(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Content warning for racist and homophobic v(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Content warning for racist and homophobic violence, sexual assault, police brutality, gun violence, and a school shooting.)
Ever since she uprooted a tree at the age of three to rescue a neighbor's cat, Nubia and her moms have known that she's different. Rather than celebrating her superpowers, her adoptive mothers, Amera and Danielle, decided to hide them instead: because, to a country rooted in white supremacy, a Black girl with superhuman strength and speed is more likely to be treated like a villain than a hero, no matter which side she's fighting for.
Despite Nubia's best intentions, staying under the radar is harder than ever in the world of smartphones, Twitter, and TikTok - hence the family's many abrupt moves. Now a high school junior, Nubia's carved out a space for herself, with best friends Quisha and Jason, and a cute crush named Oscar. Nubia barely avoids discovery - and arrest - when she foils a robbery at a local convenience store. But when privileged rich boy positively oozing toxic masculinity assaults Quisha at a party, the fallout is captured on camera for the world to see.
With racial tensions already simmering in the neighborhood after the police murder of an unarmed Black boy, school dirt bag Wayland weaponizes his whiteness further, threatening Quisha, the movement she helped to build, and the kids' high school and community. Now armed with the knowledge of where she came from, it's up to Nubia to decide who she wants to be: a regular high school kid, or an honest-to-goodness superhero.
I came to NUBIA: REAL ONE with very little knowledge of the character or her history (though I've done some internet research since). I love the origin story McKinney decided to run with, and the scenes where Nubia learns of her super-human ancestry are lovely, filled with both humor and heart.
Nubia is an endearing character, grappling with the usual teenage awkwardness and angst, both of which are only compounded by her burdensome secret. Nubia's family is adorable (if a little strict, though for obvious reasons), and the reveal at the end is just *chef's kiss*. Quisha, Jason, Oscar - all are multifaceted, memorable supporting characters who, though they may not possess x-ray vision or the ability to control the weather, bring their own special strengths to the table.
As the content warning notes, McKinney tackles a number of difficult subjects in this thin, 207-page volume: racism, homophobia, sexual assault, police brutality, state-sanctioned murder, unwarranted crackdowns on BLM protesters, gun culture, school shootings, domestic violence, bullying ... It seems like a lot when I type it out like that, yet it feels realistic and organic to the story. (It's depressingly easy to picture Wayland going on a rampage because, for once in his spoiled life, dudebro didn't get his way.)
Sadly, this is the world so many young people - especially those claiming one or more marginalized identities - live in. Systemic racism, school shootings (or just the daily reminders that a mass shooting could happen, i.e., drills and metal detectors), hate crimes, bullying ... all can be found in every town and city across America. The question is the same one Nubia struggles with - what are you willing to do about it? ...more
I'm so glad that I stumbled into SNAPDRAGON as my final read of 2020. It's such a sweet, funny, inclusive, life-affirming book - definitely one of my I'm so glad that I stumbled into SNAPDRAGON as my final read of 2020. It's such a sweet, funny, inclusive, life-affirming book - definitely one of my favorite reads of the year....more
Kahran and Regis Bethencourt began their journey as professional photographers on the kid fashion industry circuit, where they became disillusioned with the lack of diversity and stifling, Eurocentric beauty standards.
"We didn't just want to question traditional beauty standards - we wanted to shatter them. We wanted to create images that flew in the face of the established spectrum of acceptable standard of beauty. With our pictures we wanted to tell a story of a people who for centuries were artists and artisans, strategists and intellectuals, warlords and warriors, kings and queens."
With their AfroArt series, the husband and wife duo behind CreativeSoul Photography did just this (do yourself a favor and visit them on instagram for some truly breathtaking artistry: @creativesoulphoto). The series quickly went viral, garnering praise from Will Smith, Jada Pinkett, Taraji P. Henson, Alicia Keys, and Common, as well as media overage from BBC News to Teen Vogue. GLORY: MAGICAL VISIONS OF BLACK BEAUTY is a natural extension of their work, bringing their brilliance and vision to the printed page.
