Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation

Hey! You can pre-order my book!

[Image description: The cover of Emily Van Duyne’s Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation, royal blue with white lettering, and an image of a 21-year-old Sylvia Plath on a Massachusetts beach, wearing a blue-and-white-striped bathing suit, looking out at the water]

Fellow Devotees-of-Sylvia-Plath!

It has been too long since I updated this newsletter, but for good reason— for the last year-and-a-half, I have written nothing but the book which shares its name, Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation. This was a labor of love in the truest sense of the term. I wanted to write a book that took empathy for Sylvia Plath— her life, work, and literary afterlife— as its triggering emotion. I also wanted to write a book grounded in a love that was more than simple adoration, or the so-called martyrdom¹ Plath fans have been (absurdly) accused of for decades. A love that is a rigorous demand: that we do better for Sylvia Plath and for ourselves, whether that means speaking frankly about the abuse Plath (and others) suffered, and continue to suffer, or dealing openly and honestly with Plath’s position as a white woman using racist language and benefitting from racist systems.

Plath sat— continues to sit— at the pivot point of white privilege and misogynistic violence. It has long been my feeling that, as a white woman writing about her, refusing to interrogate the position constituted a massive failing. This is part of why it took me so long to finish the book. I wanted more than a reconstruction of Plath, more than a search for some kind of imaginary “whole” Plath— I wanted a reckoning with the broken past and the messy present. I wanted a way forward for new conversations about Sylvia Plath. I don’t know if I’ve achieved that, but I certainly tried.

And, in any case, Reader, you can be the judge of that! Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation, is now available for pre-order, with a release date of July 9, 2024. I hope you’ll consider pre-ordering it, or borrowing it from a library, or wherever you get your books. I hope it feels like reading a book of open secrets, like women whispering to one another across time; that’s how it felt to write it. Every sentence was a heartbreak and a joy.

With Love & Gratitude,

Emily

PS! Here are some beautiful, early reviews of the book, from some of the writers I admire most:

"Brilliant, lyrical, and moving, Loving Sylvia Plath is a riveting story of misogynistic abuse, gaslighting, and the way our culture protects treasured male heroes at the cost of female victims. A must-read for any feminist, any lover of literature, and anyone who simply values a gripping story."
― Kate Manne, author of Unshrinking: How To Face Fatphobia

"Emily Van Duyne reveals Plath as she was: the best of her, the worst of her, the parts she hid in plain sight, the parts she made harder to find. I inhaled Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation like (what else?) air."
― Jessica DeFino, Guardian columnist and beauty reporter

"Loving Sylvia Plath is indeed a reclamation, and one that not only centers, but in many ways, resurrects Plath’s own voice to speak her own truth."
― Gail Crowther, author of Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton

1. For the most thorough (and delightful) treatment of this charge, see my friend and colleague Janet Badia’s book, Sylvia Plath and the Mythology of Women Readers, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011.