Reading Resolution: Exploring Women Writers

Time to make those 2019 reading resolutions! I've decided that one of my resolutions will be a conscious effort to read fiction by and about women. After all, 2019 is seeing a record 102 women sworn into House, California Rep. Nancy Pelosi making history by returning as House Speaker, another Women's March organizing for Jan. 19, and the #MeToo movement bearing fruit as at least 11 states pass new protections against workplace harassment. I'll start with women authors receiving 2018 fiction awards. For example, the 2018 Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award went to Attica Locke for Bluebird, Bluebird, about an explosive intersection of love, race, and justice in East Texas. The 2018 Man-Booker International Prize honored Olga Tokarczuk for Flights, which interweaves haunting characters and stories to create a meditation on what it means to be a traveler in both space and time. Kamila Shamsie won the 2018 Women's Prize for Fiction for her Home Fire, a reworking of Sophocles' Greek tragedy Antigone. Joan Silber won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction last year for Improvement, a novel about a young single mother living in New York, her eccentric aunt, and unexpected implications of their decisions. In Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend, winner of the National Book Award, the unnamed protagonist loses her longtime best friend and fellow writer to suicide and finds herself responsible for his Great Dane, bonding with the dog to deal with grief. The Reading Women podcast named All the Names They Used for God by Anjali Sachdeva, a genre-busting collection of stories about struggles with fate, as its 2018 fiction winner. For more ideas on women-oriented reading, try the "2019 Reading Women Challenge" at https://www.readingwomenpodcast.com/reading-women-challeng…/

Falling Fertility Creates a Future We May Not Like

Recently CNN's Fareed Zakaria touched on the problem of falling fertility rates in developed countries in his regular "GPS" segment, citing data from Europe and Japan of birth rates below the 2.1 births per woman needed for replacement of existing populations. "Not only will some countries’ population shrink, they will also get older. Europe’s over 65 crowd will increase to over a quarter of the population there by 2050, according to the U.N. Japan’s will be over 1/3," Zakaria pointed out. "That means that already cash-strapped countries will have higher bills to pay to provide retirees with pension and health benefits." A country with a shrinking, aging population faces economic contraction, rising labor costs, falling real estate values, a smaller pool of innovative talent, and more conservative politics--a future very different from previous assumptions of continual growth and social improvement. The U.S. is part of the trend; our national fertility rate hit a record low in 2013, and our population is forecast to grow only because of immigration (add that to the political debate over immigration). Why the disinterest in procreating? Education, career and financial opportunities--especially for women--plus social acceptance of birth control are cited. But I wondered if there's something deeper at work, too. Consider a July Huffington Post survey of childless women, which found 270 explanations for the decision to remain "childfree," which boiled down to some combination of four basic reasons: prioritizing career, dislike of children, bad relationship with parents, avoidance of the financial responsibility, and preference for an existing (childless) lifestyle. Apparently, a growing percentage of women consider motherhood a negative factor in their personal happiness equation. So developed countries can try to boost baby-making via peppy campaigns, economic incentives and social support programs, but the fertility fall is unlikely to be cured by tax credits and slogans. We seem set on a future we may not like. For the Huffington Post survey: http://data.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/choosing-childfree?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000030