Jack Remick – A Man Writes from a Woman’s Point of View

Is it possible for a man to write from a woman’s POV?  Well we are learning in the book club that it is possible.  However, we are questions if it is just Jack’s writing or if any male writer is able to write from a woman’s POV. 

A Man Writes from a Woman’s Point of View

by Jack Remick

Gabriela and The Widow is the third novel I’ve written with women protagonists. Early on, I worked out a post-apocalyptic novel called Citadel and later I came up with Lemon Custard. I got some static about Lemon Custard for not pulling a Nora Helmer (from A Doll’s House) and turning Olive, my protagonist, into some kind of liberation heroine. But Olive is a regular woman with kids trying to find a way to make it when the odds roll against her. Gabriela is a different kind of woman. She’s been hurt, displaced, damaged. Writing from her POV was a challenge.

I think that men are uneasy writing in a woman’s voice but I find it provoking and rewarding. The challenges are enormous because we’re always bugged by the limiting specter of American Realism in the literary novel: Write what you know. If you haven’t lived it, you can’t write about it.

This tells us that because I’m not a woman I can’t write either for women or about women. Realism is a trap I won’t fall into even when I get the question that drives me nuts: Did this really happen?

Look at me—I’m six feet tall, weigh 190, wear cowboy boots and ride a Harley. Do I look like a 19 year old Mexican woman? No, it didn’t happen to me and it’s not based on a “True Story”. This is fiction. I love to create good women who stand toe to toe with good men. Reality belongs in a memoir. In fiction, it’s about emotion.

Fear, Love, Anger, Grief, Joy, Surprise. If you want to write human characters and bring down everything we are onto the written page, and if you want to reach into the minds and senses of readers, you give the reader what the characters feel and project. Men feel fear. Women show surprise. Women get angry, men do too. We all have the same emotions. In writing, it’s reaction that gives you character and character has nothing to do with gender.

 

Blurb and Book Info:

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Genre – Women’s Fiction

Rating – PG

More details about the author & the book

Connect with Jack Remick on Twitter

Website http://jackremick.com/

 

 

The Widow (La Viuda) is ninety-two years old. She lives in a house filled with photos and coins, jewels and a sable coat. Aware that her memory is failing but burning with desire to record the story of her life on paper, she hires Gabriela, a nineteen-year-old Mixteca from Mexico. Gabriela is one of the few survivors of a massacre and treacherous journey to El Norte. Gabriela and the Widow is a story of chaos, revenge, and change: death and love, love and sex, and sex and death. Gabriela seeks revenge for the destruction of her village. The Widow craves balance for the betrayals in her life. In the end, the Widow gives Gabriela the secret of immortality.