CBC: Elephant in the Room

CBC: Elephant in the Room

I've been pondering this for a few days, thinking of ways to phrase the obvious without making it look like sour grapes. No, the book that I thought should win the Canada Read 2011 series did not win this year, but deciding the best book, like the best bagel, is a completely subjective decision, which we all can't agree on, and this is something that I acknowledge.

But a few words have to be said about the obvious.

The Canada Reads 2011 series has now been running for 10 years, and its objective was to get Canadians reading, and reading Canadian authors. The series is a win-win situation for our national publishing industry and our authors who reap the benefits of increased exposure and book sales. I must admit that if it had not been for Canada Reads, I would not have read Guy Vanderhaege's the Last Crossing, Leo McKay's  Twenty-Six or Angie Abdou's the Bone Cage, three stories that I adored. The series has also demonstrated that Canada has many world class writers, and this was not the case when I was studying Canadian Lit in high school in the 1980s.

Indeed, we have come a long way. Canadians now read books by Canadians and even enjoy them. But now we need to look a little closer at the results of the last 10 years. I've done a little research and found that of the 50 finalists over the 10 years, only 19 women authors have made it into the finals (38% vs 62%), and in this past decade only two women have actually won (20% vs. 80%). There was a glimmer of hope this year when three women actually made it into the finals, one of whom was Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Carol Shields. Unless made it into the top five, Ms. Shield's final book in a stellar literary career. Initially, it hardly seemed fair that her end-of-career book would be competing against four first-time novels.

But surprise! Terry Fallis's The Best Laid Plans, the self-published book and "the Cinderella story" won the Canada Reads' essential book of the decade title. Everyone loves an underdog! Self-published authors are smiling from ear to ear across Canada. Then the other male finalist, the graphic novelist Jeff Lemire, won the CBC's People's Choice Award. Woohoo! Both men won awards.

I don't see Fallis's win as a "Cinderella story," I see it as a perfect illustration of the sexism portrayed in Shield's Unless--in other words, the elephant in the room that no one seems to be talking about. In this semi-autobiographical book, we see via Reta, our protagonist, how women's books are often ignored and undervalued. Our cautious protagonist's rage builds throughout the book, but her anger only surfaces when her editor, Mr. Springer, wants to make her book into "great fiction," which involves her assuming a pen name and changing the point of view from the female lead to that of the male protagonist. That way men would buy the book--the age old argument! Women read books written by women and men, but men only read books written by men.

Sorry, I don't buy that men only read men and that there's no way around it, particularly with all the marketing gurus out there who can sell cars, homes and just about any other consumer product to people who don't need them or have the money to buy them. This is intentional sexism, and some people obviously like the publishing industry the way it is.

The most aggravating part is that women make up the lion's share of readers. According to a UK study published in the Guardian in March 2009, 48% of women were avid readers while only 26% of men fell into this category. An avid reader was defined as someone who "cannot put a book down once they begin it and who reliably get through a long list of titles in an average year."

As a publicly funded broadcaster, the CBC should be investigating the Canadian publishing industry and getting to the bottom of some of its sexist practices. Rather than just perpetuating rampant sexism, the Corporation should be using its considerable power to influence the very industry that it helped build. In addition, it might start by giving equal exposure to women writers, looking into who is winning all the literary prizes and creating a list of best practices that publishing companies would need to follow in order to receive a CBC endorsement.

I'm sure there's a lot more our nationally owned radio and television network could do instead of just throwing its hands in the air and saying, "We didn't make the decision. It was the panel." This is a deep-seated issue that requires a little more than a glib "oh well!" response.

I'll just close with some 2009 statistics about who is winning all the literary awards and prize money in the US:

Amazon- Top 100 Editor’s Picks 2009

77 Men
23 Women

Los Angeles Times Book Prize 2009

Innovator’s Award- 1 Man
Robert Kirsch Award- 1 Man

LA Times Favorite Fiction 2009

16 Men
9 Women

The National Book Awards 2009

Fiction- 1 Man
Nonfiction- 1 Man
Poetry- 1 Man
Young People’s Literature- 1 Man

Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2009

71 Men
29 Women

Publishers Weekly Top 10 Books of 2009

10 Men
0 Women

Slate- Best Reads of 2009

15 Men
7 Women

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1948-2009

40 Men
16 Women

© 2010 VIDA
www.vidaweb.org
Author: Amy King

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Unless by Carol Shields

Unless by Carol Shields

In our Off-Canada Reads series at the office, Unless by Carol Shields rolled my way a few weeks ago. Some of my colleagues have already read Unless and have chosen not to re-read it. As I started to read it, I quickly understood why...

Our main character is 44-year-old Reta Winters who lives in a rural Ontario town, an hour's drive from Toronto. She is married to the town doctor and is the mother of three grown daughters. An accomplished literary translator, Reta has also written a book of light fiction and is writing its sequel. Then for reasons that we only discover at the end of the book, Norah, Reta's oldest daughter, drops out of university and starts begging on a street corner in downtown Toronto, wearing a sign with "goodness" written on it.

Norah is never far from her mother's thoughts, and Reta repeatedly blames her own shortcomings for what has happened to her daughter. Sensible Reta, various family members and friends visit Norah on the street but never force her to come home for fear they will only exacerbate the crisis.

Reta goes through the motions of her life: cleaning her farmhouse, writing her sequel, visiting friends and finishing a book tour. We discover that Reta harbours a certain resentment towards male privilege, and her daughter's sudden odd behaviour only turns this resentment into rage--rage that never seems to surface until her editor, Mr. Springer, wants to subject her sequel to substantial revision, which includes switching the point of view from the woman in her story to that of the male protagonist, giving Reta a nom de plume so that her gender is unclear and changing her book from light fiction to great fiction.

An underlying theme in this book is goodness versus greatness. Reta could be a great novelist, but she consciously chooses the safety of goodness. In fact, Unless was difficult for me to read because I found myself wanting to throttle Reta on more than one occasion. She claims that she was part of the women's liberation movement with Helen Redy singing "I am woman," yet the only bit of feminism she seems to have retained was choosing to work outside her housekeeping and mothering duties. Reta simply tows the line, and as the reader sees, her resentment slowly builds.

Whether I loathed Reta or not, Shields did achieve greatness with this book. I finished it two weeks ago, and I still find myself going over different parts. Although the main protagonist was annoying, Reta was a realistic character. Her reticence to take risks or assume the rights her generation had fought to attain is emblematic of an entire generation of women who were and are still afraid to assert themselves.

Unless succeeded in pushing my buttons and giving me plenty of food for thought. And it made me wonder...was Shields goading women into standing up for themselves? Or was she fed up with women writers being refused entry into exclusively male literary circles?

Other reviews and related post:
Reads from Men
AYA: the Secrets Come Out
The Curious Case of the Communist Jell-O Box (zine)

Essex County by Jeff Lemire

Paul Goes Fishing by Michel Rabagliati
Some Thoughts on Canada Reads
Expozine's Broken Pencil
Make Me A Woman by Vanessa Davis
Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges
Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle

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