Chick Lit and Postfeminism

Abstract

In response to the accolades heaped on Jonathan Franzen following the publication of his novel Freedom (2010), an acerbic look at American marital and family dynamics, popular female authors Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult began their own media blitz, one focused on the literary establishment’s sidelining of female writers who take on similar themes. Referencing the New York Times’ preference for what Picoult termed, “white male literary darlings,” Weiner tweeted in August 2010, “In summation: NYT sexist, unfair, loves Gary Shteyngart, hates chick lit, ignores romance. And now, to go weep into my royalty statement.” Weiner’s implicit admission that the derided chick-lit genre is also quite lucrative provides an apt introduction to the tensions at issue in Stephanie Harzewski’s engaging Chick Lit and Postfeminism, one of the first scholarly monographs devoted to this oft lambasted subject. As Harzewski acknowledges, “the genre’s impressive sales records [ … ] disinter long-standing mistrust toward the producer of popular fiction and a novelist’s deliberate acquisition of commercial gain” (19). Yet, studying chick lit, Harzewski argues, allows for a revisiting of debates surrounding the origin of the novel, the status of women writers, and the relationship between romance and female readers.