GLORY pairs the Bethencourt's stunning photography with short profiles of their subjects and inspiring quotes from Black leaders, intellectuals, artists, and cultures. The portraits are organized around three central themes: Past: Once and Future Kings and Queens; Present: Glory Prevails; and Future: Our Unbound Glory, which further underscores the project's message and amplifies the pageantry. Being a science fiction nerd myself, I expected to enjoy the last chapter the most - but they're all equally spectacular.
While many of the subjects are models, musicians, dancers, and performers and creatives, the Bethencourts also featured children from less privileged backgrounds, most notably through the Jamestown Project. Two of their own nieces also appear, which is pretty neat.
I also love how many of the kids are into STEM; in GLORY's pages, you'll meet children and young adults who want to be architects, astronauts, marine biologists, veterinarians, pilots, and comic books authors - as well as fashion designers, politicians, and singers. Some of the kids are already politically active - look for Mari Copeny, aka Little Miss Flint - and while a part of me wants to celebrate that, it's also shameful that kids have to clean up the messes of adults, rather than just being kids.
“Who better to fight a monster than another monster?”
(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for viole“Who better to fight a monster than another monster?”
(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for violence against women, including rape, torture, and dismemberment. This review contains some vague spoilers.)
I grin from ear to ear when a dewdrop descends slowly before me, its crystalline beauty easily perceptible by my sharpened vision. I’ve never felt this happy before. Never felt this free.
“Is this what birds feel like?” Britta shouts excitedly. “No wonder they never wanted us to run.”
And I stumble, the reminder as piercing as an arrow. the Infinite Wisdoms forbid running, as they do most things that don't prepare girls for marriage and serving their families. According to them, girls can’t shout, drink, ride horses, go to school, learn a trade, learn to fight, move about without a male guardian. We can’t do anything that doesn’t somehow relate to having a husband and family and serving them. Elder Durkas always told us that’s because they’re trying to show us how to live happy, righteous lives.
What if it’s meant to cage us instead?
“The Gilded Ones...,” Belcalis says, finishing Britta’s question. There’s no question about it when those veins are so unmistakable, as are the other things: the pregnant belly of the Westerner, the Southerner’s darkness, the pale glow of the Northerner, the scaled armor of the Easterner, wings protruding from it.
“They don’t look like demons at all,” Britta says, shocked. “They look like—”
“Gods,” I whisper, thinking of all the statues of Oyomo I’ve seen, glowering down at us from the corners of temples. “They look like gods.”
Keita accepts me as I am—loves me. He doesn’t have to say the words, but I feel them. I feel them in the way he cradles my severed head so gently, even though the very act of holding it should horrify him.
Sixteen-year-old Deka of Irfut lives in Otera, a fantastical world that looks little like our own ... and yet still feels painfully familiar.
Long ago, Otera was simply a collection independent villages and kingdoms, loosely divided into four regions: north, south, east, and west. That is, until the humans banded together to defeat The Gilded Ones, four demons who were terrorizing humanity, as powerful as they were bloodthirsty. Ever since, Otera has remained a theocracy: ruled by an emperor, and governed by the Infinite Wisdoms.
Otera is a deeply patriarchal society; women are meant to be wives and mothers, and little else. The prohibitions on female activity are endless: women and girls cannot run, laugh, ride horses, drink, receive an education or learn a trade, fight, leave the house without a male chaperone, be seen in public without a mask after a certain age, work outside the home, or have an opinion. "Women were created to be helpmeets to men, subservient to their desires and commands" - after all, it's right there in the Infinite Wisdoms.
While this misogyny is the bread and butter of feminist dystopian fiction, Forna throws in an extra little twist, in the form of the Ritual of Purity. Every year, all the sixteen-year-old girls in the village are rounded up and ceremonially cut. While most girls' blood runs red, as expected, occasionally a girl will bleed gold. She is impure - an alaki, a descendant of The Gilded Ones - and, according to the Death Mandate, she must be executed. But this is often easier said than done: an alaki only has one true death, one from which she cannot recover, and it is different for each girl. Otherwise, she will simply slip into the Gilded Sleep, only to awaken weeks later, good as new.
