''Little Birds'' is

Anaïs Nin Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell ( ; ; February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977) was a French-born American diarist, essayist, novelist, and writer of short stories and erotica. Born to Cuban parents in France, Nin was the d ...

's second published work of

erotica Erotica is art, literature or photography that deals substantively with subject matter that is erotic, sexually stimulating or sexually arousing. Some critics regard pornography as a type of erotica, but many consider it to be different. Erot ...

, which appeared in 1979 two years after her death, but was apparently written in the early 1940s when she was part of a group "writing pornography for a dollar a day." The book is a collection of thirteen short stories. The sexual topics covered are quite varied, ranging from

pedophilia Pedophilia ( alternatively spelled paedophilia) is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Although girls typically begin the process of pube ...

lesbianism A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homo ...

, but linked by an interest in female subjectivity and in the dialectic of discourse and intercourse. Many of the same characters that appear in ''

Delta of Venus ''Delta of Venus'' is a book of fifteen short stories that Anaïs Nin largely wrote in the 1940s as erotica for a private collector. It was published posthumously in 1977. In 1994 a film inspired by the book was directed by Zalman King. Bac ...

'', her first published book of erotica, reappear here.

Title and themes

The 'little birds' of the title story refer both to the actual birds used by its

exhibitionist Exhibitionism is the act of exposing in a public or semi-public context one's intimate parts – for example, the breasts, Sex organ, genitals or buttocks. As used in psychology and psychiatry, it is substantially different. It refers to an ...

protagonist to attract young schoolgirls to his attic, and (metaphorically) to the girls' flight when he finally exposes himself. In other stories, Nin calls into question the objectifying tendencies of the

male gaze In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosex ...

; both male and female complicity in

masochism Sadism () and masochism (), known collectively as sadomasochism ( ) or S&M, is the derivation of pleasure from acts of respectively inflicting or receiving pain or humiliation. The term is named after the Marquis de Sade, a French author known ...

; and the pornographic genre itself through her subtle subversion. The contents of the book include a "Preface" and the thirteen short stories: "Little Birds", "The Woman on the Dune", "Lina", "Two Sisters", "Sirocco", "The Maja", "A Model", "The Queen", "Hilda and Rango", "The Chanchiquito", "Saffron", "Mandra", and "Runaway".

Conditions of writing

While writing her erotica, and organising that of her fellow writers such as George Barker, Nin referred to herself jokingly as the "madam of this snobbish literary house of prostitution" for a client who examined sexual activity "to the exclusion of aspects which are the fuel that ignites it. Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional." In her 1976 preface to ''Delta of Venus'' she said "I had a feeling that Pandora's box contained the mysteries of woman's sensuality, so different from man's and for which man's language was inadequate.... Here in the erotica I was writing to entertain, under pressure from a client who wanted me to 'leave out the poetry.' I believed that my style was derived from a reading of men's works. For this reason I long felt that I had compromised my feminine self. I put the erotica aside. Rereading it these many years later, I see that my own voice was not completely suppressed. In numerous passages I was intuitively using a woman's language, seeing sexual experience from a woman's point of view. I finally decided to release the erotica for publication because it shows the beginning efforts of a woman in a world that had been the domain of men."

Susie Bright Susannah Bright (born March 25, 1958) is an American feminist, author and journalist, often writing on the subject of politics and sexuality. She is the recipient of the 2017 Humanist Feminist Award, and is one of the early writers/activists ref ...

saw the results as forming part of a pioneering feminist erotica. In 2021

Sky Atlantic Sky Atlantic is a British pay television channel owned by Sky Group, Sky Group Limited that launched in 2011 and broadcasts in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The channel airs original British-produced dramas like ''Fortitude (TV series), F ...

released a six-part erotic drama based on Little Birds.

Little Birds (TV series) ''Little Birds'' is a British drama (film and television), drama television series starring Juno Temple and produced by Warp Films. Based on the Little Birds (short story collection), homonymous work of erotica by Anaïs Nin, the six-episode se ...

Title and themes

Conditions of writing

See also

References

Further reading