This blog post was written by Communications Intern Camille Fung about the VIDA survey we run in partnership with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, which conducts their own nationwide count of how many women and men are published in, or have their books reviewed by, notable literary magazines.
Our 2015 VIDA survey results are in! Continuing our partnership with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, who conduct a nationwide count, we surveyed our girls to learn more about what they are reading, and why.
Students are still reading the canon classics in school, or what many of them distinguished as books that were deemed “classics”, but were not necessarily relevant to their lives. White, male authors remained dominant yet there was often an extra effort from teachers to find books more representative of their students’ experiences. Girls Write Now in particular has expanded many students’ awareness of different literary genres that they can both read and write, such as flash fiction and memoirs.
Here’s a snippet of what we found:
William Shakespeare retains his place in the high school curriculum, with Macbeth, Hamlet, and Romeo & Juliet. Other familiar names that remain on the list include The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, and Animal Farm by George Orwell. A few of the classic female authors were also prominent, with titles like Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
The number of diverse authors making the school list was pleasantly surprising. Several black female authors were prominent, with A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Passing by Nella Larson, and The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Other diverse authors the girls read in school included: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, Drown by Junot Diaz, The Color of Water by James McBride, Sold by Patricia McCormick, and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.
Several of our mentees also wrote about new genres they learned through Girls Write Now with one mentee saying, “I usually read YA fantasy so reading other genres really opens my mind to more realistic things and struggles happening in the world today.”
Lynn Melnick from VIDA weighed in on our results: “Happily, it looks like the results from this new survey show a more diverse reading list than in years past. It seems like schools, and individual teachers specifically, are widening their syllabi reading lists. There’s still a long way to go; there is still an overwhelming skew toward the dead white male canon. But the progress is encouraging, and I’m so grateful that Girls Write Now exists to bring more diverse literature to young people and to open up the possibilities for who and what a writer can be.”
We look forward to our continued partnership with VIDA, and to results that show increasing diversity year over year.