I'm not a historian at all, much less one of books, so...I ask this question in total honesty and hope that someone out there who is much smarter than I will comment and answer.

This summer I've read Female Chauvinist Pigs, Sisterhood Interrupted, and now Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters. Throughout my women's studies academic career I've read many an "academic-lite" book. But I fail to recall other books from my women's studies courses that had so much personal anecdotes in them. Sure, there were stats on top of stats and then some threading of someone's personal story. But that story came from focus groups not the author's diary or especially not an email.

At book club when we were feverishly discussing FCP, a good number of people wanted the book to delve deeper than it was doing, to not make so many generalizations (I'm not a short skirt wearing woman with low self-esteem, I just like to dress slutty!), and less talk from the author about the author.

There's a passage at the beginning of PC, SD, where Martin states flatly that she doesn't know how else to write about the topic at hand/societal trend without using generalizations.

So on this fine Labor Day I find myself reading a review of Julia Alvarez's new book on quinceaneras and they flatly state that Alvarez blends in her personal observations.

My questions are:

• Are the women at book club asking for too much from trade books?
• Is there an increase in personal observations in pseudo-academic* books?

I really have no idea. Perhaps I need to go back thru my old syllabi or throw this to my former professors.

* I call them that because they are pretty well researched, but written in in a way that you don't have to have a Ph.D. to read it, BUT are being marketed to professors to include in classrooms.

Labels: Books, feminism