Walking into a bookstore, you are likely to be bombarded with books with hot pink covers graced with an illustration of a handbag, a shoe or a martini glass. The stories on the pages of these books usually come from heavily recycled formulas: Girl living in the big city searches for Mr. Right while shopping and dieting and eventually snags Prince Charming.
Sound familiar? It is called “chick lit,” and Elizabeth Merrick is tired of it.
This author and editor got sick of women being fed the same story over and over again, so she collected stories from some of today’s most promising women authors and put them into a book released this year called “This Is Not Chick Lit.”
“This project was done to spotlight women’s work and these amazing stories that go beyond this one story that has had so much dominance lately,” Merrick said. “Everyone was really excited to do a project that really highlights the diversity of women’s work that is out there.”
But what is the problem if women everywhere loved such popular books like “Sex and the City” and “The Devil Wears Prada”? Merrick said that although chick lit does have its place, women owe it to themselves to realize there are other voices and other models of women’s lives out there.
“As humans, we live on stories, it’s how we tell about our lives, across every culture. If we only have access to one kind of story, then we are in trouble,” Merrick said. “Women are leading amazing lives and doing many great things and the stories in this book reflect that.”
The book is a refreshing change from the books that push young women to find a glamorous career and hunt for the perfect man, and is definitely a step outside the tried and true formula. There are stories that deal with race and culture, stories written by women from the perspective of men, tales about other kinds of love in relationships (like caring for children at a homeless shelter) and even a story that features a female robot designed to seduce a dangerous hermit who sounds an awful lot like the Unabomber.
These stories open the readers’ eyes to a variety of narratives, like a historical look at the day the first black couple was married in a tiny courthouse in North Carolina or a woman’s dilemma as she is hired as a PR expert for a less-than-noble dictator.
The authors who contributed work to this book prove that there are many stories left to be told and the powerful voices telling them need to be heard, even if they do not always make it up to the front display among hot pink pictures and glitzy covers.
“My greatest hope is that people will read this book and then say, ‘There are 18 writers here, now I can follow their careers and look for their books and I know where to go to find more substantive work,'” Merrick said. “There are so many other stories out there, and I think people want to find those other stories.”
