narrated from Duryodhan’s point of view will not match the version if narrated from the eyes of Arjun or Krishna or Yudhisthir or anyone else. Reading the narrative from the eyes of Draupadi provided a fresh interpretation of the epic.The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni tells the story of Mahabharata from Draupadi’s viewpoint. But I wonder if a male had written the story, would the story read any different? It probably would. But are those differences guided by the gender of the author or are they driven by the sensitivities of the individual?
Woman writer or just writer?
When we highlight the gender of the author, are we trying to prime the reader in any manner? Would we have a different expectation of JK Rowling if we did not know whether the author was male or female?I am delighted to see a separate section for displaying Indian authors when I go into a bookshop. But we rarely come across a separate section marked ‘Women Writers’ in a store. There are enough women authors from India who have been published. Should we then expect another shelf reserved for Indian Women Writers? If a section based on nationality is acceptable, why should we object to a categorization by gender? Should we be surprised to see categorization of writers based on height (Tall/ short writers) or weight (fat/ underweight writers). If that sounds ridiculous let us stop to ask why.Nouns and adjectives certainly evoke our emotions. Think of your responses to the statements:
- Two people were arguing with each other.
- A man was arguing with a woman.
- A rich man was arguing with a poor woman
- A rich young man was arguing with a poor old woman
Each twist of the language evokes a different reaction. These terms play into our stereotypes and filters. They set our expectations. The Wikipedia has an entry called Indian writers <click here> and Indian women writers but no separate listing for “Indian men writers”. I wonder why. Perhaps, these categories are made to describe only minority voices.There is a need to tell more stories about voices that are not heard or not mainstream. It is important to tell stories of women, the minorities and the marginalized. But in labeling a writer, the audience gets pre-conditioned to expect a certain point of view being pushed through in the writing. Imagine seeing a section called Indian Nationalist Writers section in a bookshop. Would that category have the same emotional appeal to a young reader today as it would have to someone before 1947?Let the diversity be in the range of stories and issues raised without adding labels that describe the author. That is unfair.Here is another compelling argument by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichiehttps://youtu.be/D9Ihs241zegJoin me on Twitter @AbhijitBhaduri