I'm here to share with you the Raising Women book trailer.

We're getting so close - just over a month away.
Pre-order here!

And check out the Raising Women site for downloads and other things.

Video clips shot by the forever wonderful Lindee Robinson Photography.

I'm not sure what to think about I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (translated by Ros Schwartz), but it's not entirely what I was expecting (based on the back cover and reviews). It wasn't bad... just, not what I thought. Like when you expect to drink water and then realize you took a sip of Sprite.

I loved the idea of these women being trapped in a cage for some unknown reason, with guards watching them for some unknown reason. And then they escaped, and you're like YES. There's going to be some action! And then there never is... Yes, it's desolate like some reviews say, but other than a very short scene or two, I didn't feel much, and I really wanted this book to make me feel (based on the concept it had). Most of the text was just a lot of wandering.

Critically, I can understand the purpose behind this book, and how if maybe I was to discuss this with others (which I will with my book club next month) I might appreciate certain aspects more. It brings up the idea of community, and how we become who we become, and what we are without those things. It makes you consider the point of life, especially if you are simply on your own with no community. It brings to light motives, and others' stories, and who are people if we don't know who they are? There are many thematic elements that this story brings to light that would be fascinating to discuss with people.

But reading it as it is and reflecting on it by myself, I was left... meh. Wanting more. As a story, it felt like much didn't happen. It isn't a long book, but I felt like Harpman could have written a short story about this and packed a far more powerful punch on these themes. And, to be fair, maybe that's part of the message - forcing readers to metaphorically wander with nothing to do, like the women in the book had to do, but I don't know. This book started off with so many riveting questions and really led me to believe there were going to be answers. I was excited to see what the reasons for the conflict were, but then we got nothing. I think I expected more transgression. In my blog post "What is Transgressive Fiction?" I summarize other author's definitions of the genre:

Palahniuk: Fiction that has characters who misbehave and commit crimes as political acts of civil disobedience.
D’Hont: Fiction that evolves and represents the sociopolitical shifts it explores.
Morrison: Fiction that analyzes the limits of the world.
While all of these definitions involve limits in some way, they still vary from each other. So I’ll look at a few more definitions…

I then go on to say, I think that all of those things, combined with writing techniques and contemporary trademarks (like unreliable narrators with conversational/dialectical tones, for example), are what make the stories that are most widely recognized as transgressive fiction earn that label.

With women endlessly trapped in a cage, watched over by male guards, I expected misbehaving and crimes. I expected gender norms and social commentary. I expected sociopolitics. I thought this book would be more transgressive, but instead it was a little more of a dystopia with no action. It did explore the limits of the world, and I think that is what reviewers who have given it a high rating are holding onto.


Read below if you want my thoughts that includes SPOILERS:
We never find out why the women get locked in a cage. Additionally, we find out that there are other camps set up exactly the same with the same number of women locked in them - then we find out there are also the same camps of men. Still, we never find out why any of these people had been locked up - what was the motive? (And honestly, I was disappointed when we found out there were camps of men too. I feel like the book's message would/could have been drastically different if it had just been women, but also men? And yet we never find out why they were there, what set off some alarms, what happened to everyone else in the world, and like... I get the message is kind of laid out to us at the end, but having these cages of men threw it off for me.) With the title being I Who Have Never Known Men, I thought the book was going to have something specific to say about men/gender, but now I wonder if it was referring to humans and not men? Because men had to deal with the same traumas of being in a post-apocalyptic world, and she decided they also didn't know what was going on. So what does it matter that she's a woman who never knew men? I thought there would be a cooler critique on society regarding that and there wasn't.

The writing is good, and I like the characters and how they are developed, and I like the ideas the book introduces. I would probably like this better if it was for a college class where we discussed it and built arguments about the piece, but as a book I was reading for fun, I wanted something more, and if not all the answers, at least one or two. Instead MC just lives trapped in a cage, escapes, wanders around never knowing community and then she dies. I guess not having this information is saying something, and I guess not having this information can lead us to come up with our own answers, but... meh.

Additionally, I didn't quite understand some details logistically. For example, these wandering women survived by eating food they found at all the other abandoned cage shelters, including meat. For 30+ years? Meat can't last that long, even frozen.

So three and a half? four? stars because it wasn't bad, and I liked the idea and all of that, but ... this could have been really cool and it felt like it was trying but didn't hit the mark. Like, Harpman didn't know the answers to this cool plot herself, so she just let the not answering anything at the end be some deeper meaning instead.

