Reviews for Random summation

The average rating for Random summation based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-05-19 00:00:00 Fred Pouliot A collection of essays and talks (even an extended poem from Ursula Le Guin) by women on writing. It covers what, why and how they write and what the obstacles are. The contributions are variable in quality, but they are all worth reading. Contributors include Margaret Attwood, Joan Didion, Erica Jong, Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, Anne Tyler, Diane Johnson, Mary Gordon and others. None are more than a dozen or so pages and provide an insight into the minds of the writers. Some are very personal, others more didactic. Of course there are insights into the attitudes of society and of men. Mary Gordon’s anecdote is particularly horrific as she reports a story told to her by a famous male writer in 1971. Sadly she doesn’t say which writer it was. “I will tell you what women writers are like. Women writers are like a female bear who goes into a cave to hibernate. The male bear shoves a pine cone up her ass, because he knows if she shits all winter she’ll stink up the cave. In spring the pressure of all that built up shit makes her expel the pine cone, and she shits a winter’s worth all over the walls of the cave. That’ what women writers are like.” That sort of left me speechless. Gordon goes on to say she stopped writing for two months after that. However she also argues that there much more of a community of female writers who are mutually supportive than there is of men. Alice Walker writes powerfully about being a writer and a mother and also about being a black writer amongst white writers, even white feminist writers. Margaret Walker’s essay entitled On Being Female, Black and Free foreshadows the Black Lives matter movement. This is the virago edition, a collection put together from the two original volumes published ten years apart. It is a fascinating insight into the art of writing and into its challenges.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-08-02 00:00:00 Frank Papapanagiotou Honestly, I don't have much to say about this. It might be because I haven't fully processed some of the essays I read to the point where I can sufficiently talk about them. A lot of the essays acted as a balm to my soul. It was interesting to see that a lot of the struggles women face today are almost the exact same. I wasn't exactly surprised, but it made their words feel even more pressing.