Female Friendship

[osprey_archer]

goldjadeocean linked an excellent article about feminist characters (summary: Strong Female Characters (tm) are a good starting point, but we need lots of different kinds of female characters in fiction); and within that article there's a link to a topic that is, if possible, even closer to my heart: Feminist SFF: Female Friendship.

Which argues that, yo, SFF novels need more female friendship. To which I would add, most kinds of novels need more female friendship! The only novels that have anything like a sufficiency are children's novels.

Specifically children's. YA novels, in contrast, tend to suck at female friendship.

Although there are some good ones. Jaclyn Moriarty's Year of Secret Assignments is particularly awesome in this regard - all of her books are, but Secret Assignments especially so. Also Michelle Cooper's Montmaray Journals: the most important relationship is Sophie's friendship with her cousin, Veronica. And - maybe I should make this a separate post.

But its worth noting that when I wanted to read books that had tons of female friendship, I turned to girls' literature from a hundred years ago. A century past, people! We should be able to do at least as well!