Welcome Julie Greicius, Elissa Bassist, and Antonia Crane, TheRumpus.net, and Host Amanda Marcotte, Pandagon.com

[As a courtesy to our guests, please keep comments to the book. Please take other conversations to a previous thread. – bev]

Rumpus Women

Amanda Marcotte, Host:

When I first picked up the book “Rumpus Women,” I had to admit I had a moment of wondering why. In this modern era of blogging, personal essays by women are easy to come by, and in fact, we are absolutely swimming in them. Why go to the effort of cracking a book?

Well, this wonderful book reminded me why. There’s an intimacy to reading a book that a blog can’t replicate. Not to bash blogs! Blogs have their own intimacy, especially since you can often reach out directly to the writer and share your own thoughts and experiences with her. But reading a book closes you off into your own world, where it’s just you and the author’s thoughts, and no distractions from Twitter or email to interrupt you. As a writer, I can also attest that putting something to paper that won’t immediately go out into the rough-and-tumble internet world makes it easier to open up and express the darker parts of yourself that far too many anonymous commenters are willing to latch onto for maximum bashing purposes. The results are evident in this book: a collection of essays by women who demonstrate the full range of human emotions, from strength to moments of weakness, from compassion to selfishness.

21st century American women are living in an in-between state. Feminism’s work is only halfway done. On one hand, we have many of the freedoms and responsibilities that our foremothers fought for, but we’re still subject to the demands of a sexist world to be objectified, to work twice as hard for half as much, to be perfect in order to be considered deserving. It’s hard to figure out the balance between surviving in this milieu and feeling free to be ourselves. And, as feminists before us figured out, what we have to achieve this is our stories.

Our three writers that are on hand today all touch on these struggles in their essays in the book. Antonia Crane’s essay “Locker 29” is a fascinating look at the walls that strippers build around themselves so they can preserve themselves in a world that tears women down in dramatic ways. Elissa Bassist’s letters with Sugar about writer’s block will echo with any woman who fears producing anything that falls short of perfection. Julie Greicius captures so well the feeling of being overwhelmed and underwater, of sympathizing even for just a moment with those who take drastic measures to escape.

I particularly liked the emphasis on diversity of experiences in “Rumpus Women”. You have unapologetic sex workers right up next to women who simply cannot countenance it, women who glory in self-destruction next to those who write about the evils of it, and somehow you get the impression that everyone involved could be friends. We are all, after all, trying to make sense of it all, not just by living our lives but also writing our way through them. And that keeps us together even as our paths may diverge.

I’d like to welcome Julie Greicius, Elissa Bassist, and Antonia Crane in the comments for questions and discussion.