Becca Klaver interviews Kate Durbin

Becca Klaver on Kate Durbin over at H_NGM_N! A brief highlight: "Girls who’d ignore you in front of some guy they liked, for example, or talk shit about you behind your back to other girls because they were jealous. Girls who were incredibly smart and yet would make fun of you for something stupid, like your period stained underwear. Certain feminists have talked about how the effects of the patriarchy are what have turned women against each other, and okay, that’s true. Except that when you leave your friend in a compromising position at a party, or when your friend leaves you, you know that you made a choice. It may have been two lousy options you were choosing between, but you still chose. And so to blame the patriarchy entirely is to give it too much power, I think. In my fairy tales I let the bitches be bitches. I wanted to reveal the complexity of these issues that I think are, at times, too simplified in [Angela] Carter’s tales. In many ways my tales are a response to hers. They are also an homage to Sylvia Plath. Plath always let the bitches be bitches."