The Writer's Husband....

How does that sound? Good? Weird?

I remember in high school one day while perusing the library book collection I found a hard-cover book entitled "My life with the Indians."

I was surprised that my school would have something so seemingly outdated but really it was the first time I realized concretely there was such thing as a gaze, a POV, one that carried power and authority. I also realized that for various reasons, I would probably always be on the receiving side of such a powerful look.
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bell hooks talks about the gaze in several of her essays, about how slaves were hung and severely beaten for looking a white person in the eye. These days, she might maintain, this patriarchal white view has been internalized, and every day women and minorities are suspending their own realities in order to participate in many aspects of mass culture.

I went to B&N yesterday and saw evidence of my own suspension in contemplating a new book to read. I noticed a trend which I later confirmed on Amazon:

The Astronaut's Wife
Ahab's Wife
The Pilot's Wife
The Time Travelers Wife
A Hustler's Wife

Though some of these books are written by a woman, the titles refer to the main character of each book in terms of how she is defined by being the wife of someone. As though her status as an individual is/must be defined in term of the man she is attached to. POV. To men we are their wives, daughters, whatever. To be fair, that men see us that way is not bad.

But to ourselves, that we are not first ourselves,  we are wives, girlfriends, etc, is something I find disturbing.

Put the word "husbands" in Amazon and you will find one movie "An Ideal Husband" and a number of books on how to find and keep a husband. Again, men are the subject, women are the adjective. Or, white is the subject and black is the adjective.No where do you see stories of men's strength and triumph couched in terms of his marital status. 

Heck I don't know. I am just thinking at my keyboard, now. But I do know that I sometimes think about writing a book called "My Time with the White People" or better yet, and more microcosmic, "My White Friends-A Study in Whiteness" or even "The Writer's Husband."