MCLC: no female or Chinese writers in his classroom

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Crevel, M. van <M.van.Crevel at hum.leidenuniv.nl>
Subject: no female or Chinese writers in his classroom
***********************************************************

The article contains several links to related material, so is best read at
the original URL. Following the article, find an "Open Letter to David
Gilmour," from one Anne Thériault.

Maghiel

==========================================================

Source: The Guardian (9/27/13):
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/27/author-david-gilmour-female-wr
iters

Canadian author David Gilmour sparks furore over female writers
Giller award nominee and University of Toronto professor says he won't
teach books written by women or Chinese authors
By Liz Bury 

Toronto literature professor and Giller prize-longlisted author David
Gilmour has found himself at the eye of a literary storm after declaiming
in an interview that he doesn't teach books written by women or Chinese
authors, because he's only interested in "serious heterosexual guys".

Gilmour – not to be confused with his namesake Pink Floyd guitarist David
Gilmour – shared his views with Shelf Esteem, a blog by Random House
Canada, which offers "a weekly measure of the books on the shelves of
writers, editors and other word lovers".

Eyeing the rows of books in his office, Gilmour said: "I'm not interested
in teaching books by women. Virginia Woolf is the only writer that
interests me as a woman writer, so I do teach one of her short stories.
But once again, when I was given this job I said I would only teach the
people that I truly, truly love. Unfortunately, none of those happen to be
Chinese, or women."

He went on: "What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F Scott
Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth."
Gilmour also claimed not to have encountered any Canadian writers he
admired passionately enough to teach. For women, Chinese and Canadian
authors he directs his students "down the hall", to other tutors.

The comments set Twitter atwitter.

Cartoonist Evan Munday tweeted: "Great new publishing slogan: 'Down the
hall from David Gilmour's office.'"

Bestselling author Jodi Picoult wrote: "Oh, how I wish this were a joke.
But by all means, keep pretending there's no discrimination against female
authors."

Gilmour, who teaches modern short fiction, mostly Russian and American
authors, at the University of Toronto, has been longlisted for the Giller
prize, Canada's largest literary award, for his novel, Extraordinary,
which tells of a brother reminiscing with his half-sister about their
lives and her children as they prepare for her assisted death.

In an attempt at self-defence in Canada's National Post, Gilmour explained
that his editor, Patrick Crean, at Patrick Crean Editions, "was concerned
that this was going to affect the general climate around the book
[Extraordinary], that some women might not like the book if they think
that that's my policy. And that's one of the reasons that I'm apologising.
Normally I actually wouldn't."

Judging by the reception on Amazon.com, Extraordinary is going to need all
the help it can get to justify its place as the lead autumn title for
Patrick Crean Editions/Harper Canada. So far it has received two one-star
reviews. "I can't believe this book was shortlisted [sic] for a literary
award, wrote ReadingBliss. "It was so deathly boring. Nothing happened
except a lot of drinking and talking, so I quit it. So very, very dull.
Maybe this author should try reading some female writers to liven things
up a little."

• David Gilmour is longlisted for the Giller prize instead of shortlisted,
as an earlier version of this article suggested. This has been corrected.


=====================================================

Source: Bell Jar blog:
http://bellejarblog.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/an-open-letter-to-david-gilmou
r/


An Open Letter to David Gilmour

Dear David Gilmour,
As a woman writer I’d like to say thank you.
No, honestly, thank you.

Thank you for being privileged enough, culturally tone-deaf enough, and
even just plain stupid enough to say that you don’t love women writers
enough to teach their works in your class. Thank you for saying what so
many other male professors think but are afraid to admit. Thank you for
opening up this huge fucking can of worms that most people are happy
enough to pretend doesn’t even exist.

Seriously, thank you for reminding me that, as a writer who happens to be
female, I will always be a woman first and a writer second.

Oh and thank you especially for throwing in that little racial comment
about how you also don’t love Chinese writers, because you might as well
shit all the beds while you’re at it, right?

But thank you. Thank you for proving how very unequal the world is when it
comes to female writers and queer writers and trans writers and any writer
whose skin isn’t lily-fucking-white. Thank you for pulling back the
curtain and showing the dark, misogynist, racist underbelly of academia.
Because when people like you pull shit like this, everyone is finally
forced to pull their collective heads out of the sand and accept how very
biased the academic world is.

Look, I’m not here to tell you what literature you should love or not
love. None of us can help which writers resonate with us while others,
though we can admit that they are technically proficient, brilliant with
language, and certainly not without talent, fail to move us. We like who
we like. I get that.

What I don’t get is how very little self-reflection there seems to be in
your discussion of which writers you love and why. Have you ever wondered
why you might possess such a bias against female writers, Canadian
writers, and (apparently) Chinese writers? Have you considered what
influence your own professors and their prejudices have had on you and how
they have warped your perspective and taste? Have you thought about the
fact that your own relative privilege means that without serious thought
and introspection it’s going to be a real fucking challenge for you to
understand the context and nuance of writers who don’t fit the mold of
cis-gender white male?

And maybe what I really want to know is if you were ever up for that
particular challenge, and if the answer to that question is yes, then I
need to know when the fuck you got so literarily lazy that you could no
longer stretch yourself enough to inhabit a skin that didn’t resemble your
own. Because that’s what the best literature does, right? It takes us
completely outside of ourselves and forces us to view the world from a
completely different perspective. If done well enough, that experience
changes us. Hopefully it makes us better people. I don’t understand how
you could ever become a better person if you only ever read books with
protagonists whose take on the world is, ultimately, not so very unlike
your own.

I also want to tell you that as a professor, your first responsibility is
to your students, not yourself. Like a good book, a good professor should
change a student. The best teachers that I’ve had in my life have been the
ones who’ve taken me out of myself and made me see the world in an
entirely different way. Passion for what you teach is, of course,
incredibly important and can’t be discounted, but so, too, is the ability
to extend yourself beyond your own petty likes and dislikes in order to
give your students a well-rounded view of literature. How can you possibly
be doing that when every year you devote all of your time to re-hashing
all of your favourite books? How can you open someone else’s eyes when you
refuse to do anything but perpetuate your own biases? And honestly, if you
can’t challenge yourself when it comes to how and what you read, how can
you ever challenge anyone else?

Finally, I want to ask you how, as someone who is a writer who also
happens to be female, I am supposed to process this. When you say that you
“teach only the best,” what should I take away from that? Am I supposed to
just sadly shake my head and assume that my vagina* prevents me from ever
writing anything interesting or good? Am I supposed to laugh in a
world-weary way and say, “well, that’s just one man’s opinion,” as if your
opinion isn’t symptomatic of a much larger problem within academia? Or am
I supposed to think that you are somehow trying to throw down the
gauntlet, as if you could maybe bully women into writing something that
you love?

Because the thing is, I’ve got my own fucking gauntlet to throw down.

I’ve got a dare for you, David Gilmour. I dare you – I fucking dare you –
to spend six months reading nothing but writers who aren’t white cis
males. Read female writers. Read Chinese writers. Read queer and trans and
disabled writers. Read something that’s difficult for you to love, then
take a deep breath and try harder to love it. Immerse yourself in worlds
and thoughts and perspectives that are incredibly different from your own.
Find a book that can change you and then let yourself be changed.

I’ll even put together a top-notch reading list, if you like.

In return, I will let you teach me to love one of the books on your
curriculum. I live in Toronto; I can easily audit one of your classes.
Prove to me that you’re a decent professor, and that the books that you
teach will, in fact, change me the way that the best literature can and
should.

I’m totally up for this if you are.

Sincerely,
Anne Thériault