10 memoirs that question traditional masculinity
The Next Chapter columnist Jen Sookfong Lee has had a busy year — she's been a writer-in-residence at the University of the Fraser Valley, she's served on the jury for the Governor General's Literary Awards and she's been hard at work on her upcoming novel. The writer and broadcaster recently noticed that a lot of nonfiction lists were highlighting stories about fathers, sons and what she calls "alternative versions of masculinity."
Jen Sookfong Lee joined Shelagh Rogers from Vancouver to talk about two books that are part of this trend — Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates and My Body Is Yours by Michael V. Smith. Lee's bonus expanded reading list is below. This interview originally aired on March 21, 2016.
ON ALPHA MALES, MARGINALIZATION AND NEW KINDS OF MASCULINITY
I think what men have to do these days is understand that marginalization, the things that make them not traditional alpha males — everyone has something like that and it's okay to talk about it and identify with it if you feel the need to. I think it's important to be able to walk into a room and not assume that every man is going to have an idea of masculinity that's the same as theirs. That's what I think men can take away from both of these memoirs.
TWO BOOKS THAT ADDRESS THE FATHER-SON RELATIONSHIP
Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me is a groundbreaking discussion of race in America. It's a father writing to his son about what it means to be a black man in America. And he talks about oppression. He talks about what it means to be so concerned with survival that a very rigid sense of masculinity is presented to men and they're expected to live it. There's a point where his son is younger, and he realizes that this very rigid, masculine thing is not the way he wants to raise his son, and that's a turning point in the book.
My Body Is Yours by Michael V. Smith is a memoir about Michael's conflicted relationship with his own body, and his ideas of masculinity and gender. At the centre of the book is his relationship with his father, who was an alcoholic, and the book is structured around the five years where he's dying, and Michael is trying to negotiate a new type of relationship — one in which his father is needy and he has to tend to him. I found so many similarities with Ta-Nehisi's book. I think they're both posing opposite sides of the same question, which is what is it to be a father, and what is it to be a son. They're both trying to define that relationship while at the same time they're both trying to define their own versions of what it means to be a man today.
Jen Sookfong Lee's comments have been edited and condensed.
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