It's here that we meet Deka, as she's on the cusp of undergoing her own Ritual of Purity. Before her turn can come, Irfut is attacked by deathshrieks: fearsome, supernaturally fast and strong creatures made of quills and leather and rage. (I pictured them as crosses between werewolves and porcupines, maybe with a little pterodactyl and Groot thrown in.)
Just as her beloved father is about to be slaughtered, a primal, irresistible scream wells up from the depths of Deka's soul - and the deathshrieks freeze. It seems that she alone can command them. For her troubles, she's thrown in an elder's basement, tortured, murdered countless times, and bled dry for her valuable gold blood.
Her salvation comes in the form of a mysterious woman Deka nicknames "White Hands," aka the Lady of the Equus, who whisks her off to Hemaira, the City of Emperors, to join the emperor's burgeoning alaki army, specially assembled to exterminate the deathshrieks.
[image]
Here, she finds her true family: good-natured Britta, with the perpetually upset stomach (much like Roberta in Superman Smashes the Klan, Britta's stomach is A MOOD); sisters Adwapa and Asha who, as daughters of the high chief Nibari, only pretend to follow the Infinite Wisdoms for the benefit of visiting priests; Belcalis, who suffered more than most under the Death Mandate and knows better to trust the elite's fleeting favor; and Katya, a red-headed farm girl who wants nothing more than to marry her childhood sweetheart.
As the alaki train alongside the uruni - regular human boys who are to be their brothers in arms - Deka undertakes her own lessons in secret; White Hands teaches her how to harness her combat state to further enhance her already superhuman powers, and consolidate her control over the deathshrieks.
But with each raid, Deka cannot shake the feeling that something is wrong: with her cryptic answers, what truth is White Hands keeping from her? Why does Deka witness the deathshrieks using increasingly complicated tools - cochleans to cover their ears, armor to protect their bodies, and weapons ranging in sophistication from rocks to swords and maces - when she has been taught that they are unthinking, unfeeling brutes? And what of the shrines to The Gilded Ones the alaki warriors keep discovering along their path of destruction?
Usually when I dread reviewing a book, it's for one of two reasons: either the story was so utterly, jaw-droppingly amazing that I fear it's impossible to do the author justice - or it's simply "meh," and I can't for the life of me think of anything to say. I bet you can guess which category The Gilded Ones falls into. This is my first starred read of 2020 - I read an early copy in April, before the release date got pushed back almost a year thanks to the corona virus - aside from a few graphic novels and a reread of Not a Drop to Drink, that is.
The Gilded Ones is like The Handmaid's Tale or The Grace Year, but cranked up to the nth degree, and with a welcome understanding of racial politics to boot. There's so much to love here: richly detailed and wholly imaginative world building; one awesome found family (that keeps growing more wondrous with each chapter); unexpected plot twists like whoah; a terribly sweet (and sometimes weirdly gross; not mutually exclusive) star-crossed romance; and a compelling, skillfully executed plot, the true feminist ferocity of which doesn't become fully apparent until the story's end. The Gilded Ones continued to surprise me to the very last page, in the best ways possible. This book is every bit as beautiful as the cover promises, and then some.
The ending also sets up a pretty epic sequel, which I'm already pining for. It was giving off a serious Fury Road vibe, which I am so here for. In the meantime, HBO? Pick this up, stat. You need a next Game of Thrones, I need some feminist fantasy to inject into my socially isolated veins, let's do this thing! (Hey, it's got to be better than bleach. Hello again from early 2020.)
On the book's Amazon page, Refinery29 blurbs The Gilded Ones thusly: "Namina Forna Could Be The Toni Morrison Of YA Fantasy." Three words, and I'll try to keep it as unspoilery as possible: Octavia. Butler. Deathshriek.
A spectacular reincarnation of Octavia E. Butler's masterpiece.
(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review from the publisher, ABA spectacular reincarnation of Octavia E. Butler's masterpiece.
(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review from the publisher, ABRAMS Books. Trigger warning for violence, including rape. Click on the images to embiggen.)
