"In The Argonauts, Nelson wrote in detail about her relationship with a transgender man at a time when the topic was relatively unexplored in literary nonfiction. The book also recounted Nelson's struggles to conceive a child using in vitro fertilization and the birth of her son at a time when highbrow books about writers reconciling art with motherhood-Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation, Rachel Cusk's Transit -were the rage."
"She complains that both women have been subject to "the same script that has greeted female profusion, personalism, and ambition literally for millennia," a script that consists of the "rote shaming of making the personal public; calls for the artist to look outside herself for subject matter; charges of her vulnerability being faux, or deployed as a manipulative marketing tool; tongue-clucks about self-indulgence and being 'in need of an editor.'""
Intellectual fashion can shift quickly, leaving once-celebrated voices feeling disoriented. A mid-2010s memoir epitomized highly personal/political writing, detailing a relationship with a transgender partner, IVF struggles, and the birth of a son amid a vogue of confessional highbrow books about reconciling art with motherhood. A later slim volume centers Taylor Swift and Sylvia Plath, arguing both have been stigmatized for excess, personalism, and ambition. Those critics employ a recurring script: shaming personal disclosure, urging artists to look outward, questioning authenticity, and labeling vulnerability self-marketing or self-indulgence. The critique connects to broader conversations about sexism in literary culture.
Read at Slate Magazine
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