A villanelle is a very structured poem made up of nineteen lines, with five tercets (three-line stanzas) followed by one quatrain (four-line stanza). Additionally, many poets use iambic pentameter (which is when a line has five sets of unstressed and stressed syllables. Each line then has a total of 10 total syllables).


LitCharts provides further information and an example:

“Jean Passerat's poem "Villanelle (I lost my turtledove)," [is] the first fixed-form villanelle ever written. The formal aspects of the villanelle are highlighted: the first line of the poem is repeated as a refrain at the end of the second and fourth tercets; the third line is repeated at the end of the third and fifth tercets.”
 
For those that are more visually inclined, this is what the villanelle looks like (all the lines with A must rhyme, and all the lines with B must rhyme. Additionally, the first lines repeat as lines 6, 12, and 18 as noted by the asterisk below. Line 3 repeats and lines 9, 15, and 19 as noted by the caret below.):
 
A *
B
A ^
 
A
B
A *
 
A
B
A ^
 
A
B
A *
 
A
B
A ^
 
A
B
A *
A ^
 
It’s literally the same two sounds happening over and over, and two lines that get repeated multiple times.

I learned of the villanelle poem and challenged myself to write a poem in that form (which is, in fact, pretty challenging). Although I did it, and am pretty happy with it (for what it's worth), I’m not the biggest fan of writing form poetry. I'm a free verse kind of woman. I do, however, love thinking about how to apply unique form to fiction. This led me to consider the villanelle’s use of repetition in my fiction writing.

I obviously wasn’t planning on rhyming or iambic pentameter-ing my story, but I could repeat an idea, or a line, instead.

This forced me to consider what kind of story would be best suited to include constant repetition.
Like I mention in my article “Stalking Women: Transgressive Fiction Topics” that I wrote last week, I stumbled across a docuseries on stalking that gave me an a-hah moment. Stalking is obsessive… and repetitive… this form would perfectly lend itself to the obsessive behavior a stalker has. Repeating ideas over and over and over.

So I did some research on stalkers – specifically female stalkers – and after better understand who my character might realistically be, I started to plan my own fictional villanelle.
 
This is the outline I came up with:
 
 Villanelle Form Outline
 
A* I used to live on the tenth floor – (of the Watterson towers).
B I saw you in class - you talked about the importance of words.
A^ I want to see you again.
 
A My unfriendly roommate (roommate starts conversation about mom dying and boyfriend leaving).
B My window faced West.
A* I used to live on the tenth floor.
 
A Last day of class.
B Thought about missing him -  'Part of me wishes I hadn't passed my test, because I would have got to spend more time with you'.
A^ I want to see you again - email him.
 
A Show boyfriend breaking up - spiral downward.
B It was small, but from the tower I could see your classroom across campus.
A* I used to live on the tenth floor.
 
A You didn't answer your email that night, so sent another in the morning, two more that afternoon, and three more that night. Why are you not answering?
B I found your number on the internet - and so I called. Needed to hear your voice to fall asleep. Left a voicemail. Each night for seven days - didn't sleep for a week.
A^ I want to see you again.
 
A Now I’m in my car - next to your building on campus - it's easier to see this way. It's west, but it was far.
B I showed up at your house first, and threw a rock at your window - but you weren't home. Window cracked.
A* I used to live on the tenth floor, but now I'm in a car waiting for you.
A^ I want to see you again.
 

Based on my research, my character was less likely to stalk a stranger, so it should be someone she knows. She was motivated by a desire to having a more intimate relationship with someone who is older. I decided to make the person she was stalking a professional who she desired being closer with after she experienced great loss in two areas of her life.

On any given day, whenever I come up with story ideas, I write them in a document (I will write about this on the blog soon.) One of my random line ideas I had in this document was “I used to live on the tenth floor” which, as I was looking through the document for inspiration, I decided would be a focal point for the narrator. I also decided that part of the repetition had to be from her obsession, so “I want to see you again” became the other chorus.

In traditional poetry, all the As would rhyme and Bs would rhyme. There’s nothing ‘rhyming’ about the other lines, but instead they are just scenes that help develop the story.

While a different kind of difficulty, this project definitely challenged me like when I was writing the villanelle poem. These very specific parameters to write this story under forced me to be very intentional about how I structured this plot.

If you're interested in working with this form for a fiction story specifically:

• Repetition needs to make sense. Does your plot lend itself well to obsession?
• Do you need to do research to develop your character? Your setting/location?
• Make sure that what happens in your plot lends itself to return to the chorus/repeated idea

"I Used to Live on the Tenth Floor" is the draft I ended up writing.


It was a fun exercise and I encourage you to try playing with this, or any form.
Are there any unique or experimental forms you have tried? Anything you’re interested in playing with?

