First of all, this isn’t about his books. I’ve only read one of them, a long time ago, and so can’t speak to them. Books speak for themselves, and readers, writers, everybody gets to interpret them individually and on their own merits.

This is about patterns and systemic sexism and how Andrew Smith said something extremely sexist in an interview on www.vice.com with Hugh Ryan.

He answered the following question thusly:

Q: On the flip side, it sometimes seems like there isn’t much of a way into your books for female readers. Where are all the women in your work?

A: I was raised in a family with four boys, and I absolutely did not know anything about girls at all. I have a daughter now; she’s 17. When she was born, that was the first girl I ever had in my life. I consider myself completely ignorant to all things woman and female. I’m trying to be better though.





Disregarding the obvious logical problems with such an answer – that I hope was meant facetiously – the broader context of, well everything, but especially literature and YA literature puts this answer so firmly in the category of outrageously sexist it’s hard for me to see how anybody could interpret it differently.

The interpretation is that women are less than human, or at the very least, inherently different from men. That is one of the oldest sexist arguments in the entire world.

Andrew Smith writes books with fantasy in them. By many accounts, including the 2015 Printz committee and the LA Times, he does this very, very well. He grapples with intense issues like war and sexuality, with backdrops including alternate realities, giant grasshoppers, and reanimated crows. The fact that he can do this – because he has a great imagination – suggests that women are more alien to him and to the context of white men in America than are giant bugs and pedophiles.

Women are so different they defy his incredible imagination.His answer suggests that it’s impossible to write them well, or at all, without personal experience.

Now yes, maybe he was joking or being facetious, but that doesn’t negate the sexism in the words just like it wouldn’t excuse racism or ableism or homophobia.

The fact that he thought it was an ok answer regardless of humor proves the culture of overt sexism that pervades YA and broader literature. Andrew Smith is an acclaimed author. He is held up as a great writer, and represents us – our community. It is unacceptable that he be allowed to say this kind of thing without consequences.

I’m not asking for boycotts or apologies, I’m asking that we keep talking about this, keep pointing it out, keep making it shameful and at least annoying to say things like this. I was nearly scared out of writing this up simply because it’s hard to listen to haters and stalkers and trolls, and I’m pretty damn busy writing my feminist novels. But shouldn’t it be harder for someone to willingly participate in a culture of sexism than it is for us to talk about it out loud, and publicly?













*for more examples of the culture of sexism in literature, the intro to the interview itself is pretty cherry in that it brings up badly written women, but dismisses that immediately in the face of the greater glory of manly writing. And the question I pasted here assumes girls need girls for a way in, so conversely that boys need boys to like/read/understand a book. The question presumes his answer and that = systemic sexism.

