In Defence of Chick Lit
It’s more diverse, more interesting and better-written than you think.
You know what we call what men write? Books.
We need to start by talking about that term.
‘Chick lit’.
According to Wikipedia, chick lit was first used in an ironic sense, as the title of the anthology Chick Lit: Postfeminist Fiction, by editors Cris Mazza and Jeffrey DeShell.
It’s now widely used to designate fiction which “consists of heroine-centered narratives that focus on the trials and tribulations of their individual protagonists”.¹ In other words, books about women.
Let’s be clear: chick lit is a phrase both disparaging and dismissive, a phrase which belittles even as it beckons, a phrase which winks one moment and sneers the next.
This genre of literature deserves so much better than that.
Although popular with readers, chick lit has been largely disregarded and disdained by critics and literary commentators.
Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, called chick lit “instantly forgettable” and said of female writers:
It would be better, perhaps, if…