Stalking: uncertainty over your privacy and safety, being watched at any given moment, continued harassment (sounds kind of like social media, eh?).

Stalking is considered abnormal, wrong, and bad by most people, unless they at first think of it as endearing or a form flattery, I guess. But most people think of it as bad. This alone makes it transgressive, but we’re going to up the transgression ante: female stalkers. (I will use genders described as male and female in this article just because that’s what’s referred to in the data I pulled).

The typical stalker is portrayed as a male. We might also imagine these male stalkers as being in their 30s or 40s, angry over a rejection, and maybe unhinged. This isn’t the only scenario though… women also stalk.

I was scrolling through my husband’s Netflix (which happens once a year — we don’t watch TV or movies more than that — he pays for it for his mom) and found the docuseries I Am a Stalker. I didn’t even end up watching it (ended up watching some other crime, murder, docuseries) but I was mulling over ideas for a new fiction piece at the time. I realized that a stalker story was perfect (because I was playing with a new fiction form based on a villanelle poem, where the structure is based on repetition; it would make complete sense that someone so focused on something, someone — stalking, would repeat things like I was going to have to do).

The story I ended up writing is called “I Used to Live on the Tenth Floor” and can be read here.

In order to write a story about a stalker, I did a little research that would support my character development. Below you can see some of the research I found (all sections are linked in the headers with where the information came from). Feel free to use it in your own transgressive writing.

The definitions of transgressive/transgression: involving a violation of moral or social boundaries. An act that goes against a law, rule, or code of conduct; an offense.

Stalking can be:
Violent
Scary
Uncomfortable
Always nonconsenting
Obviously it goes against social boundaries and the law.

This makes it a perfect topic to finagle and write into a transgressive story. I did the work so you don’t have to; here are the facts and statistics I gathered before I started writing my story so its plot would relatively reflect statistics accurately. I first give you stalking facts in general, and the source that I got them from, and then I provide statistics specific to female stalkers. Many of these links include more information that I’m not listing here, so I’d recommend checking them out if you’re interested.

Stalking: Define the Crime
Stalking is a repetitive pattern of unwanted, harassing or threatening behavior committed by one person against another. Acts include: telephone harassment, being followed, receiving unwanted gifts, and other similar forms of intrusive behavior. All states and the Federal Government have passed anti-stalking legislation. Definitions of stalking found in state anti-stalking statutes vary in their language, although most define stalking as “the willful, malicious, and repeated following and harassing of another person that threatens his or her safety” (1).

Stalking:
· Men commit stalking the most
· 4 out of 5 victims are women
· Stalking occurs most frequently between people who know one another
· Women are most likely to be stalked by someone they were/are intimate with
· Less than ¼ of women are stalked by strangers
· Less than 1/3 of men are stalked by strangers
· The majority of women stalked by intimate partners report having been physically assaulted by them (1/3 also report having been sexually assaulted by them)
· Most stalkers are not psychotic (but often suffer from other mental health conditions including depression, substance use, and personality disorder)

And from Safe Horizon:
· 7.5 million people are stalked every year
· About 1/6 women have experienced stalking at some point
· About 1/17 men have experienced stalking at some point

While female stalkers occur less, statistics do provide trends for them. Statistics show differences between who they stalk and how they do it compared to their male counterparts (although many characteristics are similar among both).

Female Stalkers are:
· Less likely to have criminal offenses or substance abuse diagnoses
· Less likely to stalk a stranger
· More likely to pursue a prior profession conflict
· Often motivated by a “desire to establish a close and loving intimacy with the victim”
· Females are less likely to threaten and then assault
· Slightly less likely than males to assault (just 1 out of 5 female stalkers attacked their victim)
· Ages vary from teens to above middle age
· Many female stalkers seem to be single women in their mid-30s (comparable to male stalkers)
· Education and IQ appear to be higher in female stalkers than female criminals in general
· Females are less likely to follow their victims
· Female stalkers threaten their victims at about the same rate as males (50–75%)
· Violent female stalkers target males 67% of the time
· On average, female’s victims were men at least a decade older than the female victims of male stalkers
· Women are more likely than men to engage in same-sex stalking

Because this research is one study and less than fifty people, I don’t plan to generalize here other details the researchers discuss, but I do suggest reading it. It includes data on 33 female stalkers, including their mental health, sexuality, who they stalked, motivations for stalking, criminal history, pursuit, threats, violence/deaths, escalation, and victims’ demographics. The researchers include data from their study, as well as data from other studies in their discussion.

While females do stalk females, they also stalk males. In addition to female stalkers being less common and therefore less heard of, men being stalked is equally cut from the social narrative. It does happen though. This article offers a great personal account of a man’s experience, which helps provide story to the female stalker statistics.

