The member diversity in the WNBA makes our goal of connecting, educating, advocating, and leading possible. As bookwomen, we believe “Books Have Power.” The Bookwoman welcomes Anne Babson (New Orleans) to the “Power behind the WNBA” interview series!
Tell us about yourself.
- My name is Anne Babson, and I’m a member of the WNBA-New Orleans chapter. I am the author of two collections of poetry, The White Trash Pantheon (Vox Press, 2014) and Polite Occasions (Unsolicited Press, 2018), the libretto for Lotus Lives, an opera performed in the Northeast and in Canada, and a play entitled Reenactment, which is being published this autumn. I have published poems in journals on five continents and have won multiple awards.
Why did you join the WNBA?
What I have to say about this doesn’t sound like a brochure you pick up at a nonprofit. I was encouraged to join by another member who is also a poet. When I got to the meeting to which I had been invited, I felt like I was a guest at Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party or a more erudite collection of eccentric women geniuses à la Ghostbusters, who were all about getting things done that no one else had thought to do, and not really at all about ego. It became evident to me immediately that these women (and a few men) wanted to promote women writers and their books as well as books in general that are of benefit to the community as a whole. They each had talent in one field or another, and they were ready to form a new literate culture in one of the best towns for books in the whole world.
Publishing is less of a boys’ club than it used to be, but it’s still not really a place where women are generally more than a sideshow for “great” male authors. The women around the table were perfectly happy to read books by men where the books were valuable, but they already were convinced that women say smart things that men don’t say, not usually. They knew that women have not been given quite the forum they might have otherwise had if they have been part of some secret handshake fraternity or Hemingwayesque drinking club. Down here in New Orleans, ladies know how to have a soirée with strong spirits, too. This group was prepared to promote the work of other women and create forums for important discussions about women’s writing. Honestly, what could be better? What could be more important? I joined immediately and have only been thrilled to be counted as a novice in the beguine house of the book!
So what benefits do I get? It’s so much deeper than getting a free tote bag or discounts on events. I get to hang out with the most interesting and well-read women in town, get to drink a little too much with them, and get to invite the whole town to the party of our favorite books.
What value does the promotion of books bring to your community?
Louisiana is a place of contrasts, including in the area of literacy. There is no more literarily significant American town than New Orleans. But at the time of Hurricane Katrina, it became clear that 25 percent of people living in the area affected by the hurricane were functionally illiterate, as evidenced by their inability to fill out a form to claim disaster relief from the government for catastrophic losses. Books are the best cure for what ails this place. Books and jazz are the best celebrations of what works here.
Of course, the people who already love books benefit from a lively literary culture here. But, for instance, the chapter is considering having a talk at the end of a forthcoming movie about a woman author, in the cinema where it is being screened. I myself am doing a teach-in of French Resistance literature at L’Union Française, the oldest French cultural association in this former French colony. I do it because the community at large might need to know about the bravery of people who resist fascists and write poems. We might need to know about women who are brave enough to tell the truth about who they are. We definitely need books to open a discussion about who we are going to be in the future.
Share a book that has had a lasting impression on you and why?
The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan is an audacious text written by a medieval author who dared to imagine a world run by women. She imagines the women both living in the city and being the actual architectural edifices of the city, with each heroic woman of history as a building block, a heavenly Jerusalem descending to Earth as a literal bride of Christ—a community of the sacred feminine. The book opens with the female narrator talking about reading misogynist texts and getting really discouraged by them until she is confronted by several allegorical female figures representing virtues and who tell her to build her own city full of amazing women.
I think this is a little bit like the wildest-dream aspirations of the WNBA. I want to live in such a place. I want to be part of building such a place. I want to live in a place where the texts acknowledge the reality of the lives of everyone.
I think of Christine de Pizan sitting in medieval patriarchal France being criticized by all the male intellectuals of her day and being willing to believe in herself, despite being divided from other women authors past and future, relying on her own imagination to sustain her sanity, and I understand her. I think any woman who reads and thinks for herself understands her. She is the person I would get in a time machine to take out to lunch if I had a time machine and a free afternoon in any era.
Interview compiled by assistant editor Pam Ebel (New Orleans).
Leave a Reply