"Ugh! Who would want to be caught reading that kind of trash?"

Sue Miller discusses the stigma of "women's literature" in a delightful 2002 profile in the UK Independent:

"Jonathan Franzen's discomfort at being taken up by Oprah and women readers opened up some intelligent American journalism about the schisms between male/female; high art/low art – 'womens' books' as opposed to serious books written by men," she says. "There's this whole notion, dominant in the 19th century, that writing novels was a pretty low art form, created for the daughters of shopkeepers to read."

Miller, who has been teaching an undergraduate class in creative writing at Amherst College, breaks into a hilarious grimace. "Ugh! Who would want to be caught reading that kind of trash?