The short story (“I Used to Live on the Tenth Floor”) inspired by this research ended up being about a woman stalking her professor.

Other ideas for people a woman might stalk:
· Her counselor
· Her best friend
· A former coworker or boss she wants revenge on
· A former lover
· Previous maid/nanny
· Physical trainer/coach
· Lawyer
· Family doctor

For more information on female stalkers, check out The American Journal of Psychology’s “A Study of Women who Stalk”.

This behavior has a wide-reaching deep dive you could jump into if you’re interested. The information I collected here helped me develop my character for the story I wrote. Like I mentioned, I was using a form that required repetition, and so having a character focused on a man allowed me to explore that. Next post, I’ll be talking about the form I used for this story (and how I really enjoy playing with different narrative forms in my prose).

I used to live on the tenth floor. It isn’t the highest floor of the Watterson Towers because the building is actually twenty-eight stories high, but it’s still pretty high. High enough. It overlooks a lot of campus, but I didn’t realize how important that was until recently when I lost everything.

The first time I saw you was the first day of class, Intro to Psych. You had a terrific laugh. You had slick hair, round glasses, and a suit coat that fit you like it was a tailored Armani. Man, do I like tailored suits.

You said to us that psychology was important, even if we never became doctors, because it explained people, and why people do the things they do. People are interesting. You paced the floors, talked with your hands.

I sat in the fifth row of the lecture hall and that was the last time I sat that far back.

You talked about words. We each speak thousands of words a day and many of us slip. Our words spill, they bend, they are messy. We say things we don’t mean. We grab words, and we have to do it so quickly that sometimes we grab the words right next to the correct one. We say things we think. We say things we don’t mean to say. One experiment showed that people who had first read the phrase “damp rifle” later said “wet gun” instead of “get one.”

I watched your shoulders slump, your throat sigh. I watched the corners of your lips reach up.

I wanted to see you again.

My roommate stole my book last week. She stole it once before, but I found it. Underneath clothes of mine that she also took and threw on her closet floor. She thought she could take them since I’d flagged them as a soon-to-be thrift store donation. So she took them. The book though, there was no excuse, and then she took it a second time. I know this because it wasn’t sitting on my desk where I left it.

I asked her for it back.

“You’re only acting this way because your mom died.”

Seriously, she said that.

Then she said that I could try being a little friendlier, she didn’t mean anything by taking my stuff. She thought I didn’t want it. Was this because my boyfriend broke up with me right after my mom died.

I told her I just wanted my book.

And when she left the room she told me that I misunderstimate, which doesn’t even make any sense but it made me think about your lecture on slips.

I still had no book. I sat down at my desk and I, I’m embarrassed to tell you this, but I guess I want you to know that I cried.

I come from a poor family, and we were always getting sick. We got sick, sick like dogs, sick like those on welfare, sick like people with broken hearts. The sickness hurts, but what are you going to do? So I left. I started college, I moved East and left mom in Nevada. She loved me like her daughter, but I left her like a son. I went to school and she knew nothing about school and I started dating Spencer who definitely wasn’t dating me for my looks, but then she died. And he left.

I lived in that room for the last four years and by the time she was done stealing my stuff I didn’t have much left besides my bed, desk, and some of my books. My desk sat in front of a window that faces West which mostly matters because I used to live on the tenth floor.

It was the last day of class. Mom would never get to see it, me walking, the whole thing, but I would be graduating. I tapped my pencil. I tapped my pencil once, twice, three times, and then I tapped it to a four-four time signature. You came over to me and tap tap tapped my desk with your soft finger. You whispered to me to shh. We were taking finals and I was a distraction. Spencer told me I wasn’t pretty, that’s not why he was with me. He told me I could be charming when I tried to be. I should cheer up a little more often. I’ve never been a distraction.

In-between drawing bubbles in the shape of a whirlpool with my number two pencil, I watched you pace the front of the room. The soles of your Beckett Simonon dress shoes made a clicking noise as they met the ground. Look who’s the distraction now? Your eyes scanned the room, your palm reached inside your hip pocket. I would miss you.

Later that night, I should have been packing up, I’d need to leave the dorm in two days. I sat down, logged onto my laptop, and the thief threw my book at me. It hit my desk leg and page ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fifty-two all bent. She didn’t say anything. Nothing. I carefully unfolded the pages, trying to decrease them, and she left.

My hair is long like a cobweb stretched straight across the corner of a room and I’m thinking about this because it tickled a little, wisped along my shoulders, which made me feel even more nervous when I sent you that email. You scanned in my final exam result that afternoon, quicker than any of my other professors, and I passed.

Part of me wishes I hadn’t passed my test, because then I’d have gotten to spend more time with you next year. Send.

