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June 1998 Issue [Criticism]

Scent of a Woman’s Ink

Are women writers really inferior?

What a glorious time it is to be an American woman novelist! Oprah Winfrey has only to say a writer’s name—so far, most of her book-club choices have been novels by women—and hundreds of thousands stampede the bookstores in search of the lucky author’s work. Most books are bought by women, who tend to read novels by female authors. One of our two living Nobel laureate novelists is an African-American woman. Women edit major magazines—The New Yorker, The Nation, The New York Review of Books—aimed at readers of both sexes. Women are top decision makers at America’s ten biggest…

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is the author, most recently, of the novel My New American Life (HarperCollins, 2011). Read her blog post on “Scent of a Woman’s Ink” and V. S. Naipaul here.



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