Book Review: Sugar in My Bowl

Title: Sugar in My Bowl: Real Women Write About Real Sex
Author: Erica Jong (ed)
Format: Trade Paper (ARC)
Publisher: ECCO | HarperCollins
Pub Date: Jun 2011
Read: Jun 2011
Source: found it in the ARC/Galley section of Housing Works Bookstore
Why: Erica Jong’s name was attached to it… that seemed to be enough really.
Fulfills Challenge? Yes (2)
Notes: I first learned Erica Jong was coming out with a new book when I was looking up signings at BEA. I saw Jong was a ticketed signing and I got really excited. Then I saw the book was an edited anthology and I was slightly disappointed but still! Erica Jong! Sadly I didn’t get to see her at BEA because I didn’t wake up at the buttcrack of dawn to get tickets.

Review/Thoughts:
Apologies for this review being posted right after Seducing the Demon. I wasn’t expected to fly through this as quickly as I did or I might have planned better.

Let’s start off with what I liked: the diversity of content. Each story was unique and not every woman talked about the “best sex they ever had” (which was the original title of this anthology). The pieces are refreshing and honest, some sexy, some funny. Some standouts for me were Ariel Levy’s “My First Time, Twice” about how she lost her virginity “twice” because in fact, she didn’t actually have sex the first time, J.A.K. Andres’ funny piece entitled “The Diddler” about her six year old daughter’s masturbatory habits, and Anne Roiphie’s “Peekaboo I See You” about playing doctor in the closet and what followed. Mostly the anthology is made up of essays but there is a trialogue (Eve Ensler), a graphic story (graphic as in a comic strip), and a handful of stories. Truth be told the stories somewhat bugged me. In a collection where “real women write about real sex” these stories seemed somehow less real. Honest (as in the sex was still depicted in a candid way) but still, not real. I appreciated the short story about the older couple (in their late eighties, early nineties) because sex between people of that age doesn’t seem to get a whole lot of attention. I would have liked it better though if it had actually been written by someone of that age… and had not been fiction.

This of course is starting to veer into things I didn’t like. Let me reiterate the collection is solid and if I just examine the pieces themselves and the collection as a whole, I can’t really complain. I read the whole thing in a few hours despite my usual tendency to put aside collections of any sort, reading a few at a time. So in terms of engagement, the book is a success. But still. I have to talk about the negatives.

Although the collection is diverse in terms of age, it is not diverse in terms of race or ethnicity. I didn’t actually notice until I got to Min Jin Lee’s essay. When she started talking about how often times Asian women are fetishized, I realized, hey no one else has mentioned race! That’s when I checked out the contributor bios (which included pictures!) and lo and behold I realized I’d only be encountering one other piece by a woman of color. Two women of color in a collection of 28. Am I the only one who finds this absurd? I think racial diversity adds to the conversation. I appreciated that Rebecca Walker did not focus on race in her piece just as much as I appreciated that Min Jin Lee did. The latter shows that yes, race and ethnicity can and do often play a role in one’s sex life and views on sex while the former shows that regardless of race, some feelings, such as desire, are universal. Both views are important.

The collection also only covered heterosexual encounters. Check that: once again Rebecca Walker did briefly discuss one of her female lovers BUT that was an aside. The piece was actually about a man she lusted after and how the best sex she ever had was the best sex she only fantasized about and never had. Eve Ensler’s trialogue briefly (even more briefly than Walker) mentioned sex between women. And though I’m forgetting which piece it was, there was one other brief mention of sex with women. But I’m not exaggerating when I say brief…MENTIONS. Only Walker takes the time to describe the sex between her and her female lover, and none of the pieces focused on sex or desire between two women.

Now it is entirely possibly that Jong requested pieces from lesbians or more women of color and these women for whatever reason chose not to contribute. There is also the fact that some of these women have obviously been involved with other women but chose to focus on a different sexual experience. This is their prerogative and I’m not criticizing these women, just acknowledging that not everyone had only had sex with men. But none of this changes the fact that the collection would have been strongly improved by the addition of more diverse viewpoints and stories.

Final Verdict: