Is it me, or is the book world getting a little bit... bitchier this year? With anthologies created purely to rail against chick-lit, and chick-lit anthologies created to show them who's boss, women writers are sparring like never before. Today's Thursday Three is about saying damn it to nice cutesy heroines, and celebrating the inner bitch in all of us...
Bitch Lit, edited by by Maya Chowdhry and friend of Trashionista Mary Sharratt, is a collection of stories about bad girls and anti-heroines, "women who take the law into their own hands, who defy society's expectations, put their own needs first and don't feel guilty," according to the blurb on Amazon. It's a book that celebrates the fact that sometimes being powerful means being a bitch- or at least, being thought of as one.
What bitchy books will we find over the cut? Be nice to me and I'll tell you...
The title of memoirist Elizabeth Wurtzel's book Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women (follow that link to read an extract) is pretty self-explanatory. She considers why women are called bitches by the media and society, and why victim-hood is too often celebrated, rather than bolshiness! In five essays, she writes about women as diverse as Hillary Clinton, Sylvia Plath and Nicole Brown-Simpson (O.J's unfortunate ex). She draws few conclusions but asks some worthwhile questions- although she was criticized for her choice of women (!)
Back to fiction, Martha O' Connor's debut novel The Bitch Goddess Notebook [The Bitch Posse in the U.S]caused quite a stir when it was published earlier this year. The story of three friends whose lives are ripped apart by a violent crime, it also has a main character who celebrates female sexuality quite er, actively.
So what do you think- is 'bitch' a huge insult, or a word women need to reclaim? Does it mean we're seen as ambitious and powerful- or unpleasant and overbearing?
