The second “Conversations With Friends” was published, Sally Rooney gained an almost cult-like following. I’ll admit, I am a proud part of that. “Conversations With Friends” was published in 2017 when I was 11, so I wasn’t aware of Rooney until a few years later. For my 17th birthday, my sister gifted me her novel, “Normal People.” I remember her saying, “It’s sort of angsty, but I thought the story was really good.” Oh my God was she right. When I tell you that that book changed my life, I’m not kidding. And I know I’m not alone in this.
Sally Rooney’s Impact on Me
Rooney almost single-handedly got me back into reading for fun. I had been in a reading runt. Like many other people of my generation, I read as a kid, got a phone and then stopped reading for years. When my sister got me “Normal People,” I didn’t read it for almost a year, but when I did, I didn’t want to stop.
When I read “Normal People,” I was about the same age as the characters I was reading about. I was drawn to them. I felt for them. The novel deals with transitioning to adulthood, insecurities and relationships. I was just about to go off to college and, as I was finishing it, I was going through my first breakup. I could see myself in the characters, especially Marianne. The similarities were scary sometimes.
Warning! “Normal People” spoilers in this paragraph!
Reading about Marianne and Connell’s transitions to university right before I was going to go through that same transition felt huge to me. Would I turn out like Marianne and grow into myself, or would I turn out like Connell and find myself struggling? It felt monumental to take in these characters who were realistically depicted as the same age that I was as I was reading it. Reading about Marianne’s insecurities and willingness to give everything she had to Connell was huge for me too. I had a high school boyfriend who I would’ve given my life for. Marianne’s line in which she says “I would lie down here. And you could do anything you wanted to me. Do you know that?” It was too relatable for me. Creating or staying in unhealthy relationships just because you are so desperate to be loved is something so many young women and girls have experienced.
I was reading about things that I had experienced, or things that I was anticipating experiencing. Reading Rooney feels like you are reading a depiction of real life. The characters are imperfect and at times it can feel painfully embarrassing and frustrating to read, but that’s the point. Life is imperfect, embarrassing and frustrating. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to read something that feels real but is still a fictional novel.
Sally Rooney’s Greater Impact
Rooney’s novels have had a huge impact on millions of women around the world. One of the main reasons for this is how she writes about relationships and sex from a woman’s perspective. Too often in media relationships and sex are depicted from the perspective of a man. Women are depicted as objects of pleasure. They don’t have pleasure, they just provide it. Sex means nothing to the women in the media, it is just something they do for the man. The whole relationship depicted surrounds the man’s ideals and pleasures. Too often have women been misrepresented in the media.
Sally Rooney provides a more realistic woman’s perspective. A woman can have pleasure without being “sl*tty,” she can be the more mature person in a relationship as well as the less mature person. She can be as intelligent as she is flawed. She can be everything that a person is without having any different expectations than a man would have.
The Problems and Controversies
As much of a Sally Rooney fan I am, I think it is important not to forget about the problems that so many people have with her. While Sally Rooney is widely loved, there is the occasional book review that states that while Sally Rooney is a great author, she writes for a very specific audience: White women. Many women of color explain that they do not resonate with any of Sally Rooney’s novels. Her novels tend to center around prestigiously educated, middle to upper-class white women. This does make sense as this is exactly who Sally Rooney is. This is not a new concept; art usually reflects the artist. Most people are not looking to bring down Rooney’s art, but they are looking to point out the undeniable facts.
There are articles written about Rooney that say that Rooney is the first of her kind or that there will never be another like her. There is a problem with this though: there are so many authors of color who have been depicting women in similar lights. But because they are people of color and their characters are also people of color, they don’t get as much attention as Rooney. Both Rooney and these authors of color are incredibly talented, but it is unfair to give Rooney so much attention and credit when there have been so many others who have done the same or similar things.
While I haven’t had the chance to read any of these yet, Malavika Kannan from Electric Literature states that “Novels like Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, Ling Ma’s Severance, Jean Kyoung Frazier’s Pizza Girl, Raven Leilani’s Luster, and Candice Carty-Williams’ Queenie are all excellent, complicated coming-of-age or millennial narratives that hold their own against Rooney’s in terms of content and craft.” I am planning on reading these novels and if you are a Sally Rooney fan as well, I would recommend looking into reading these and other novels like them too. I will include a link to a list of some similar novels to Rooney’s, including many authors of color.
At the end of the day, Rooney is undeniably talented. She uses her voice to make a difference and share her voice. Rooney is doing great things, but she is not the voice to make everyone’s change. Sally Rooney’s art deserves to be appreciated, but authors of color do not deserve to be overlooked.