Ending the Phrases "I Don't Read" and "I Don't Read Women," One T-Shirt At A Time
Monday, May 9, 2011 at 4:00AM in Alafair Burke Admit it. At some point in your life, you've said it, or at least heard someone say it. "I don't read books by women," or more harshly, "I don't like women authors."
Typically when I hear the sentiment, there's a slight (and I suppose flattering?) modification: "I don't usually like women authors, but I love your books."
Huh??
Appreciative yet perplexed, I started asking readers why they thought they didn't like women authors. Usually they said it was because the books weren't hard-boiled enough. Or they said there was too much romance and not enough action.T hey believed that women writers were writing for women and not men.
On the conference circuit, I've talked a little bit about the stereotyping of authors, and we've had great discussions about male/female differences (or the lack thereof) here on Murderati. I do believe that publishers and editors are more likely to steer female crime writers toward romantic suspense. They might also encourage them to write more about female experiences and characters.
But to say "I don't read women" is very different than preferring certain types of books over other types of books. Some of the most inventive, brilliant, and, yes, bad-ass crime fiction being written today comes from women. Using gender as a proxy for subgenre is a darn lazy way to choose books when your local independent bookseller will happily hand-select books tailored to your individual preferences, and when Amazon tells you if you like Michael Connelly, you might also like Tess Gerritsen, and if you like Harlan Coben, you might also like Lisa Gardner, and when thousands of high-quality reader-reviews are a computer away via GoodReads.
I was talking about the "I don't read women" phenomenon over on my Facebook wall a few months ago, and I quipped, "I want a t-shirt that says Real Men Read Women." Before I knew it, a bunch of my friends said they wanted to buy that t-shirt. Well, when it comes to my readers, I say, "Ask and you shall receive."
But if I was going to get into the tee-shirt vending business, the money needed to go to a good cause. And as the daughter of a writer and a librarian, I see no worthier cause than youth literacy. As much as I hate to hear someone say, "I don't read women," it's far worse to hear, "I don't read." And it's even sadder to hear those words from a child.
Did you know that the majority of low-income families do not have a single book for their children at home? Teachers have students bringing in phone books when asked to bring a book from home, because it was the only book they had.
I'm proud to report that bestselling (and super cool) authors Lisa Gardner, Tess Gerritsen, Laura Lippman, Karin Slaughter, and Lisa Unger have lent their names to an odd little effort to end the phrases "I don't read" and "I don't read women," one t-shirt at a time. Thanks to them, "Real Men Read Women" gear is now available online.
We've also got "I Like Boys Who Read Books by Girls" gear. 
And though we thought that the use of our names would help bring the crime fiction community to the effort, we also have gear that does not list any individual authors, so you can collect the gear even if you prefer Harper Lee and Dorothy Parker.
All profits will go to First Book, a non-profit organization that provides new books to low-income children. Order your stuff here. And if you're not into t-shirts, mousepads, and water bottles (who ISN'T into that stuff?), please consider donating directly to First Book here.
Thanks in advance for your support and for help spreading the word!
I'll be raffling off a t-shirt to one lucky commenter. Just post a comment that relates either to your favorite female authors or your experiences reading as a child.
P.S./B.S.P. Early reviews for my new book, LONG GONE, are rolling in. Library Journal, in a starred review, says "Burke’s first stand-alone novel is a fast-paced, plot-driven nail-biter." And from Booklist: "Burke delivers a tightly plotted, suspenseful account . . . It’s very much in the Lisa Gardner vein—strong female protagonist, shadowy villains, intricate and suspenseful story." (And they didn't even know Lisa and I are on t-shirts together!) Still waiting for PW and Kirkus.
You can watch the LONG GONE book trailer here:
literacy, reading, women thriller authors 
Reader Comments (68)
I understand people who say I don't (usually) read ..... even less. I certainly have my favourite genres, with mystery/suspense probably being top of the list (regardless of the gender of the author) but it is through reading outside my comfort zone that I've discovered the most amazing authors and books in the past.
I loved reading as a child. A book was so much more satisfying than a short TV show or even a film. Still is, of course. For a few years, when I was little and lived with my parents, there weren't many books available except at school. The local library was too far away for children in my neighborhood to walk to and really did not have much for children, anyway. Our parents did not take us. A couple of times my friends and I made the 3 mile walk (each way), but we were not allowed to even go into rooms that contained books beyond our age level (just 6-8 years old at the time). Who decided what was what in that regard, I don't know. But at that age I just thought the poor librarian was mean. [Sorry, wonderful librarians.] That was Massachusetts a long time ago.
