SOURCE: Brooke-Rose, Christine, Ellen G. Friedman, and Miriam Fuchs. “A Conversation with Christine Brooke-Rose.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 9, no. 3 (fall 1989): 80-91.

In the following interview, originally conducted on December 29, 1987, Brooke-Rose discusses the difficulties faced by experimental women writers.

[Friedman and Fuchs]: In your essay “Ill Iterations,” which you wrote for Breaking the Sequence: Women's Experimental Fiction,¹ you mention the difficulties experimental writers face when they are male, but you say also that the differences are compounded when the experimental writer happens to be a female. Will you talk about those difficulties for the woman writer?

[Brooke-Rose]: Yes, although it took a long time to become aware of them. Once in Paris, quite a long time ago, Hélène Cixous range me up and asked me to write something about the difficulties I've had as a woman writer. Naively, I said, “Well, I haven't had any difficulties as...