I want to see you again.

Spencer rubbed my back when he told me he was breaking up with me. He worded it more like “I think this will be best for us” but he doesn’t know what’s best for me. Cups of coffee, half smiles from other people, and fitted suits are what’s best for me. Spencer knew my mom had just died, but we were both graduating. We were in my room. His eyes slanted forward when he tried not to look me straight on. He wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath his Chicago Bulls hoodie, but he never wore a shirt under his hoodies. He hadn’t washed his hair in a week. After the breakup, his friend Jeremy told me it was best. Spencer’d been kissing girls in bars, big sloppy wet ones after he drank too many Old Fashions, with lipstick tire tracks smeared on his chin. There was a blond he kept taking home on the weekends he wasn’t with me.

I need you to know that I didn’t really love him that much.

DeGarmo Hall is small, you know. Square, with brick foundation and translucent windows. Each wall of the building is made almost entirely of windows. I could see it across campus, barely, but I could see it. It’s the building that your office is in, and I could see it out my window when I would sit at my desk.

I used to live on the tenth floor.

You never answered my email that night. I told myself it was because you were grading other final exams. You were packing for vacation. You were cooking an old Italian, secret-family-recipe for dinner. I told myself it could have been a lot of reasons, but I didn’t believe any of them.

No. You were avoiding me. You were embarrassed of me. Or maybe you wanted what you sent back to sound perfect and it would take you time.

I spent all night with the taste of my own snot and spit as I cried, on my back, staring at the cottage cheese ceiling in the dim light of my floor lamp. I still hadn’t packed.

In the morning I sent another email. Just want to make sure you got my email. By the afternoon I sent you two more. Throughout the night I sent three. Why aren’t you answering?

It isn’t hard, the internet, to find things. I typed in your name on Facebook to find your city, I typed in your name and city into the search engine to find your phone number. And your home address. And then I stared at the two numbers in front of me like they were a diagnosis. I typed and my heart raced and my typing sounded like the four-four time signature of my pencil tapping and, just like before, I’m never a distraction.

I called. My skin wet with sweat went numb like when you burn it on the stove, and my breath shallowed like the simmering water above the flame. I typed your number into my phone and each heartless ring left me. Left me. I needed to hear your voice to fall asleep but you never answered. Your voicemail message was just the phone number said by a bot. I left you a voicemail, asking you to call me back. Telling you I missed you.

I told your voicemail good night, like a soft kiss, each night for seven days and I didn’t sleep for a week.

I wanted to see you again.

Now I’m in my car next to DeGarmo Hall on campus. It’s easier to see it this way. It’s West, and my window faced West, but it’s far from up there. From here, I see the grain of the bricks, burgundy sand weathered by years. I see my face reflected in the translucent windows but I can’t see in.

From the outside, it’s not easy to tell that everything I own is in my trunk and back seat with me.

I went to your house first. Five, six miles away. No, maybe twelve. I drove until I needed to turn left in your neighborhood, right down the dirt road, and another right until the end of the block. Your house is quaint. Yellow siding, white shutters, and a grey roof with a patch that’s starting to sag. A picture window in the front would have made it easy to see inside if your curtains weren’t closed. What were you doing in there? You should let me see. I threw a rock at your window, a small split zippered down the center, but you didn’t answer your door.

It doesn’t matter that you weren’t home. I’m eating some potato chips out of a bag I picked up at the gas station because I can’t eat in the cafeteria now that the dorms are shut down. Also, I’ve graduated. If mom was still around, she would have begged me to come back. I try not to think about how Spencer would have reacted to us graduating.

Crumbs fall on my seats, I suck grease off my fingers, as I wait in the parking lot of your office. I don’t mind waiting though because waiting isn’t an email or a voicemail. You’ll see me, and I’m hoping to lick you up after work.

Hah. Lick you up. You have to admit that’s kind of funny. Just a slip of my tongue.

I used to live on the tenth floor.I want to see you again.

Are you nosey? Because if you are, Boy Parts is for you and isn’t for you, all at the same time.

Somewhat of a fever dream of sorts, Boy Parts is a novel centered around the narrator, Irina, who is a photographer in the middle of her own crisis. Based in New Castle, she obsessively takes photographs, mostly dark and sexual photographs of men. Her photographer path began in art school in London where she developed her edgy path of challenging the way women are typically portrayed by spinning men in a similar light. After a series of impactful relationships and critiques, Irina left school and works at a bar while handing out her business card to strangers she meets in public of whom she’d like to take photos of. By the end of the book and her quest for capturing men, things turn dark.

In the midst of desperation for an art career that she wants but would never admit to, she spirals in and out of the drug, alcohol, and sex scene with friends. She manipulates everyone around her, including herself.