I love experimenting, and playing with different forms. Last year I decided I wanted to write a piece of literary fiction that incorporated an interactive fiction form (I'll blog more about writing in this way soon). Then this last December, I just dove in and decided to do it - I started writing Raising Women. It wasn't planned; I had just finished a fiction workshop for my fall semester and had another one in the winter semester and was in the middle of writing other things, but for two weeks I just decided to write this. I knocked out most of the first draft then, then revisited it a few months later to finish it. Many rounds of editing and revising later, and I'm extremely excited to reveal the cover and announce that Raising Women will be released on October 11th!   Learn more about it here. Look out for more blogs about how I wrote this, what I love about it, and other fun freebies that are coming soon.

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine walks the thin line of prose and poetry, using a collection of different text types to tell an overarching story that is inherently American. Through seemingly trivial, everyday occurrences, Rankine develops an understanding of many Black experiences. Vignettes paired with epistolary sources clearly highlight these lived Black experiences, often using second person point of view, allowing readers to go through those experiences for themselves.

Scenes include the narrator visiting a new therapist and mistakenly entering the wrong door get approached angrily, with the homeowner perceiving the narrator as an intruder. You hear the remarks, “Get away from my house! What are you doing in my yard?” The speaker then informs the stranger, the therapist, that she was her new patient, and the therapist, realizing her mistake, says, “I am so sorry, so so sorry” (p115). While for many this may seem like a mistake and not racist, the book layers story after story like this to help readers realize that these types of experiences happen over and over again. It prompts readers to wonder: at what point does someone get tired of experiencing this?

This racism, the kind that so many Black Americans experience regularly, in addition to more violent forms, get addressed in this text.

While this book is often identified as poetry and sometimes has poetic elements, I mostly found it reading far more as prose than poetry, and not quite poetic prose usually either. It does break many boundaries however, both in form and topics, so it made it a very easy text for me to analyze under the scope of transgressive fiction creating social change.

Last year, I began researching the things that create social change and looked into books that have, historically, influenced social change. I started to synthesize these ideas, and began working on a formula that would allow books to do that. Citizen does many things that align with my research on creating change. Some notable things it does include using second person point of view, providing performance/unusual form (through vignettes, incorporating news articles, photographs, etc.), and introducing positive contact (McRaney (2022) and Dovidio et al. (2009)).

I haven't done a lot of talking on the blog yet about the research I did regarding transgressive fiction and social change, but I'll introduce some of it now. This book is definitely transgressive, in both the topic and the way it's written. It is uniquely crafted, and it includes elements my research says makes social change, so it made me wonder why it didn't become successful at doing that.

In David McRaney’s (2022) book, How Minds Change, McRaney compiles evidence for why minds make decisions based on group identity, why people keep the ideas that they do, and what finally changes their minds. He spends time discussing the process of deep canvasing to explore a method that has worked in getting people to change their minds on typically controversial topics. In deep canvasing, a volunteer speaks to people at their homes with the goal of shifting those people's minds. The three steps to deep canvasing include the volunteer building rapport, describing his or her own relation to the topic, and finally, the homeowner telling their own story. The volunteer reflects feelings and asks probing questions that prompt the individual to reflect. Reflection is incredibly important because, oftentimes, the homeowner has never thought about it before. This process helps them realize the origin of their belief and reconsiders it. Providing facts isn’t what prompts the reconsideration, which is where many people go wrong when trying to change other's minds. I'm wondering if Citizen didn't build rapport well enough at first, or include room for the readers to reflect on their own stories. While I understand that was not the point of Citizen, it seems it may be one of the reasons the book didn't pick up enough wind to change society. I imagine that most of the people who read the book are people who are already on the author's side.

Citizen is an enlightening text that really invites readers into an emotional experience. While it has won awards, it is not a household name and did not pick up enough steam to create national outcry or change. I do think though, if you haven't read it, that you absolutely should. Citizen is a very important read that really offers insight into the (tragic) human experience, specifically the American experience, for many. This book can help bridge gaps and create empathy (probably more so if you are someone open to that opportunity, as opposed to someone who immediately gets defensive and shuts down). Rankine offers an exceptional opportunity with this book, so read it and see for yourself.

Sociopath: A Memoir by Dr. Patric Gagne is a detailed depiction of Gagne’s experience growing up, realizing she was a sociopath, learning how that affected her, and doing much of her own work to treat herself since there is very little resources about sociopaths available.

