I do think that memoirs by women are reviewed differently and considered somewhat outside of the canon.

It is only through having a stable loving partnership that I began to feel in control enough to attempt a strict writing discipline, to realize something I always knew was simmering underneath.

The biographies of the great men see their excesses as signs of their greatness. But Jean Rhys, in her biography, is read as borderline; Anaïs Nin is borderline; Djuna is borderline; etc. etc. Borderline personality disorder being an overwhelmingly gendered diagnosis. I write in Heroines: “The charges of borderline personality disorder are the same charges against girls writing literature, I realize - too emotional, too impulsive, no boundaries."

The memoir by women, read by female readers, is considered a market form, not "great literature."

The concept of "girl-on-girl crime" is perplexing to me, and it happens in many ways. There are those, who refuse to identify with women as a group, preferring the shade of the mythologized men, who want to keep up the status quo.

For years I lived rather medicated and muted - I did not possess language to describe my vague feelings of unhappiness, to politicize it, to attempt to transcend it.

I think so often, especially if the work is perceived of as being drawn from life, the woman, not her book, is reviewed.