Irina is not a great friend, and unless you want to be invited to the party, you probably wouldn’t want to be her friend either. That being said, she’s convincing, and it’s easy to listen to her and follow along — that is, follow along until there’s not much left to follow. Throughout this dizzy story, Eliza Cark points fingers at gender roles, consent, and reality.

The book uses graphic scenes to draw attention to thematic elements. The plot is dark and unexpected, especially being that it comes from a woman in (I think) her 20s, which really develops those thematic elements even more. This plot feels like a journey and insight into the modern damaged psyche and how our society fuels it. While it’s easy to hate Irina, the reader also has to ask him or herself, is she that much different from them? Could anyone else’s life also ended up this way had a few things been different? What is the cost of being the best, or making it out on top?

Underneath the chaos and scenes that seem unrealistic, there’s a lot of serious messages woven in the middle. Being driven by an outright perfect antihero, this book makes absolutely no sense in a maddening way (as is life), but all the sense at the same time because of course, after reading that other thing that happened at the beginning, it makes sense somehow that she’d do this here near the end. I kept thinking that over and over, but all the same, didn’t want to. It didn’t need to turn out this way… did it?

For anyone who likes transgressive work, like the edgy, dark, and unacceptable things, this book will give you what you expect, while also addressing modern taboos and issues around gender, sexuality, consent, and control, all combined with truth.

Last week, I wrote about Young Adult Transgressive Fiction — texts that fall under the YA category, but simultaneously have characteristics of transgressive fiction. Thinking more about it though, YA transgressive fiction books are more closely related to what I call mild transgressive fiction (a text that breaks some norms, but is not focused on making a political statement through the norm breaking). This is just because transgressive fiction seems to be so much transgression and criticism that that’s the whole point of the book, making it a genre that stands on its own, and I’m not sure the transgressive fiction of the YA world completely fits under that… It does question norms and exposes them though.

Push by Sapphire 100% falls somewhere in being a YA book and addressing the socially unacceptable. Claireece “Precious” Jones is a teen who deals with sexual abuse from her father, physical and verbal abuse from her mother, as well as the judgement from a society that doesn’t know her story. She unfortunately can’t read or write which just adds to the mountain of adversity she faces.

Precious gets bullied in school, does not speak up (because of her illiteracy), and is thought of as the bad and stupid kid. She gets pushed out and ends up joining an alternative school, much to the dismay of her mother who doesn’t leave the house and continues to abuse Precious. Precious’s dad has raped her and gotten her pregnant, twice, and her mother calls her a slut, clearly jealous of Precious (in some weird, twisted way).

While disgusting and difficult at times, this is a book that needed to be written. People need to be reminded that this behavior happens in the real world and that there are girls who are forced deal with this.
Precious wants more for her two kids than the life they were born into. She works hard at the alternative school she joins and finds a group of other girls in her class who become a support system to her, one that she never had before. Through learning to read and write and reflect, she learns more about herself and what she’s capable of.

Further tragedy happens to Precious, which was hard for me as a reader because I was rooting for her. She doesn’t let this stop her newfound outlook on life though, which is the best we can hope for in this situation.

The book is written from Precious’s point of view, taking on the writing of someone who is illiterate. As her writing improves over time through school, the book becomes easier to read as well. The writing, paired with the detailed descriptions of incest and abuse make some of the book difficult to read, but as someone who reads transgressive fiction, it didn’t stop me. Even though it’s similar to the book Tampa in that the plot is difficult, I consider this to be a strength of the book — these things happen in real life, don’t get talked about enough, but were very blatantly placed on the table here in Push.

While the content that can be challenging to read, this is what makes the novel a YA transgressive fiction piece, no doubt in my mind. Exposing the dark sides of humanity (horrific ways little girls are sometimes treated), this book tackles multiple transgressive topics through the story of a young adult. The way in which this story can be relatable for young adults also furthers this concept.

For anyone interested in transgressive fiction, I would recommend this book. It has a hopeful end to it, but it makes you earn your way there by traveling through dark, difficult paths first. It brings you to corners of horrific realities which are arguably worse than the imaginary scenarios used to fight against norms in a book like Fight Club.

I’m curious, for those of you that have read Push — what about the book makes it YA? What about the book do you think makes it transgressive?

Young Adult (YA) Literature is another tough genre to pinpoint. Romance is easy, horror is easy, but YA and transgressive fiction both seem to include other genre elements, thus hiding under other genres.

When defining YA lit, I ask myself:
Is it a genre written for young adults?
Do the characters need to be young adults?
Do the stories need to be about common topics that young adults like?
Is it all of the above?

