Why My High School Class Voted to Stop Reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s Depictions of Women
Eventually, my male teacher thought we should discuss whether or not to continue reading the Brod chapters in our study of the book. Although I was certain that these chapters were demeaning, and not crucial to our understanding of the book’s main plot line, I wasn’t sure if that meant we should stop reading them altogether. Authors are typically intentional with their plot and character decisions, and maybe we could learn from our discomfort surrounding Brod’s portrayal. Moreover, perhaps it’s unwise to censor literature in general. On the other hand, when words unequivocally feel demeaning, do the author’s intentions really matter? Ultimately, after an impassioned class debate, we voted to stop reading the Brod chapters.
Foer did a wonderful job illustrating a story about Judaism, and I appreciate his work. Yet, he wrote about women in a way that felt careless and belittling. He was able to write beautifully about Judaism, an identity that he shares, but wrote poorly about being a woman, an experience that he lacks.
It’s important that stories about women are told by women, or at least influenced by them in real ways. I’m not saying that men can write stories only about men and women can write stories only about women, but I do believe that getting a diverse group of opinions and people involved in your work is crucial. Everybody’s life experience is different, and we can’t expect to understand one another automatically, but we should work to listen instead of speaking on each other’s behalf. The main message I derived from Brod’s mistreatment is this: representation and diversity matter.
This article was originally published on Jewish Women, Amplified, the blog of the Jewish Women’s Archive, and was written as part of the Rising Voices Fellowship.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lilith Magazine.
4 comments on “Why My High School Class Voted to Stop Reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s Depictions of Women”
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I can definitely relate! Foer’s depiction of mothers/motherhood is similarly problematic. “Here I Am” uses the absent-mother-theme :/ https://majaschwarz.wordpress.com/2018/03/18/the-absent-mother-reloaded-jonathan-safran-foers-here-i-am/
This article is very disturbing and represents the attitude of the Millenial generation that offensive speech should be deleted or not permitted in the first place. Why not read the whole book and discuss the offensive chapters and why they are demeaning to women. There is a lot of offensive material about women, Jews and others in world literature. Are students to start redacting passages that might disturb them? This is a slippery slope that can lead to a fear of free speech, which is more important than Johnathan Foer’s depiction of women.
Hi Erica! I wrote this article and I can tell you that we discussed the slippery slope you mentioned at length before ultimately deciding not to read them, and it was by no means a flippant or easy decision. We were more than halfway through the book and had been trying to learn from our discomfort rather than evade it, but eventually it became clear that those chapters were not crucial to our fundamental understanding of Jonathan’s modern-day narrative, so after significant deliberation we stopped reading. By no means do I believe that all offensive media should be censored, because I don’t believe that we can fix any issues by running away from them and pretending like they don’t exist, and I hope that is not the message this article sent. Moreover, this was only my experience in one circumstance, and I don’t want it to be extended to the entire Millennial generation (of which, by the way, I am not–Gen Z’er here!).
Depressing that an English teacher could not make the case for how to read and understand literature to his class. Whether Safran Foer’s depictions of women or characters’ objectification or abuse of women may be thought of as offensive is irrelevant to whether or not the work should be read. It is not the job of literature (or art in any form) to avoid causing discomfort (arguably it is often the opposite). What the student author describes represents an educational failure and a failure to understand the function of art. If we only read that which is guaranteed not to offend we will have nothing left worth reading (and skipping the challenging parts is a solution that causes its own harm).
I won’t even comment on the notion that Safran Foer’s sex is to blame for the supposedly faulty depiction of women as applying that philosophy generally would mean the end of meaningful artistic expression.