Don’t Let Men Write Your Story
When I was in college, my dream was to be a writer. At the University of California, a well-known author, Diane Johnson, was teaching an advanced creative writing class for which students had to submit a writing sample. How dearly I hoped to be chosen for this limited class. But I was only a sophomore with little chance of competing with upper-level classmates. My boyfriend, Alex, was a senior and already an accomplished poet. He was sure to get in.
“Sweetie, I’ll write you a story,” he offered and held me close.
Alex was generous, a strapping young man with golden hair and an idealism that drew me and many others to him. It was the iconic Sixties, the Vietnam War was killing our peers, and Alex’s draft number might call him up to that far-away jungle any day. Alex was also, like my father, a forester; he loved the land and his devoted pet goat, Katie, as much as me. Kate slept at the foot of our bed, in a loft Alex had built himself of pungent pinewood and fragrant cedar. His poetry was pastoral and passionate. He seemed like a perfect partner for my future.
“What story should I write for you?” Alex continued excitedly. “It will give me a chance to experiment with another point of view — a woman!” As usual he was caught up in the idea of creating something unique. It was often what I admired about Alex as a writer, the desire to do something difficult but fascinating. To stretch himself and his imagination.
I slipped out of his warm embrace, not knowing why I was so hesitant. Alex was already a star in the creative writing department. I enjoyed being in his bright orbit. At parties he was the storyteller, a laconic and entertaining raconteur. I was shy and observant, often scribbling my stories after the party, rarely showing anyone my work.
“I don’t know . . .” I began and then fell silent, walking a little ahead of him, confused by the tumult of my feelings. Why would I resist such a kind-hearted offer when I so longed to be admitted into the stratosphere of that writing elite?
Alex gave me a quick kiss. “Let me help you,” he said. “You’ll never get into that advanced class without me.” Then he was off to another class where he also excelled. Biology.
As much as I loved biology classes, I’d just announced to my father that my major was English and Comparative Literature. “That will get you nowhere fast,” my father declared and had promptly cut off my tuition. Desperately, I applied for a loan from the Presbyterian Women’s Union fund. For the next two years, working two jobs — short-order cook and Russian department typist — I stayed in school. It would take me ten years after graduation to pay back that life-changing loan.
I did not let Alex write my own story. I wrote and submitted my own. I was one of two women in this advanced creative writing class of eight men. Alex and I broke up when I refused to drop out of university and follow him to Canada to avoid the draft. He’d decided that in our first year of marriage I’d be pregnant while he went on to grad school.
“But I want to write my first book,” I said firmly. He left me and the country.
I continued studying with Diane Johnson my whole college career. Diane Johnson would quit teaching to become a distinguished woman of letters, author of Le Divorce and Le Mariage; she wrote the screenplay for Jack Nicholson’s “The Shining” and is still my writing mentor. She has read and often blurbed my over twenty books. I have taught writing classes for decades, with most of my students women. After raising kids and years of marriage, these writers are telling their stories and publishing them.
Alex never published. He lives with his wife on a small farm. Once he wrote me and asked to meet. I agreed and showed up at the University of Washington campus. I waited for Alex on a sunny, windswept day under a blizzard of cherry blossoms, hopefully scanning pathways between red-tiled buildings. He never showed up. Never heard from him again.
I’m thinking of Alex as I hear a former president declare, “I’m going to protect women, whether they like it or not.” I wonder what might have happened if I’d let Alex write my story in his voice. Would I have gotten into the class if my story was written from his point of view? Is it really protection if we don’t fully define ourselves? Our own stories?
Does the patriarchy really understand a woman’s story? Can men tell our stories better than we can? We’ll find out this presidential election as the gender gap threatens to continue the status quo of men in power writing the main story and women struggling, no matter how competent, to find our voice. Women have been living too long in “A Man’s World,” what Trump dances to in his tiresome soundtrack. Aren’t we weary of HIStory?
Women may hold the key to whether we spend four more years in only a man’s world or we will experience a woman in the white house. In early voting, 60 million Americans have cast their 2024 ballot, with women turing out at 54% and men voting at 44%. White women may be the key to who wins the white house. The Center for American Women and Politics notes that “A majority of white women have voted for the Republican candidate since 2000 . . . in contrast a large majority of Black, Latinx, and Asian women have supported the Democratic candidate.”
These discrepancies should cut us to the quick and cause us to examine our hearts and souls,” writes The Rev. Jennifer Butler. “Time and time again, why do white women disconnect from women of color?”
Women will not be protected by the patriarchy in another Trump term. “Trump is not a protector, he is a predator,” writes Tara Setmayer of the bipartisan Seneca Project. When the patriarchy always wins, women lose.
What would I have lost of my own soul, if I’d allowed my boyfriend to write my own story? I may have achieved a place in the cherished creative writing class dominated by men. But I would not have made it on my own.
“Sisters are doing it for themselves,” sing Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin. Let’s find our voice and vote this election for ourselves, to fully and finally tell our own stories.~
Brenda Peterson is a novelist, nature writer, and memoirist, author of over 20 books, including Your Life is a Book, selected by Oprah.com and the memoir, I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth, an Indie Next, “Great Read” chosen by independent bookstores. Her work has appeared on NPR, in The New York Times, Orion, Tikkun, and Oprah magazine. Her new mystery novel is Stiletto; her most recent non-fiction is Wild Chorus: Finding Harmony with Whales, Wolves, and Other Animals.
For more: www.BrendaPetersonBooks.com
