"Writing Women’s Lives"

From The “Writing Women’s Lives” Documentary

Overall I thought that this documentary was really engaging. It followed a group of women, Gloria Steinem, Doris Lessing, Amy Tan, Isabel Allende, Bharati Mukherjee, Harriet Doerr, June Jordan, and Mona Simpson, and described what writing meant to them. Each woman came from a different background and had different life experiences, but they all had one thing in common and that was their love for writing. They described writing as something that they felt that they needed to do. They did not write for fame or fortune, but they wrote because they wanted to make a difference. I thought it was interesting that a lot of the authors that were interviewed said that they all had different routines when it came to writing. One woman described how she would listen to a song while she wrote so that when she resumed the next day she would still be in the same head space. Another woman said that she did not have a routine at all and would simply write when she felt inspired to.

One point that I also thought was interesting was when one of the women said that writing was the only reliable textbook. I agree with what this woman was trying to say. She explains how textbooks and newspapers are not always accurate because they are censored and are not allowed to say everything that they want to say. On the other hand, personal writing has no boundaries and allows whoever is reading it to fully understand what has happened in the past. It is better to learn from a ton of different perspectives rather than just one because there is no such thing as a right answer. 

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