I've been staring at a blank screen for upwards of fifteen minutes, trying to figure out how best to summarize the first half of (what I consider to be) Octavia E. Butler's magnum opus, the Parables duology. In the interest of expediency, I'll just lift the synopsis from my review of the original:
###
Lauren Olamina isn’t like the other kids in her neighborhood, a walled-off city block in Robledo, just twenty miles outside of Los Angeles. Born to a drug-addicted mother, Lauren is afflicted with hyperempathy – the ability to share in the pain and pleasure of others, whether she wants to or not. This makes her an especially easy target for bullies – brother Keith used to make her bleed for fun when they were younger – so Lauren’s weakness is a carefully guarded secret, one shared only with her family. In this crumbling world, a near-future dystopia that’s all to easy to imagine, humans already devour their own: literally as well as figuratively. Lauren won’t make herself an easy meal.
As if her hyperempathy isn’t alienating enough, Lauren has another secret, one that she only shares with her diary. The daughter of a Baptist preacher, Lauren no longer believes in her father’s god. Instead, she’s cultivating her own system of belief – Earthseed:
All that you touch You Change.
All that you Change Changes you.
The only lasting truth Is Change.
God Is Change.
Lauren gathers these verses into a book that she comes to think of as “The Books of the Living.” Her new religion? Earthseed. Its destination? The stars.
Parable of the Sower is Lauren’s journal (of a sort). Begun on the eve of her 15th birthday and concluding more than three years later, through her diary we witness the collapse of Lauren’s fragile world. In a country wracked by poverty, climate change, mass unemployment, homelessness, drug abuse, class warfare, and unspeakable violence, Lauren’s small community is a fortress of sorts. Though they’re far from well-off, the diverse neighborhood manages to produce enough food and goods (and occasionally for-pay labor) to sustain itself. The residents put personal animosity aside to protect and care for one another: rotating night watches keep would-be thieves at bay; when one resident’s garage catches fire, everyone becomes a firefighter; and Lauren’s step-mom Cory schools the neighborhood kids in her own home, since it’s too dangerous to venture outside the walls.
It’s not much, but it’s home. But even at the tender age of 15, Lauren can see it unraveling: “We’ll be moved, all right. It’s just a matter of when, by whom, and in how many pieces.”
After a series of blows – the disappearance of Lauren’s father; several successful infiltrations by thieves; a fire that claims all but one member of its household – Lauren’s community finally falls. Drugged out on “pyro,” a group of painted arsonists torch the neighborhood, killing and raping its residents. Lauren is just one of three to escape. Along with Zahra – the youngest of Richard Moss’s wives – and fellow teenager Harry, they hit the road in search of water and work. A safe place to pitch their (proverbial) tent. And, for Lauren, a safe haven in which to establish the very first Earthseed community.
###
Butler is one of my all-time favorite authors, second only to Margaret Atwood (who, admittedly, often suffers from some pretty glaring blind spots when it comes to race; see, e.g., The Handmaid's Tale); and her Parables duology occupies a special, even vital, place in my heart.
So when I heard that Damian Duffy and John Jennings were working on a graphic novel adaptation, I did an ecstatic happy dance in my seat, and wondered at its progress at least once a week for the next nine months or so. If it was just half as good as their treatment of Kindred, I reasoned, I could die a happy fangirl.
As it turns out? Parable of the Sower is every bit as good as Kindred. Which is to say, not quite as good as the source material, but pretty damn close.
The artwork is gorgeous, and quite similar in style to that found in Kindred. The dull browns and beiges evoke the dreary hopelessness of Lauren's world, and are juxtaposed with pages of vibrant (yet often threatening) reds and oranges, and moody, atmospheric blues.
I love how Lauren's style evolves with time as she adapts her appearance to the world around her: when she and her friends hit the road, Lauren chops all her hair off so that she can pass as a man.
As for the plot, Duffy manages to distill Butler's wisdom from a 350-odd page book to a much shorter graphic novel with ease. It's been a few years since I've read Parables, but I didn't spot any significant changes to the plot or message. (Though some of the verses of Earthseed might have migrated from Talents to Sower. To wit: "In order to rise from its own ashes, a phoenix first must burn," the latter portion of which will grace an upcoming science fiction anthology edited by Patrice Caldwell and featuring "16 stories of Black Girl Magic, resistance, and hope." I CANNOT WAIT.)