I think about things that I read as a young adult, which included transgressive fiction. I asked for Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted for Christmas and my mom, who bought it for me, told me that the bookstore clerk told her that people had passed out from reading it (I couldn’t wait to get through it — and I didn’t pass out). There’s no way this would be considered YA, right? But I was his audience and, indeed, YA.

So what makes something YA Lit? Southern Connecticut University says this:

“The term “young adult literature” is inherently amorphous, for its constituent terms “young adult” and “literature” are dynamic, changing as culture and society — which provide their context — change. When the term first found common usage in the late 1960’s, it referred to realistic fiction that was set in the real (as opposed to imagined), contemporary world and addressed problems, issues, and life circumstances of interest to young readers aged approximately 12–18…”

I appreciate they acknowledge that this genre can change as culture and society and the interest of young adults change.

But considering that YA lit refers to a realistic, contemporary world that addresses problems and life circumstances… doesn’t this sound like transgressive fiction? Or at least Mild Transgressive Fiction?
I guess it might depend on the concern we’re addressing, but please, we all have to know that kids deal with taboo things too.

Which leads me to what this blog post is about:

Transgressive fiction doesn’t talk about YA transgressive fiction enough — I mean, ever. When Googling “Young Adult Transgressive Fiction”, the same pages come up that appear when searching for “Transgressive Fiction”. This includes listings of the same novels and authors that adults who are interested in the genre are reading. The stories that are listed aren’t about teenagers (but is that a characteristic of YA lit? If YA lit just has to address problems that interest young readers, can they be about adult characters?). The ones popping up on Google would never be on the YA Lit shelves.

But there are stories that are written about teenagers dealing with transgressive topics, transgressive topics ESPECIALLY for teenagers. Many adults like to pretend teens are too young to be involved in violence and sex, but by trying to keep them away from those plots, these topics become even more “transgressive” for this age group. Right?

Here I list some contemporary novels, probably identified as YA novels, that are either outright transgressive or mildly transgressive.

Push by Saphire
Losing It by Keith Gray
Ask the Passengers by AS King
One Death, Nine Stories by Marc Aronson (Editor), Charles R. Smith Jr.
Go Ask Alice ????
Monster by Walter Dean Myers
Cut by Patricia McCormick
Books by Ellen Hopkins (like Crank, Burned, Glass, etc.)

So it appears that YA transgressive fiction, while not really identified as a genre, does exist.

Are there any other books you would identify as Young Adult Transgressive Fiction?

(Which I guess, at this point, I’m just defining as books focused on transgressive plots with teenager main characters.)

I am honored that my short story “Fat Girls” has been published on Hobart. I’ve received some curiosity surrounding the inspiration for this story, so here are the ‘behind the scenes’, so-to-speak, below.

You may have read this in some of my About Me writings, but in 2011 I was in a fatal car accident. I survived, but was in a coma for a week. When I “woke up,” I was constantly falling in and out of sleep for another week maybe. Then, when I was consistently awake, food sounded disgusting to me for some reason (which was a new experience). I would only eat to stop hunger — once the hunger was gone, my body wanted to eat no more. On top of that, the only food that sounded remotely appetizing was fruit. So for a few weeks, all I ate was fruit, and very little at that. Then I slowly started eating other food, but still, only until I was no longer feeling hunger pains. This lasted for probably three months before I returned to eating more regularly.

By the end of those few months, I ended up losing about 20 pounds.

If I’m being honest, I didn’t even feel like I had lost weight for probably the first year. I remember returning to school for the first time after my accident and a classmate had said something about me losing weight. I didn’t know what she was talking about. Eventually, I’d come to realize that I did lose weight.

Eventually, I began to think that even though everything I went through was horrific, at the very least, I was kind of grateful that I had lost weight without having to do any of the work (and that sounds so awful but think about the culture that made me feel this way).

The thing is, I was never “fat” — and saying that makes it sound like “fat” is inherently bad, which isn’t true. But my culture taught me not to be it. To be anything but it, even if I looked at other “fat” woman and thought they were beautiful. So I tried losing weight, to be “skinny”, or skinnier, by eating a little less or walking more, but nothing did much for me.

Many of the things that happen in “Fat Girls” are very real experiences that people in the world have had when existing in their body image. I actually cut some of my own experiences out because beta readers said they felt too fake/fabricated (despite having actually happened to me in real life). This includes my (now) ex telling me that I was hot, but I’d be hotter if I lost weight (and was shorter). Originally in “Fat Girls,” this is how Tony broke up with the narrator, but I changed it.

After reflecting on having lost weight from a coma and how ‘easy’ it was to do it, to not realize you’re not eating because you’re knocked out, I thought about a world in which people did that intentionally and how it could be a story. I sat on this plot for at least eight years before I finally started writing it. Then I wasn’t sure where to go with it… so it sat for a little while more. I go to the gym, and that’s where some of the plot points I needed hit me. While this is a fictional story and is not about any one person’s experience, it is made up of many real experiences.

