Teresa Martínez Quiles teaches contemporary British literature at the University of Alicante, Spain. Her primary research focus is in the field of postcolonial feminist studies, with an emphasis on Anglophone literature written by Black and Asian women authors. Her first book, Women’s Friendships in Contemporary Diasporic Fiction: Bonding Across Difference is due to be published later this year within the Palgrave Studies in Contemporary Women’s Writing series. She’s in conversation with her editor, Molly Beck.
How did you come to focus on women’s friendships in literature? How do you define women’s friendships in your book?
When I first began my research, I was surprised to see the limited scholarship that addresses the topic of women’s friendship in literature, especially when one compares it to the available studies about representations of heterosexual romantic relations and family attachments. This seemed particularly striking given that, for several decades now, there has been a prominent increase in stories about women’s friendships worldwide, especially in Western cultures.
Instead of treating women’s friendship as a self-evident category, I approach it, in line with Elora Halim Chowdhury and Liz Philipose’s edited volume Dissident Friendships: Feminism, Imperialism, and Transnational Solidarity (2016), as a relationship that involves two elements: a genuine attachment to the other, and a personal knowledge of who she is as an individual. This has allowed me to explore relations that a stricter definition of friendship would exclude, such as relations between women within contexts of deep inequality and queer and lesbian bonds, where the boundary between friendship and sexual love is far less fixed than in heterosexual dynamics.
What do you think makes friendships between women so important?
I think they have proved historically crucial for women. Before women were allowed to participate in public life, it was largely with other women that they found support, and often the means of resistance too. For enslaved black women, the building of friendships offered vital nurturance amid the breakdown of their biological families. Many feminist movements were also initiated and sustained through women’s friendships, as demonstrated by the influential partnership between suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as well as the bonds forged among members of the Combahee River Collective. We shouldn’t idealise these relations, however. Women’s friendships have long been influenced by romanticised ideals, such as the notion that women are kindred spirits or sisters, which obscure the reality that women have also contributed to other women’s oppression. Women’s friendships, like any other relationship, are also shaped, to some extent, by the patriarchal, racist, and neoliberal structures that position women unequally in the world.
Your book focuses on texts authored by women of colour. How do race, class and gender intersect in representations of women’s friendships?
One of the arguments of this book is that sharing a gender, race or social class does not automatically produce a shared experience and affinity between women. The novels I examine demonstrate that the intersection of social differences, alongside the existence of other forms of difference, shapes women’s identity construction, their social recognition as subjects and, most importantly, their relationships with other women. Chapter 2, for instance, examines how Zadie Smith’s novels NW and Swing Time depict class disparity as a source of tension in long-standing friendships, particularly when the socially privileged friend becomes increasingly detached from the other’s lived reality. Meanwhile, my analyses of Sefi Atta’s The Bead Collector (chapter 4) and Nicole Dennis-Benn’s Patsy (chapter 5) explore how racial differences can generate significant communicative barriers and competitive dynamics between women, respectively.
Our Campaign for the Humanities aims to demonstrate the impact of humanities research. How do you explain the value of your work to other scholars?
Friendship has always been a topic that helps us understand how people live together in society. The friendships examined in this book allow me to explore not only how women construct their identities and relate to one another in contemporary Western societies, but also how these societies are structured and how they hierarchically organise their residents according to gender, race, and social class, among other social differences. More importantly, many of the friendships I explore offer crucial insight into potential avenues for the cultivation of ethical connections that might bridge these differences, something I find increasingly valuable in the current geopolitical climate, where social division continues to grow.
What role do friendships – especially those between women – have in the research ecosystem?
As a researcher, I think friendships are a pivotal part of academia, yet they are often also overlooked. Many parts of academia depend on the collaborative effort between researchers, such as in the case of publications, projects, and grants. Furthermore, in an environment that rewards competition and constant productivity, friendships can offer a safe space where we might comfortably voice our doubts, find emotional support, and even develop future collaborations. Yet, at the same time, the competitive and hierarchical nature of academia, together with the neoliberal shaping of universities and research institutions, can make it harder to sustain these relationships. For this reason, I think we should all make a collective and conscious effort, both at the individual and institutional level, to foster the development of friendships in the research ecosystem, which would not only improve researchers’ well-being but also improve the quality of research itself.
Thanks for sharing with us, Teresa!