I am participating in the American Cancer Society Read Every Day challenge. This is an easy one for me, as I read every day anyway! So I am blogging my reading this month in the hopes that you might enjoy my literary journeys, and that you might consider supporting my fundraiser to fight cancer and support cancer patients through Relay for Life. Go to main.acsevents.org/goto/elizabethdonald to read my essay and donate.

Feb. 17

Is it cheating if you read your own work? I am way behind schedule on a novel, and I popped it open today to reread from the beginning and see if I can figure out why I’m having so much trouble sticking the landing. There isn’t much to edit at this point; I have rewritten the first half of this novel so many times it’s ridiculous. That’s a newbie writer problem, and I will be glad to finally put the stake through the heart of this particular book. I like it a lot, and it’s fun to play in that world. But it’s sure giving me trouble at the ending.

Meanwhile, I also read probably a half-dozen news articles in addition to my usual doomscroll. The next few days are going to be taken up with a lot of grading, so my reading will largely be student essays, but I’m going to do my best to put in some new reading despite the grading onslaught.

Feb. 18

I got in quite a bit of reading time this morning as my alarm woke me just in time to see that classes were canceled for snow. I got through another three chapters of Why We Can’t Sleep, which is detailed and accurate and wholly depressing. I felt like I needed a jolt of bourbon after the chapter on economic insecurity, and the chapter on divorce was equally disheartening. Suggestions for improvement continue to be scarce, so I’m hoping that’s its own chapter later on.

I also read an excerpt from Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen and Girlbosses Against Liberation by Sophie Lewis. Lewis makes a strong case in this segment, titled “How the Girlboss Lost” that echoes the top criticism of mainstream feminism as largely white and privileged while ignoring the feminism of LGBTQ and women of color.

I am not sure how I feel about it, however, because much of it comes across as the kind of anti-feminist backlash that greets any woman of power who speaks up about anything from “lean in” to “vote for me for President.” I don’t think that was Lewis’ intent, but I definitely began feeling some reflexive discomfort with her arguments, and not just the concept that feminism must, by definition, be anti-capitalist. (Don’t ask me for economic theory. I’m a writer, I don’t do numbers.)

There are some significant points here about the need for fourth-wave (fifth wave? I lose count) feminism to really dive deep in intersectionalism, and that it needs to include the feminism of the working class and not just the The Devil Wears Prada set.

For that matter, I kind of hate the term girlboss anyway. Adult woman is not girl, and the use of “girl” in many respects feels like automatically infantilizing and dismissing the woman in question. How about just “boss”? There was a lot of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In that spoke to me, and a lot that smacked of wealthy white woman privilege, and bell hooks’ criticisms also made sense, as did Michelle Obama’s awesome snapback, and man, it’s hard being a woman these days.

This will probably become a column at some point.