The same day that I closed my laptop and considered the story done, I was (coincidentally) at the gym and overheard two girls in the locker room talking about their pant sizes, if they felt like they looked like what the number told them they were, and how they felt about their appearance. The same day, I overheard someone else talking about their weight.

Parts in the story about the mom questioning what the narrator eats were inspired by someone’s blog post I read.

Emmy saying “Oof, I’m full. I should stop eating” is something I accidentally do.

Being hit on at the gym is another thing I’ve seen happen.

Men making comments about women, like the narrator’s Dad at the bar.

Mothers and grandmothers making comments about women, about how much someone weighs, has happened in my own family. “Maybe she shouldn’t eat as much. It’s not the dress’s fault.”

Woman making comments about women, looking at other women and judging them happens. All the time.

Heifer/Jennifer mentions “How to Get Skinny Fast” in Women’s Health magazine. This is a real article that I saw as I was checking out at the grocery store. I wrote the name down so I could use it in this story.

The narrator says, “I heard there’s health reasons and that keeps people from losin’ weight sometimes and I wonder if that’s me. Sleep. Genetics. Thyroids?” — I’ve heard these things, read these things, looked these things up even.

Men like Zillo, sexualizing, idolizing young girls. I was 12 the first time a man honked at me while he drove past me walking up to 7–11 to get a Slurpee.

And so many other small, cultural things that happen in this story are things that I and many other people are a part of and have experienced or done.

So I thought it would be interesting, to write a story that explored the life of someone so desperate to “just be skinny”, and to get all the perks that come with being skinny, that she would put herself through a coma to accomplish it. What would happen? What does that say about her? What does it say about everyone else? I did a bunch of research on which drugs would be able to sedate and not kill to accomplish this, and how one would even get access to that drug, and came up with “Fat Girls”.

In this story I explore my experience as a woman being inundated with imagery of what bodies are considered socially acceptable and beautiful, and the kinds of culture that perpetuates this imagery.

I don’t have any answers, but my hope for you is to read “Fat Girls” and walk alongside the questions. Do you have answers?

I am so excited to share that my short story “Fat Girls” has been published over on Hobart today!

This story has been in my head for over ten years, and has taken me two and a half to write and finish, but once it was done, I knew it was done. I also had a strong feeling that Hobart would be its home. It was inspired by a few things, and if anyone is interested in the “Behind the Scenes” story of what inspired this piece, let me know and I‘ll write a blog post about it.

But in the meantime: please, read this story.

I don’t have many answers, but I my hope for you is to read “Fat Girls” and walk alongside the questions. Do you have answers?

Shannon Waite has taught English and Creative Writing in Detroit. Her fiction has been published in PANK, Hobart, Oakland Arts Review, and elsewhere. www.shannonwaiteauthor.com

While writing stories that are a little gritty, or unhappy, or not considered ‘normal’ about society (broken families, disabilities, sexual experiences, among others), Victoria Lancelotta uses such beautiful language and striking images in her collection of short stories Here in the World that I fell in love immediately.

Here in the World by Victoria Lancelotta is a collection of thirteen stories. Each story is written from the first person narration of a woman (each story being a different woman) and her experience in the world, typically through the lens of relationships, more specifically her relationship to men/a man.

My favorite story was the first story, “The Guide”, starting off with “Listen. Here is a love story.” And then “We filed to the alter in doll-sized veils and patent leather shoes, heads bowed, our trembling hands folded and held chest-high, and before kneeling to receive the wafer from the priest…” The story then weaves the imagery of church and religion through a woman’s relationship to a blind man who is rough during sex, to which the narrator muses over the pain and guilt she feels in this complicated relationship. The story ends on “What could a blind man pray for, what thing that he would get?” I think this was my favorite story of the bunch (Lancelotta started off strong!) for the powerful imagery and lingering questions it left.

Her stories are not primarily focused on plot. Rather, I’d say they use the plot as a tool and opportunity to paint beautiful images with language and to present the reader with philosophical reflections in the questions and comments the narrators make. For example, in her final story, “Here in the World,” the narrator opens the story remembering what it’s like to be a young girl and get all the attention from boys who drive by as often happens when girls walk down the street. This experience of attention will thread through the main plot of the story which is that she is separated from her husband, soon-to-be ex, with whom her son still lives. She’s waiting for the son’s arrival to visit her new home, and she says, “I walk through all this carrying an invisible girl, buried under the flesh of a wife, a mother, an ex-wife by September, my hand out as I cross streets with an invisible boy, little outline just so-high when I saw him last, solid body, feet right on the ground outside that big other house with his father next to him.” What poignant language to reflect on these kinds of emotions and experiences so many women have either had, or can still relate to.

