Chick Lit Meets Silicon Valley: Ana Yen’s Sophia of Silicon Valley and Elisabeth Cohen’s The Glitch

Most discussions of chick lit focus on the stereotypically ‘feminine’ themes of personal relationships and consumption. By contrast, the theme of work has received remarkably little attention, despite its importance for the generic chick-lit question of ‘can a woman have it all?’ To redress this critical neglect, this article analyzes two novels which put work centerstage: Anna Yen’s Sophia of Silicon Valley (2018) and Elisabeth Cohen’s The Glitch (2018). Both depict a work society in ‘cool’ capitalist Silicon Valley, where every aspect of life is subordinated to work and ‘having it all’ comes to mean at best ‘having a job’. The focus on work reveals that, despite their apparently successful careers, both protagonists cannot transform the capitalist values and power structures of their male-dominated organizations.