One of our teachers, Ms. Carnilla, had two walls of books, and gave us extra credit for each book we read (beyond the required 10) and wrote an essay about in a journal. She passed them out on the first day of school. I am pretty sure she bought these notebooks herself. You might remember the kind - little cardboard bound booklets with a funny black and white design? If we filled one up, she gave us another.
I am so happy to see this support for literacy and hope you raise lots of money with the tee shirts. There are still many children who do not have access to books.
. I wonder...do you hear this much from younger readers? Because I 'd think the generation whose first great book- addiction was Harry Pottter might feel differently.
Sometimes I like little cozy mysteries. Other times harder hitting thrillers like what Tess Garritson writes and paranormal of the kind written by Sherrilyn Kenyon. My tastes are eclectic, mostly I just like to READ! I feel so sorry for people who don't read. They are missing so much,
I prefer to read a book rather than see the adaptation in a movie or on tv. I like to let my imagination go with the book. I don't always agree with the way the stories are cast.
This is no doubt too much information for this note but so be it.
Kudos to y'all for deftly fighting both ignorance and illiteracy with this project! And kudos to my late mother, who taught me to read "big kid's books" before I started kindergarten, which was the best present I've ever received!
As far as the comment, "I don't read" ... I was on the Levy bus tour in 2008 with a bunch of authors, multi-genre but mostly romance sub-genres. One of the authors had a memoir out--he was the son of a man wanted by America's Most Wanted and turned in his father when he was 19. Anyway, he'd grown up in Michigan, and one of the h.s. teachers at a school he'd spoken to had told her students they could get extra credit if they went to the signing and either bought the book or had him sign a card. most bought his book. (And so did I! He's very inspirational -- Chip St. Clair)
One signing I was sitting next to him and two girls came in with their mother. Chip talk to the girls, signed a book for them, and said to the mother, "What do you read? Over here" on his right "is Sophia writes historical romance, and Allison" on his left" write suspense novels. There's also an inspirational romance author and a--"
She cut him off and, in front of her kids, said, "I'm sorry, I don't have time to read."
I wanted to throttle her.
My Mom was one of those mothers who belonged to the Book of the Month club or whatever the book club was for mailorder of the day. We lived in a remote place and the closest bookstore was an hour drive away and the local library had a woman who for whatever reason had rubbed my Mom the wrong way. I think she just wanted books that were hers and filled the bookshelves. She ALWAYS had a book going and typically read at least 1-2 per week.
We were always read to and while I couldn't get her to give me an allowance or spend on clothes or whatever else I wanted, if I asked to buy a book she always did. I remember walking to the corner drugstore to see if a Nancy Drew I hadn't read had come in or later whatever the teeny-bopper romance series books were in. As a teen in the summer I was on the 1-2 book per week track.
As an adult, I ebb and flood on reading. I can blow-off deadlines and pickups to finish a book (bad Mom) and then go weeks without reading (so sad).
Women authors? You know the story of JK Rowling and why she went with initials. I think she changed a generation of boys to read everyone.
My favorites? Well, Murderati of course carries favorites that I've discovered and devoured the work of Tess, Alafair, Zoe, Cornelia and I came to Murderati through Louise. Katherine Neville's past works (before The Fire) have a place on my bookshelf and there is the infrequent cozy by Cleo Coyle and others (ashamed to admit I cannot recall their names).
I'm becoming more of a snob where I want to read female authors more than works by counterparts with testicles. I don't know why... perhaps looking at voice and style? Maybe I'll have a good answer for that someday.
Love the line! I just may have to add this to my "Honey Badger Don't Care" t-shirt.
And then you have the opposite sometimes: readers who will read only women. IMHO, a story is a story that holds its own no matter the gender of the author.
BTW, I'm working on my June issue of Premeditated and worked on your new release -- it sounded terrific! Congrats!
Every semester some variation of that comes out. And although I am always thrilled for that one student, I just wish every kid knew that. They have all heard so many rules that dismiss their choices: it needs to be a classic, it can't be popular, it must be by a man/a woman/a serious writer, and that genre doesn't count.
