1. What inspired you to write this book? When I turned fifty, I found myself facing Empty Nest and desperately needing a new purpose to fill my days other than homemaking and mothering. I had been, in a past life, an academic, and something in me suggested writing creatively, specifically memoir. I discovered that everything I wrote was filtered through feminism, and so my book of essays is one bound thematically by my evolution as a feminist.
2. What exactly is it about — and who is it written for? It is about my life as a feminist: how I developed an identity that challenged injustice from the lens of feminist ideology. It's not a manifesto, but rather a more nuanced look at the complexities and contradictions inherent to developing a feminist practice while living in different countries and cultures, including the US, as a scholar, educator, daughter, wife, and mother. It is written primarily for feminists, so that we feel that we are not alone, but also for anyone who wants to learn about living the humanist philosophy of feminism within cultures that denigrate the feminine.
3. What do you hope readers will get out of reading your book? I hope that they will relate to my experiences and struggles. I hope that if they don't, they will learn something about a woman's struggle to live a principled life as a feminist. I hope that men will understand what it is like to live as a woman under patriarchy and how injust our daily struggles are, both large and small. I hope that everyone, men and women, can see how patriarchy, as a white supremacist discourse, limits, harms, and oppresses both men and women.
4. How did you decide on your book’s title and cover design? I always had Portrait of a Lady as a title in mind, from almost the very beginning of my writing journey in 2018. I like it because it evokes the combination of broad and fine strokes, of gradations in light, of curated angles and shapes and forms in portraiture rather than straight forward photography. I also appreciate that the title follows in the tradition of writers like James Joyce and Henry James, who titled their works Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, and Portrait of a Lady, respectively. Portrait of a Feminist is the first in a series of five or six memoirs. The second is in production to be published in March, 2026 by She Writes Press.
5. What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers – other than run!? I love writing, and it has been both a life-saver and a game-changer for me as a woman entering her third stage of life. I am fulfilled and gratified and so joyful in my writing life. I don't write every day, necessarily, but I write at least every week. My advice is to write for the joy of it, if you can. I take classes and attend workshops where I can learn and form a community at the same time. Find a few people who can become your people in terms of writing accountability, exchanging writing for feedback, editing, and general support and encouragement. The best way to learn your craft, whether it be fiction, memoir, essay, or any other genre, is by reading as many as possible of the best works in your genre. I read so many memoirs, and still do, as part of my writing practice: Abigail Thomas, Vivian Gornick, Beth Kephart, Brenda Miller, Maxine Hong Kingston, Virginia Woolf ... the list goes on. I also learn a lot from fiction--Toni Morrison, Henry James, Sandra Cisneros, Jane Austen, Louise Erdrich ... The strategies and techniques of good writing translate into all genres.
6. Were there experiences in your personal life or career that came in handy when writing this book? I have a PhD in literature, and therefore am fluent in reading for literary and craft strategies. I also felt my feminism in my bones, so to speak, even before I knew my outrage at injustice had a name. I am an observer. I also am my family's "archivist," the person always interested in hearing and committing to memory family stories and legends---those of my Peruvian grandmother, aunt, and mother, my British American father, and my paternal grandfather's twenty volumes of daily diaries.
7. How would you describe your writing style? Which writers or books is your writing similar to? My writing style is best described as thoughtful, lyrical, and reflective. I try to use vivid scenes to make a situation come alive, then more poetic language to muse about what happened and why. My writing is similar to aspects of Vivian Gornick's, Beth Kephart's, Gloria Anzaldua's, Sandra Cisneros', Rebecca Solnit's, and Deborah Levy's.
8. How do you feel your book compares to others in your genre? It is a memoir in essays, which gives it a particular feel. All the chapters are linked by theme, yet almost all can stand alone. Some memoirs, also reflective and analytical, focus on the interplay between science, religion or nature and the personal from a more researched angle, while mine focuses on the interplay between identity/culture and patriarchal systems. I bring the deeply personal to illustrate the way sociopolitical dynamics can shape an identity and a life. How did it feel, for example, to condemn "bikini contests" as misogynist then find myself inadvertently watching one? Then, when trying to complain to management for not advertising the contest, turn around to discover that security guards had handcuffed my friend and were "saving her for later"?
9. What challenges did you overcome in the writing of this book? I started writing it not knowing what it would become and not knowing if I could write. What if I wasn't a writer? What if I wasn't good enough? I didn't know many of the techniques of writing creatively, having been trained exclusively in academic writing. Yet I took classes, I read memoirs and craft books, I attended workshops and webinars, and I learned. Looking back, the beginning was hard only in that it was new to me, but very quickly I discovered that I love writing creatively, and that it has become my art and my purpose.
10. If people can buy or read one book this week or month, why should it be yours? It should be Portrait of a Feminist if they want to be taken by the hand and led through a portal into a world where a girl who grows into a woman experiences life and tries to make sense of it according to her innate value system. It should be Portrait if they want to witness how the narrator deals with the ironies that life throws her way when it comes to living a feminist life. How does one experience family as a first-born daughter to a Peruvian mother and an Anglo father? How does she live in Manila and Quito and Rio, navigate graduate school, marry a Muslim man, raise two multicultural sons, and be an academic---all the while trying to live by the feminist principles of equality and empathy that are so precious to her? Reading Portrait of a Feminist is a journey into different cultures, time periods, and ways of being. It is a coming-of-age story that is still being told. It is a testament to the resilience of women and the struggle to change traditions and attitudes about power--who has it and who doesn't? Why or why not? What happens if we "flip the script" and imagine men in exactly the same position as women, does it look ludicrous, ridiculous, wrong? If so, then that's sexism, it's patriarchy at work. With this book, I want to change people's assumptions so that girls and women, as well as men and boys, can live more freely.
About The Author: Marianna Marlowe is a Latina writer who lives in the San Francisco
Bay Area. After devoting years to academic writing, her focus now is creative
nonfiction that explores issues of gender identity, feminism, cultural
hybridity, intersectionality, and more. Her short memoir has been published
in Narrative, Hippocampus, The Woven Tale Press, Eclectica, Sukoon,
and The Acentos Review, among others. Her second memoir in
essays, Portrait of a Mestiza, will be published in March, 2026. For
more info, please see: https://mariannamarlowe.com/
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