While I am indeed a sucker for feminist dystopian fiction, it's Lauren's science-based religion that really resonates with me. I feel like we're kindred spirits in this way. I'm an atheist who understands that, sometimes, being an atheist sucks. It can be harsh and hurtful and bleak. Religion offers comfort in the face of adversity and loss. Saying goodbye to someone you love is painful; saying goodbye for forever is downright crushing. Sometimes I wish I believed in the afterlife, in a Good Place and a Bad Place, or in karma and reincarnation. I wish I had hope that I'd see my lost loved ones again.
But I can't make myself believe in something I don't, and so I stitch together my own little safety blanket of quasi-religious truths. Lauren's Books of the Living plays a pretty hefty role, as does Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials (especially the scenes where Lyra and Will lead the despairing spirits from the World of the Dead so that they can reunite with their daemons in the natural world).
Theo Pappas’s ideas about thoughts, memories, and electrical impulses; heat and light; gas and carbon and star parts, given life and form and structure by Erika Swyler in Light from Other Stars.
The wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff in Kate Mascarenhas's The Psychology of Time Travel, and the implications this mutability of death holds for the grieving.
While Parable of the Sower is a grim story, all the more so for its prescience, it is not one without hope: like a phoenix from the ashes, Lauren rises from the rubble that was her home and introduces her fellow survivors and refugees to a new way of thinking, believing, and being. A spirituality that celebrates harmony with the natural world, rather than a system of dominance and destruction. A journey rooted in truth, yet propelled upward by visions of something better. Earthseed is lovely and brimming with promise, and I hope it takes root (though not among the stars - not until humanity can be entrusted with its own home planet, anyway).
Rare is the book that actually merits a comparison to The Handmaid's Tale.
(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. TrigRare is the book that actually merits a comparison to The Handmaid's Tale.
(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for misogyny, homophobia, violence - including rape - and suicide.)
“In the county, everything they take away from us is a tiny death. But not here . . .” She spreads her arms out, taking in a deep breath. “The grace year is ours. This is the one place we can be free. There’s no more tempering our feelings, no more swallowing our pride. Here we can be whatever we want. And if we let it all out,” she says, her eyes welling up, her features softening, “we won’t have to feel those things anymore. We won’t have to feel at all.”
“In the county, there’s nothing more dangerous than a woman who speaks her mind. That’s what happened to Eve, you know, why we were cast out from heaven. We’re dangerous creatures. Full of devil charms. If given the opportunity, we will use our magic to lure men to sin, to evil, to destruction.” My eyes are getting heavy, too heavy to roll in a dramatic fashion. “That’s why they send us here.”
“To rid yourself of your magic,” he says.
“No,” I whisper as I drift off to sleep. “To break us.”
I've started and stopped, cut and pasted this review so many times over the last few weeks that I've lost count. The truth is that The Grace Year left me speechless and, as with all of my favorite books, I'm afraid that nothing I might write will do it justice. This is the kind of book that merits a twenty-page thesis, not a 500-word review. (Though, let's be honest, precious few of my reviews clock in at less than 1,000 words.)
You can gather the basics from the synopsis. Our protagonist, sixteen-year-old Tierney James, lives in a culture that hates and fears women. It's believed that young women possess a powerful, dark magic; paradoxically, they're also considered men's inferiors. For the good of society, young women are banished from Garner County for the entirety of their sixteenth year.
The goal during the "Grace Year" is twofold: to purge the magic from their bodies so that they can return home pure and ready to be married - and to return home, period. Their wild and wicked magic; the harsh wilderness; and the poachers who aim to kill them and sell their bewitched body parts on the black market: all stand between the girls and survival.
The Grace Year follows Tierney and her cohorts as they claw, fight, manipulate, and straight up slay their way through 365 days of exile. Along the way, Tierney calls on her specialized knowledge - her dad is a doctor who always wanted a son, and thus "spoiled" his middle daughter by teaching her useful life skills - to try and change the system from the inside. She dreams of a young woman who carries within her the spark of revolution. She can only hope that her visions are more prophecy, less the random firing of neurons.