All that matters is the story!
As I've gotten older, and more crotchety, maybe, I'm finding myself more and more leaning towards fiction written by women. Maybe it's because women writers have to try harder, or maybe I just enjoy the more widely drawn characters, and more closely observed emotions. Whatever it is, my husband shares the preference.
In fact, he recently said to me what I had said to friends just a week before: I much prefer women singers. Weird, huh?
And that new trailer of yours is a winner, too. Really spooky.
I have a regular who would love Naomi Hirahara's Mas Arai series, if I could get him to open the covers. He loves Japanese culture and history, he loves mysteries, he's even an avid gardener. But he took one look at the author's name and assumed her books were "Joy Luck Club cozies." That's a direct quote, by the way.
I told him that the MC was male, and you really don't want to hear his opinion about that.
I'll wear him down eventually . . .
When I was younger, I used to think that I was too busy to read, but now when I'm in my mid-40s, I'm crazy busy with a full-time job, taking three college classes every eight weeks working on two bachelor's degrees, working on writing my own book and two daughtersm a son-in-law (18 and 25, 25 years old) and an almost two year old grandson -- and I find that I read to escape the madness! The busier I get, the crankier I get if I don't get my reading time.
I love the concept of your campaign and would love one of those T-shirts! :)
When I was a kid, I was shy and an outcast on many levels with my peers that I firmly believe my love of books was probably the only thing that kept me from becoming one of those tragic stories that we read about of children who take their own lives too soon. A lunch-hour spent in the school library with a good book was peace and escape and happiness for me; those days when the library was closed were sheer misery.At the time, I remember being teased mercilessly for being such a bookworm, but my ability to read a book and teach myself what I want to know about has surely stood me in good stead as an adult.
As I write this, I'm feeling great sadness remembering the school librarian, a kindly woman named Mrs. Mason who let me spend time in the library even when it was technically closed, who saved for me new books that she thought I'd enjoy, and whose untimely death of a stroke when I was in 5th or 6th grade was one of the first experiences of true loss I had in my childhood. How I wish there was a way I could go back and thank her for saving my life!
My mother always had a book going and we always had books in the house. Saturdays my father would drop my mother and me at the library (she didn't drive then) and we both would stock up by the armful. I read my way through my childhood right into motherhood. I then read to my baby and books were always a part of the gifts he received even after he left to start his own family.
Now I send books to my grandsons with their gifts and maybe even for no special reason other than I spotted a good one at the book store. Now his sons love their books too.
Gender was never a factor with the books I read to my son nor is it involved in the books I pick for them as gifts so I believe I have contributed to at least 3 males in this world who read for the love of the written word, not for who has done the writing. Yay me!
And yay Alafair for a great idea. Let the world know that real men read woman (and they knit too).
I can't recall a time when I couldn't read. I distinctly remember reading Winnie the Pooh before starting grade school. As I grew up, I just devoured everything I could get my hands on, which made for some sorta weird literary juxtapositions, as what I could get my hands on was often whatever my incredibly conservative (both politically and socially) grandmother had brought home from the library. So I’d go from Allen Drury to the Bobbsey Twins, from Nixon’s Six Crises to Louisa May Alcott. It was all just grist for the mill
I'm actually rather impressed some of these folks who've said these things to you or other women writers can actually articulate their stupidity. As you'll see below, until I was obliged to think about this issue because of your nifty post, I hadn't tried honestly to address my own bias. And I'm embarrassed by it -- not least because I still don't truly understand it.
I try as best I can to alternate between men and women writers in the book group I lead at my local indie bookstore: http://www.davidcorbett.com/highcrimes.php
My focus is a certain type of book -- literary fiction that deals with crime or crime fiction that pushes the envelope of genre (by which I do NOT mean "transcends the genre") -- and I can honestly say I have not discerned any reliably identifiable distinction between men and women writers.
We're currently reading Dorothy B. Hughes' IN A LONELY PLACE -- recommended to me by Megan Abbott and Sarah Weinman -- and it compares far more with other writers of the 1950s (it brings to mind Goodis and Thompson) than some genetic "woman writer" mold. And I don't think any man we've read wrote a steelier book than Joan Didion's THE LAST THING HE WANTED.
