"The incredible upsurge of woman writers and poets in the 1980s is a sign that women are finding their voices. They're beginning to talk about their experiences without using a male vocabulary or meeting male expectations. It's sticky, because the language is so male-centered that it excludes much of the feminine experience. Sex, for instance, is always described from a male point of view, as penetration, insemination, and so on. A lot of women still deny that their experience is different than a man's. They do this because it's scary to realize you don't have the words to describe your own experience. The few words we do have we get from our mothers and the women who taught us when we were young. Virginia Woolf says, "We think back through our mothers.""
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Atheists from EnglandNovelists from EnglandEssayists from EnglandShort story writers from EnglandFeminists from England
Original Language: English
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1994 interview in Conversations with Ursula Le Guin (2008)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf
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