What an emotional roller coaster. By the end of the book, I was crying, like actual tears running down my cheeks (which is funny and ironic that I’d feel so emotional from this when, from my understanding, the author probably doesn’t). I don’t remember the last book, if there ever was another one, that made me actually cry. But this did.
 
To put it very simply, sociopaths have a hard time experiencing emotions like the general public does because they have a limited emotional range, thus rarely feeling “learned” emotions (like love and guilt). Based on Gagne’s experience (and research), sociopaths will partake in antisocial behavior to try and feel something other than apathy.

Gagne’s introduction ends with, “I am a criminal without a record. A master of disguise. I have never been caught. I have rarely been sorry. I am friendly. I am responsible. I am invisible. I blend right in. I am a twenty-first century sociopath. And I’ve written this book because I know I’m not alone” (xvii). What an intriguing way to start this book – it comes across sinister and dark, but also somehow inviting. I love how candid Gagne is (or seems, which I’ll explain soon). The book continues with Gagne’s childhood and how she came to understand that she was different from the people surrounding her. She did not feel the same things they did, and she had no problem doing things that others saw as bad. Through this, she learned how to develop and or manage relationships in her life. From a craft stand point, I found the way she revealed herself building relationships with other people fascinating. The details and pacing of it made me feel something, but I had to acknowledge that it probably didn’t make her feel anything, which was an odd thing to accept. It made me wonder where her relationships were going to go when her actions and other people’s reactions got increasingly conflicted.
 
Gagne writes in a way that made me feel sorry for her, empathetic, but it also made me wonder if she was a reliable narrator or if she was manipulating me. I don’t like that I thought this, because she explains that this kind of mindset is exactly what she tries to fight, but it was hard not to think it. By the end of the book, I definitely found myself trusting her, but still wondered if I should. This, however, made me acknowledge that trust is blind. Sure, people can behave in ways that give us more reason to think they won't betray us, but also everyone can betray us. We can't really trust anyone, so what makes them anymore trustworthy than her? I naturally trust everyone though, so I guess we’ll assume she was being honest in everything she wrote.
 
I found myself thinking that this book helps people understand a lot about others, not just sociopaths. Reading Gagne’s experience with wanting people to value her, even when her personality, something that's not her fault, was hard for others to understand, helped me when thinking about the conflict my husband and I face with his mental health diagnoses. He is not a sociopath, but reading this book has allowed me to stop reacting to him based on how I want him to feel, but rather, simply be there for him. I found myself wanting to be more like a David, Gagne’s husband.
 
The other existential thought I was led to have was this: what is good and bad? After studying psychology, putting in a lot of work to reflect on and understand herself, meet her own therapist, and then do clinical research, Gagne admits that she no longer wanted to be like other people; rather, she wanted people to accept her as she is... but then she did want to be like other people? In the epilogue, she ends up working really hard to decrease the anxiety and pressure she feels from her sociopathy. This means stopping certain behaviors. I wonder what made her decide that that choice and type of life was right? Especially when so many people envied her behavior and the apathy she experienced. I mean, I was rooting for her, and wanted her to get ‘better’, but what does that say about me? And who decides what better is?
 
I’m not suggesting everyone run around doing whatever they want, hurting people, or taking things, but Patric is right when she talked about guilt being a learned emotion, and what does that say about people? Society? Why do we choose what we choose to be guilty about? And then we expect everyone else to feel guilty about it too? So I was rooting for her, and for her to "manage" her behaviors, but then I realized that I didn’t know how I felt about my “rooting” once she got there.
 
Really, by the end of the book I had tears streaming down my face. I don’t even know what I was feeling, but what a testament to the storytelling she did. This book paces her experiences and conflict so well, develops “characters” profoundly, and truly lets you inside Gagne’s experiences, really hoping she’ll achieve the things she wants. Like I said, I think this is great insight into the mind of someone who experiences sociopathy (which is a relatively rare experience), but also just a great reminder that we all experience things differently and should be patient with people.
 
Originally, I started my blog in part to encourage myself to continue researching and writing about how transgressive fiction can be used to create social change. Life got in the way, and that research fell to the wayside. I do think that Sociopath has given me some more things to research when I pick it back up. While books in general have been shown to support empathy, this book worked especially hard at it, and it makes me think about how strongly developing empathy in fiction might play a part in social change.

If you're interested in the darkness that is mental health disorders, understanding people, and overcoming challenges, I highly recommend this book. I found it engaging, and easy to like and root for Gagne. You just might need a box of tissues.

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.)