When a white, American, male journalist on our panel repeated what I had said minutes later, he suddenly and remarkably changed his mind.
When he finally asked me a question, it was with a nod to my young son and a patronising smile: ‘So you’re a housewife?’Īt the same festival, an Indian public intellectual told me that he didn’t agree with an argument I had made. At one in India I sat next to a male author over dinner, politely listening to him talk at length about himself, rolling my eyes as he unsuccessfully tried to pick up the younger woman sitting on the other side. But even at literary festivals I’ve attended with my husband – events awash with women – people assume that I’m there to accompany him rather than the other way around. I’m used to being ignored at male-dominated science conferences. When he finally asked me a question, it was with a nod to my young son and a patronising smile: ‘So you’re a housewife?’ But when you’re a woman, it can be worse. What do you write about? Who’s your publisher? It can feel like a game designed to gauge where to place you in the literary hierarchy, to size up your smarts, to figure out how much attention to pay you.
I’ve been going to them for about a decade now, and although I love meeting readers, I find getting to know fellow authors sometimes wonderful, other times relentlessly awkward. Literary festivals are funny things when you’re not famous.
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