The story is told in four main parts, each corresponding to one season in Tierney's Grace Year: autumn, winter, spring, and summer. There aren't chapters to divvy things up further (at least there wasn't in the ARC), which makes each section feel L-O-N-G (in a good way!). Whereas some reviewers complained about this format, I loved it: it gives the readers a sense of the slow passage of time as the Grace Year girls experience it, the weight of days differentiated from one another only by violence and death.
Usually I scoff when books are blurbed as "The Handmaid's Tale meets XYZ," but I think the comparison is more than warranted here: The Grace Year is The Handmaid's Tale meets Lord of the Flies, with a dash of The Hunger Games meets Bridezillas for extra-crunchy complexity. There's so much to unpack and dissect here.
In The Grace Year, Kim Liggett has created a semi-fictional world that could exist at (nearly) any time or place in history. The lack of modern technology - there are references to lithographs and gas lamps, and a distinct absence of electronics - hints at the past. Perhaps Garner County is an isolated community in 1800s America? Yet, without a detailed backstory of how Tierney's community came to be, she and her ilk could just as easily live in some future dystopia, a society rebuilt from the ashes of a pandemic or world war. Or they could inhabit another 'verse altogether. I love that the setting is open to interpretation, because it prevents us from dismissing Garner County as something from our past: a result of primitive and outdated beliefs that we have since moved beyond.
News flash: misogyny and homophobia (and racism, classism, ableism, etc.) are still alive and well. Just read the damn news, mkay.
Again just from the synopsis, it's glaringly obvious that Tierney's is a strictly religious and patriarchal society marked by rigid gender roles...but this summary hardly does it justice. Think: the fictional Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale. Or Women Talking, inspired by the very real mass rapes that took place in Manitoba County, a Bolivian Mennonite settlement.
In Garner County, women face myriad restrictions, including but not limited to the following:
- Women are branded with their father's sigil at birth. They are quite literally owned by their fathers, until the time they are bartered and traded to would-be husbands. Needless to say, they have no say in who they marry.
- Young women who go unclaimed have three options open to them: they can become maids, field laborers, or prostitutes in the outskirts.
- Married women are required to perform their "wifely duties": “Legs spread, arms flat, eyes to God.” In other words, wives are raped on the regular.
- Though it's not stated outright, it's safe to assume that birth control and contraception are outlawed, at least for married women. (Married) women are not allowed to determine how many children they bear, if any.
- It's considered blasphemous to pray for a baby girl (because we're worthless, see?).
- Women are only schooled until the age of ten.
- "All the women in Garner County have to wear their hair the same way, pulled back from the face, plaited down the back. In doing so, the men believe, the women won’t be able to hide anything from them—a snide expression, a wandering eye, or a flash of magic. White ribbons for the young girls, red for the grace year girls, and black for the wives. Innocence. Blood. Death."
- "We’re forbidden from cutting our own hair, but if a husband sees fit, he can punish his wife by cutting off her braid."
- "We’re not allowed to pray in silence, for fear that we’ll use it to hide our magic."
- "The women of the county aren’t allowed to hum—the men think it’s a way we can hide magic spells."
- Adult women cannot wear hoods or other protection against the elements: "After their grace year, their faces needed to be free and clear to make sure they weren’t hiding their magic. The wives scarcely went outdoors during those months."
- "In the county, bathing with flowers is a sin, a perversion, punishable by whip."
- "The women aren’t allowed to own pets in the county. We are the pets."
- "The women aren’t allowed to congregate outside of sanctioned holidays."
- If a girl does not return from the Grace year - either alive or in bottles - her female family members will be punished by banishment.
Some of these rules are universal to what you'd expect to see in a religious patriarchy: anything to keep women voiceless, segregated, and compliant. In a word, powerless. Others feel like loving throwbacks to The Handmaid's Tale: for example, the scene where Tierney defiantly bathes with a flower brings to mind Offred, secreting away a pat of butter to moisturize her dry and purely functional (to Gilead) body.
One detail that jumps out at me is how the girls and women are pitted against each other, so that they exist in a perpetual state of competition rather than cooperation. Similar to what you'd see in FLDS communities, there's a sizable gender imbalance in Garner County; created not by casting young men out, as is the polygamous Mormon way, but by drafting lower-class men as Guards, denying them wives, and then castrating them to prevent unauthorized pregnancies. (This is one obvious deviation from The Handmaid's Tale, where lower-class men like Nick are at least allowed the hope that they may one day merit a Wife.)
