Woman Pissing

by Elizabeth Cooperman

When we think of prototypical artists, we think of, say, Picasso, who made work quickly, easily, effervescently. On the contrary, in Woman Pissing , a literary collage that takes its title from a raunchy Picasso painting, Elizabeth Cooperman celebrates artists—particularly twentieth-century women artists—who have struggled with debilitating self-doubt and uncertainty. At the same time, Cooperman grapples with her own questions of creativity, womanhood, and motherhood, considering her decade-long struggle to finish writing her own book and realizing that she has failed to perform one of the most fundamental creative acts—bearing a child.

Woman Pissing is composed of roughly one hundred short prose “paintings” that converge around questions of creativity and fecundity. As the book unfolds it builds a larger metaphor about creativity, and the concerns of artistry and motherhood begin to entwine. The author comes to terms with self-doubt, inefficiency, frustration, and a nonlinear, circuitous process and proposes that these methods might be antidotes to the aggressive bravura and Picassian overconfidence of ego-driven art.

Genres: Nonfiction

192 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2022

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a Woman In Her Twenties who for some reason can not stop reading books about being a Woman In Her Thirties.

[Tahlia]

Had to speed read like this like I’ve never speed read before so I’m not going to give it a rating, but it’s definitely thought provoking

[Lacey Losh · Rating 4 out of 5]

At a glance, the pieces in this collection feel chaotic. As it moves along, recurring themes and characters start to take shape and do a nice job of creating a cohesive theme. Eventually you discover the self-described “central thesis of this book: absolutely nothing lasts.”

My least favorite aspect of this collection is how often the author puts down her own writing.

[Ally · Rating 4 out of 5]

A perfect book about failure

[Anya · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5⭐️

[Isaac Lambert · Rating 5 out of 5]

feelings about art and the (naturally difficult) birth of creative process. Wish it visually had the art it was referencing