So there's this guy named David Gilmour that is a Literature Professor in Toronto. David shared a thought with this blog called "Self Esteem" a blog by Random House Canada, which offers "a weekly measure of the books on the shelves of writers, editors and other word lovers. David doesn't like to teach his students with books written by women or Chinese people, in his own words he claims " "I'm not interested in teaching books by women. Virginia Woolf is the only writer that interests me as a woman writer, so I do teach one of her short stories. But once again, when I was given this job I said I would only teach the people that I truly, truly love. Unfortunately, none of those happen to be Chinese, or women." i find this man to be so closed minded for the simple fact that women have written some the best literary material used in literature classes such as "A Raisin in the sun" by Lorraine Hansberry and "To Kill A Mocking Bird" by Harper Lee. (And i'm sure it's the same for Chinese Literature). My favorite part of this article is the tweets that raged against this mans statement, my favorite one particularly being "Cartoonist Evan Munday tweeted: "Great new publishing slogan: 'Down the hall from David Gilmour's office.'"
What does everyone else think?
Link at the bottom!!
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/27/author-david-gilmour-female-writers
I also love the fact that he felt the need to clarify that the material he teaches must be written by not just any men, but only by heterosexual men. As if a person's sexuality must affect literally every aspect of their thought/writing process. Then again I'm not sure what else we could expect from someone who issues a fake apology about his statements because his editor was worried that they would affect people's attitudes about his book.
ReplyDeleteThis is ridiculous, the world is not only filled with white heterosexual men so only limiting yourself to teaching about things written by them alone is absurd.
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