Thus, there are more eligible wives than husbands - and as the position of wife is the "best" a young woman of Garner County can hope for (the gilded cage), women are pitted against each other. As if this isn't offensive enough, the veil ceremony takes place immediately before the potential brides leave for their Grace Year. Picture it: you're a scared sixteen-year-old girl who was just sentenced to a life of hard field labor; the only thing standing between an early, sun-baked death and a relatively cushy life as a wife and mother is a scrap of fabric. You're alone and unsupervised, for the first time in your life; your body coursing with magic. What now?
Garner County has effectively incentivized murder - hence The Hunger Games meets Bridezillas. Not that state-sanctioned murder should come as a surprise: the death penalty is alive and well. See also: the poachers. In truth, not all of the Grace Year girls are meant to return home: not when they are sent into the wilderness with inadequate housing and provisions, and certainly not when they state sanctions poaching. Women are nothing if not expendable.
Magic is also a common theme but, as Tierney so astutely observes, men only seem to discover evidence of magic when it is convenient for them: "Like when Mrs. Pinter’s husband died, Mr. Coffey suddenly accused his wife of twenty-five years of secretly harboring her magic and levitating in her sleep. Mrs. Coffey was as meek and mild as they come—hardly the levitating sort—but she was cast out. No questions asked. And surprise, surprise, Mr. Coffey married Mrs. Pinter the following day."
Women are so thoroughly indoctrinated that they question themselves whenever they have an impertinent thought or experience a flash of anger: "And I wonder if this is the magic taking over. Is this how it starts—the slip of the tongue? A loss of respect? Is this how I become a monster the men whisper of? I turn and run up the stairs before I do something I regret."
Spoiler alert: magic isn't real. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that magic, as it's defined in Garner County, is not mysterious or supernatural in nature. Rather, magic is code for women's anger. Magic is when a women speaks her mind and demands equal treatment. Magic is women working together to overthrow the patriarchy and create a new, more equitable society in which they are valued and respected. Magic is a tiny red flower. Magic is revolution.
"Ask yourself, why would a society deny girls and women, from cradle to grave, the right to feel, express, and leverage anger and be respected when we do? Anger has a bad rap, but it is actually one of the most hopeful and forward thinking of all of our emotions. It begets transformation, manifesting our passion and keeping us invested in the world. It is a rational and emotional response to trespass, violation, and moral disorder. It bridges the divide between what 'is' and what 'ought' to be, between a difficult past and an improved possibility. Anger warns us viscerally of violation, threat, and insult. By effectively severing anger from 'good womanhood,' we choose to sever girls and women from the emotion that best protects us against danger and injustice.")
It's no wonder the men fear it.
Of course, not everyone is hip to the true nature of women's magic, and it's enthralling to see how this plays out in the little community formed by the Grace Year girls. I love how Liggett devises a very reasonable, if not mundane, explanation for the manifestation of the girls' magical powers. And the power dynamics that arise out of this are pretty shrewd and insightful, with plenty of real-world consequences. This is how cult leaders are made. Or 45th presidents.
There's so much more I want to rave about: The way that Liggett uses Hans to eviscerate the Nice Guy (tm) trope. The kinship between women and animals, and the vegan feminist ethic that might arise from recognizing and honoring our similarities. The sheer, raw power (might I say "magic"?) of sisterhood. The seed of revolution that blossoms here.
The Grace Year may not take place in 2019 America, yet its lessons are painfully relevant today.
My only complaint - and it is not a minor one - is the complete absence of race from the narrative. Only a few of the girls are described in great physical detail; those that are all appear to be white. Do no women of color live in Garner County? If not, why not? Perhaps darker skinned women do exist, but simply are not valued as Wives in this white nationalist patriarchy. If this is the case, we'd expect to find them laboring in the fields, serving the white nuclear families, and bearing the brunt of toxic masculinity as sex workers in the outskirts. As with The Handmaid's Tale, this is an egregiously weak spot in an otherwise powerful and engaging story.
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