Book Club Session 2 - There are Girls Like Lions
- Hattie Lewis
- Aug 22, 2021
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 23, 2021
Welcome to Session 2 of Book Club - a monthly review of books I've been loving and think you will too. So pull up a chair, grab a cup of tea and a biscuit and get ready! An empowering collection of female experience from differing voices across the poetic discourse, There Are Girls Like Lions is the Hattie's World Book Club pick of August.
There are Girls Like Lions is a remarkable collection of feminist poetry ranging from the ancient and mythical tones of Sappho - translated by Anne Carson - to the more modern voice of Margaret Atwood. In a beautiful amalgamation of the most inspiring poetry of the feminist literary canon, we can see the growing power of women throughout history. The individual reader feels the strength and allyship of the these empowered female writers and their experiences as they work through the collection.
The collection's foreword is written by American poet, editor, translator, professor and winner of the 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, Cole Swenson. Her experienced, sensitive and beautifully written commentary is reflective of the journey of feminist poetry, as well as conscious of the distance left of the journey to total equality. She questions: 'What is it to write as a woman at the beginning of the 21st Century?' to which I would answer, a privilege. To write freely, uncensored and independently is a liberty not granted to all women of the past, or even all women now. Swenson describes the collection as a 'rich unravelling of preconceived notions into an outward expansion of possibility', and it is this possibility that defines the literary experience of a 21st Century woman.
One of my favourite poems from the collection is the title piece, {Here are Girls Like Lions} by Elisabeth Hewer. It gives permission for women - young girls especially - to be powerful, and scary, and dangerous and assertive, to be loud, and not to be kind at their own detriment.
Here are girls who carry kindness and katanas in their rucksacks because they never know which they will need - {Here are Girls Like Lions}, Elisabeth Hewer
Another of my favourite poems addresses the struggles of parenting a growing daughter. Kimiko Hahn writes of girlhood with a beautifully scathing tone, claiming 'my own childhood was a doll / that could do nothing but close her eyes', yet contrasts this memory of a bored, sheltered childhood with a mother's instincts: 'My own mother taught me suspicion: to question a man's gifts, whether trifles or truffles'. Written from the perspective of the Greek Goddess Demeter begging her daughter to return from a modern version of Hades, the tribulations of the mother-daughter relationship are presented as a tale as old as time itself.
There comes a point where the mother must risk losing her daughter by telling her, No, you must leave him tonight - Demeter's Cuttings, Kimiko Hahn
There are Girls Like Lions is predominantly comprised of poems written post 1960s and 70s second wave feminism, despite harking back to the roots of the feminist power through older works such as Sappho's 'Deathless Aphrodite of the Spangled Mind'. This creates the effect of a cacophony of rising female voices, getting stronger in their unity when they arrive, combined with their history, in a collection like this. In-keeping with the 1970s second wave feminism on which this collection seems to pivot, Swenson mentions Hélène Cixous's well versed 1975 essay, 'The Laugh of the Medusa', which has featured heavily in my own interpretation of feminist literature and the construction of my identity and voice as a female writer. Cixous advocates 'écriture feminine' or 'women's writing', encouraging women to pen themselves into the literary discourse as individuals, 'in a way unmeditated by phallocentric bias'. Swensen goes on to explain that this is demonstrated on a deeper level by the poets in the collection through a 'notion of writing-as-experience as opposed to writing-as-recording', allowing us to 'feel the vivacity of these voices', creating an intimate author-reader relationship based on a universal feminine experience. However, the canon has shifted once again, and Swenson points out that while women's writing was once a 'call to arms', it has now become confining, and instead writers, male and female should simply strive to be artists in their own right, allowing their experiences to influence their work, but not to define it or limit it.
The collection is heavy with the struggles of the past, as well as carrying the weight of the inequity still present and the journey to come. Swenson describes the lack of gender equality still present in our society and the concepts of intersectionality brought forward by the third-wave feminism of the 1990s as 'the crucial social project of our time'. While the collection focuses on a largely Western view of a feminist history, Swenson's commentary turns the focus into a wider, more modern and global view. In the week that saw Afghanistan lose decades of progress in women's rights and equality, it is important to recognise that women's empowerment means feminism on a global scale, and we still have a long way to go. Her assertion that 'social and political projects, to have any lasting impact, cannot focus solely on a single situation, no matter how complex that situation might be, but rather must address social progress in the largest sense, based on a recognition that a coming together of all populations is crucial to a necessary social remapping' resonates even more strongly in the wake of recent events.
Despite the differing tonality, topic, style and intent of these poems, they all contribute to a wider feminist history. It is through the 'many ways in which women have sculpted the presentation of their works and their words' that 'offer concrete options for women to take the responsibility for the self-representation that begins in the writing itself and the 'taking charge of one's own story'. So, I challenge you as readers, both of my writing and hopefully of much much more, to see the possibilities of being alive in the 21st Century and to take charge of your own story.
Before you go:
I, along with the majority of my readership, are in a position of extreme privilege, so please take a minute to check out these links and support the people of Afghanistan in their time of crisis. Feminism is a global concept and currently the rights and progress of so many women is in jeopardy. Do what you can.
Donate:
https://womenforwomen.org.uk/ @womenforwomen
https://www.afghanaid.org.uk/ @afghanaidhq
Sign:
Fight the Anti Refugee Bill https://www.refugee-action.org.uk/ @refugeeaction
Educate:
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