Women Readers and True Crime Writing @guardian
J. Oliver Conroy interviews journalist Rachel Monroe (Savage Appetites) about the popularity of true crime writing among women readers. Says Ms. Monroe in part,
One common, overarching explanation is that true crime stories allow women to talk about and explore vulnerability. Reading a true crime story about a stalker who murdered his girlfriend might be a way for a woman to process her own anxieties. But I think there’s a danger in that formulation. It risks replicating cultural ideas about who is the most dangerous and who deserves protection and who doesn’t. One thing troubling about the true crime genre is how disproportionately it favors stories about attractive middle-class white women who’ve gone missing versus stories about the people who are much more likely to suffer violence in our society.
More here, in Mr. Conroy’s interview with her for The Guardian.
More from Ms. Monroe here:
gangreypodcast interview with Rachel Monroe, hosted by Matt Tullis