There is nothing wrong with a little Girl Shit
This Thursday, May 30 at 6:30 p.m. the girls will be talking all kinds of truth at Beep Beep Gallery. An all female class of nonfiction SCAD-Atlanta writers are reading from their selected works, sharing a bit of the uncomfortable, and proving why women in the lit scene need more respect. Below, Priscilla Alarcon shared her thoughts on the reading series, why it’s not a feminist propaganda meeting, and that it was in fact a man that pushed them to be this honest.
Q. Girl Shit, obviously, is a very catchy name for a reading series. Do the readings themselves mirror the effect that the series title has?
A. Karon initially threw out the name “G-Shit” as a joke, because we were looking for a name that was a little edgier than the standard titles. But we all liked it and adopted the “G” to stand for “girl”.
We all have very different voices and there really is no overriding theme that connects all of our readings, but we are all emerging voices in the Atlanta lit scene and it is nice to have a space of our own to showcase our work, instead of having to fight for a place at some of the other events around town that are already well-established. Our work isn’t just for girls, and people shouldn’t expect an angry feminist love-fest. There should be something for everyone.
Q. Each of you will be reading nonfiction, how does your piece fit into the title of the reading?
A. I will be reading a piece entitled /Silence/ which is a lyrical meditation on the subject, written in a hybrid of prose poem and non-fiction essay. The work examines silence from both a literal and metaphorical standpoint: the everyday things that are silent but that greatly affect us, such as the rotation of the earth, as well as the greater social issues that silently affect us, including institutional racism, patriarchal oppression, and the ways in which victims are often forced into silence.
Q. At SCAD it is a rarity it seems like to have a man in the classroom except for the professors, but what was it like to create, workshop and now present your work with all females?
A. Our professor really pushed us to examine the roles of women in society as a whole and the ways they are often subjugated within the literary community. He was very aware of his own status as a white male and the inherent advantages of that position in society. We were encouraged to question the status quo, fight against complacency, and challenge ourselves to write about subject matter that we might find uncomfortable. As a group we have come to know each other very well and that helped to create a safe-space for discussions about topics such as race, gender roles, and society’s treatment of the female body and women’s health .
Q. You write across the board when it comes to prose, what do you fear sharing with the public more, your fiction or nonfiction?
A. My non-fiction work typically lays everything out there; there isn’t much that is off-limits for me in terms of sharing. That type of writing comes very naturally to me and I think people have come to expect if from me. When I was younger, I often tried to pass off my real-life stories as fiction because I was afraid of what people would think of me. But now I have gotten over those fears and I am not worried about what people might think. If anything I want to provide a voice for the gritty types of subject matter that people aren’t usually comfortable discussing. It is more difficult for me to craft fiction because I find the real world endlessly fascinating and so rich in subject matter. I fear sharing my fiction with the public because it is not even close to being as good as my nonfiction.
Q. Besides being all female, what is it that unites all of your readings for the evening?
A. I think we all have a desire to move past the categories that society tends to put us in. We don’t want to be viewed simply as “female writers” or “African-American” writers or whatever other labels. We just want our work to be taken seriously for the sake of creating art and discourse.
