Tribute to the Ladies

As you may already know, March has been designated National Women’s History Month. We’d like to take this opportunity to tip our DSM hats to all the great female authors, from Dickinson to Leslie Marmon Silko to Edwidge Danticat, all of whom have added to the richness and diversity that is the human experience through the conduit of words. This week’s picks include various female authors, each of them shining examples of that creative spirit we pay homage to this day.

– White people are so lame. You hate being a white person. Such a blank and embarrassing race, so much to be ashamed about. You decided a while ago, during that course on Native American Literature at your newfound city college, that you were going to renounce your whiteness. You called your grandmamma, who talked to you for an hour telling you all about the family tree you never cared about until right now. Apparently you’re a quarter English, a quarter German and half Polish. That’s something! Being white is nothing; being European is nearly just as bad. But being from Poland: now that’s specific, that’s somewhere. – Faith Gardner in Bananafish

– It isn’t difficult. The pipes are stacked up beneath the underside of cement, secured eight to a pile, the ends like the eyes of four sawed-off shotguns, larger than life. Large like an oversized cardboard cutout of Jessica Alba. Like the one Sandy stole from Blockbuster last month for our eighth grade graduation. She’s propped up next to his bed. She’s still there, even after I drew the mustache on her with a Sharpie. — Andrea Kneeland in Necessary Fiction

– This is the way it goes when I masturbate to Didion. The sentimentality spills forward. I have trouble getting off. I have trouble distinguishing my history from what has been set before me in books and on the screen. I remember everything that was said. The years will do nothing to diminish my affection. I have a needle and thread with me still. I remember no promises. – Elizabeth Ellen in Everyday Genius

– Harry stood staring, greasy hands closing and unclosing, at the bizarre autopsy for a moment, then at the crooked empty nails on the wall vaguely in the shape of a diamond. The spider was still there, in the same spot, unmoving. He was reminded that once Addie had taken a map of the United States and drew dots for all the members of Harry’s family: his sister in Georgia, father in Arizona, mother in Florida, grandmother in California, and one for he and Addie in Michigan. She had tried to draw a star with the dots as its points, but couldn’t get the shape right. The dots could make no discernable shape at all, no matter how she had tried to connect them. – Ann Stewart in Bare Root Review

– We’re not going to own the yacht — it belongs to a Russian billionaire or a Chinese inventor or an Internet entrepreneur who loves to share his generosity with people in no way in need of generosity. Me, my hot Hollywood movie star husband and my hot Hollywood girlfriend are going to spend fifteen days sailing to nowhere. When we want to go on land, a helicopter will come to the yacht and ferry us away for a few hours. There’s going to be a large staff on this massive yacht and they will call us sir and ma’am even when we tell them to call us by our first names. They never will because they know we don’t really mean it. They will watch us even when we think they’re not and they will hate us for the vulgar ways with which we love each other. — Roxane Gay in Matter Press