Interestingly, the only two authors whose books the whole group didn't like were women: Susannah Moore's IN THE CUT and Joyce Carol Oates' LITTLE BIRD OF HEAVEN. That doesn't mean I haven't picked men writers who left folks cold or inspired true disdain, it just was never across-the-board.
But the only two authors who've had three books chosen are women: Denise Mina and Kate Atkinson. This reveals a bias of mine: I love both writers. And when an interviewer recently asked me for other writers I might suggest for his blog, the first two who came to mind were women: Cara Black and Zoë Ferraris. (He's also interviewed our own Tess Gerritsen.)
HOWEVER: I must admit that with one exception -- Martha Gelhorn -- the writers who've inspired me are men. Now, inspiration is deeply personal, and so touches on issues of gender identity in a variety of ways, I suppose. (Gellhorn, unfortunately known more for her marriage to Hemingway than for her journalism, was one of the finest war correspondents this country has ever produced.) And yet -- on reflection, I can say the poet Kim Addonizio has inspired me in the way, say, Pete Dexter, Robert Stone and Richard Price have. Those are probably the main five, the ones I go back to time and time again to teach myself things.
And the poet Anna Akhmatova hits me in a way no writer of either sex does.
But I still choose more men than women writers for my personal reading. My TBR pile is overwhelmingly testosterone-centric, with the only women with books there being: Rebecca Goldstein (INCOMPLETENESS and 36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD), Kathryn Harrison (ENVY), Marina Lewycka (A SHORT HISTORY OF TRACTORS IN UKRAINIAN) Marilynne Robinson (GILEAD) and Rebecca Barry (LATER, AT THE BAR). [Plus two friends, Nancy Rommelmann and Cheryl Strayed.]
That may seem like a lot, but I have a HUGE TBR pile.
What's up with that? I'm not sure. Having a literate girlfriend who puts work by women writers in my hands helps me get out of this rut, and I'm incredibly grateful. She just gave me Jennifer Egan's A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD, and she's constantly giving me women poets and short story writers to read, all of whom I invariably love. But why don't I instinctively seek them out myself?
In some sense, I'm always looking for writers who seem like guides on my own path, who are in a sense teachers, and as noted the majority of those have been men. But Gellhorn and Addonizio have also touched me that way.
Hmm, as they say.
I'm sorry, this is terribly muddled, but you've got me thinking. And questioning.
Damn you.
I was signing in a bookstore when I noticed a male customer who had an armload of thriller novels he was about to buy. My media escort called out: "If you like thrillers, why don't you try one by Tess Gerritsen? She's right here and she'll sign it!"
The customer looked at me, shook his head, and said: "I don't read books by women. I don't like their writing."
I got a look at the thrillers he was holding and happened to know that two of them were ghostwritten by WOMEN. He was already reading women authors, but just didn't know it.
When I was at the RT Conference a woman came up while I was signing and passed my table, glancing at my books. She smiled and said, "Nothing personal, I just don't read male authors."
I could kind-of understand her thoughts, considering this was a romance conference. But on the other hand I wondered how many male romance authors she was reading who are writing under pseudonyms. Probably not many, because I imagine she does her homework. Still...come on. My world would be considerably smaller if I didn't read female authors.
So, the ultimate put down review might be -- Magnificent, insightful book, packed with action and tension. A must read. She writes like a man. Looking forward to shopping for my writer friends.
I personally believe the most unique and interesting and drop-dead funny comic on the scene today is Maria Bamford: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4egL6Ju6M0&feature=related
When Kathryn Bigelow won her Oscar for THE HURT LOCKER, the male buzz in Hollywood was: Lowest Grossing Best Picture Ever.
So God knows the talent is there. And so is the Glass Great Wall. It's one thing to wonder if you have the talent. It's quite another to know you do, and be told it doesn't matter.
Yes, I was puzzled by the children. Also by the fact you apparently suffered amnesia concerning the spelling of your own name (Alafiar).
Thanks for clarifying.
David
P.S. Dusty: I watch Maria Bamford and feel my chin tapping my knees. I love her so much I could almost stalk her.
Dusty: OK, you made me laugh out loud.
Barbie: You make me blush. Believe me, I am not the coolest guy. Ask Alafair.
Yeah, woman don't make good comedians. Say goodnight, Gracie.
I didn't know Alice Sheldon was James Tiptree Jr., and her work continues to amaze me. And I was rooting for Tana French to win the Edgar this year for Faithful Place.