Lancelotta is a thoughtful poet and each of her stories uses this skill to create a universal longing, even among different stories. She threads main plots alongside thematic events that work together to create a bigger message in such a short space. The stories were beautiful.

I was drawn to some more than others (I particularly was less interested in her stories near the end which involved a few of the narrators living on the beach). I’m not sure why those types of stories appeal to me less — I can’t say it’s because that life is less familiar to me (because the dark urban settings that I love reading about aren’t exactly my life either), but maybe it’s because the connotation of such a life feels less taboo, despite the plot. Either way, I’d say the collection definitely includes some stories that are stronger and more vivid than others (as with most anthologies).

I would consider this mild transgressive fiction, which I discuss in my previous blog post, because it definitely incorporates transgression (like I said, politically and socially taboo relationships, actions, etc.) and at some points the abuse of the body (which I discuss here as a great technique for transgressive fiction) but because Lancelotta’s stories seemingly focus more on the beautiful language than the shock of the plot, it’s hard for me to define this as complete transgressive fiction. It’s mild. It definitely includes elements, and anyone who enjoys pretty language, deep reflections, and subtly taboo relationships, will love this book.

I bought this book by accident — I was at 2nd and Charles, a used bookstore, just browsing books. Couldn’t find anything by authors I knew who I hadn’t read yet, and they had a sale going on for buy 2 get 2 free, so there’s no way I couldn’t find more books when they were free books anyway. So I’m just pulling out book after book across a ton of different shelves and this cover image (along with the title) caught my eye. They say “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” but there was no way this was your average fiction book. I skimmed a story and was sold. I’m grateful I stumbled upon this and was inspired by Lancellot’s craft!

Mild transgressive fiction — I mention in my blog post “What Is Transgressive Fiction” that I considered a lot of writing to be transgressive fiction after first learning the genre some 15+ years ago. My introduction was through Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters and I’d never read anything like it. I assumed things even in that contemporary/conversational form, or remotely risque, must be transgressive fiction. Since reading and researching more, I now understand/define transgressive fiction as a text whose purpose is to explore/critique social norms through excessive or exaggerated transgression. This focus makes it difficult for a text to really fall under a different genre, as I talk about in “What Is Transgressive Fiction.”

But where does that leave the other writing that I read that feels similar to the transgressive fiction style, but doesn’t quite cut that definition?

This is where I’ve decided to coin the term “mild transgressive fiction”. It’s when a text breaks some norms, but is not focused on making a political statement through norm breaking. Or when a text is not intentional about having characters break (exaggerated) norms but instead acknowledges the broken norms that people don’t want to talk about or feel embarrassed by if they do.

For example, I will discuss a short story from Miranda July’s anthology No One Belongs Here More Than You. In her story “The Shared Patio”, July has the narrator describe a living situation in which a couple rents the first floor and she rents the upstairs floor. The narrator is concerned about the use of the patio and if the couple understands it is to be both of theirs. She marks the days they use it down on a calendar and matches her time on the patio to theirs. She eventually talks to the husband and enjoys the patio with him while his wife is at work. During a conversation, he has a medical emergency and the narrator, unsure of how to respond, instead dreams that they have a very intimate conversation, acknowledging some kind of romance, despite recognizing that he is still married. In reality, the wife comes home and manages to save her husband and the narrator sort of slips away, unnoticed again.

This story does not describe some blatantly shocking scene, right? There’s no rape, drugs, body destruction, nothing gory or disgusting. There’s no big critique on society. But there is transgression — it’s just subtle. The story is about a woman who watched her neighbors a little too close for comfort — stalkerish? Then she doesn’t try to help her neighbor when he’s dying (although he does survive by his wife). Then she continues to imagine him intimately, even though he’s married. All of these things go against accepted norms.

And I think this is where defining transgressive fiction can become difficult for people, because like I previously mentioned, a lot of stories involve transgression — but it’s hard to define those texts (like “The Shared Patio”) as transgressive fiction, and it’s because of this. Because they are what I’m calling mild transgressive fiction —stories that include transgressions, they acknowledge them, point out the ways in which they are wrong or uncomfortable, but are not necessarily a story about them, or not critiquing society through them, or not trying to create change through them. These actions are instead just a part of the story, or maybe about a theme unrelated to social norms.

The thing is, this kind of transgression is sneaky, but is more relatable. Way more people are going to have experienced paying too close attention to ‘a neighbor’, or dreaming of someone in a taboo way, than say murder.

My review for Here in the World by Victoria Lancelotta (coming this Wednesday!) addresses her stories as such texts, discussing ‘politically’ and ‘socially’ incorrect things, but in a more subtle way than other transgressive fiction.