Fat Girl in a Strange Land
Author:
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Book Type: Paperback
Author:
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Book Type: Paperback
Helpful Score: 1
I found this collection extremely uneven. There were several stories I absolutely hated, which is unusual for me in short fiction: "The Tradeoff," "The Right Stuffed," "Nemesis," and "Sharks and Seals." But there were also several that I loved deeply, passionately, without reservation: "Cartography, and the Death of Shoes," "Flesh of My Flesh," "Davy," and "Lift." What surprised me even more was how my tastes broke down by genre: I found all but one of the fantasy stories good to great, and disliked or hated all but two of the science fiction stories. Also surprising (and a little disappointing to me) was that there wasn't a single story where the protagonist liked her body. Still, on the strength of those four stories that I loved I would recommend this collection, and I am grateful to Crossed Genres and the editors Kay T. Holt and Bart R. Leib for making it.
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"La Gorda and the City of Silver," by Sabrina Vourvoulias -- As the jacket says, this is the story of a woman who wants to become a luchadora but who becomes something bigger instead: a folk hero. This story reminded me quite a bit of Jacqueline Carey's novel Santa Olivia, all atmosphere and deft characterization. The fantasy content was minimal or nonexistent, and the main character's fatness was beautifully done -- it was relevant to the story, but only one aspect of her character, and the story as a whole felt fairly body-positive. Unfortunately, the ending didn't work for me; I found it too wish-fulfilmenty. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Pass. Rating: ★★★★
"The Tradeoff," by Lauren C. Teffeau -- In the future, mandatory, identical food rations have made everyone skinny; however, the physically grueling nature of terraforming planets requires the main character to gain a great deal of weight for her job. This felt like an Issue story to me, and the main character's extreme discomfort in her body made me uncomfortable in my own. There was also a romantic subplot that I found neither interesting nor convincing, and the ending seemed glib. I found the whole story slightly distasteful. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★★
"Cartography, and the Death of Shoes," by A. J. Fitzwater -- Despite the unusual second-person narration, this story delighted me, and reminded me of Catherynne M. Valente's Palimpsest: lyrical and surreal, full of the magical minutiae of modern urban life. The narrator, alienated from this world, has developed obsessions with maps (because she's an explorer) and shoes (because she walks each new pair into the ground within 6 months). An encounter with a very special cobbler changes her life. Like in "La Gorda," her fatness has shaped her character, and is an essential component of the plot, but is not the be-all and end-all of her existence, and unlike "La Gorda" the ending was a perfectly calibrated mix of wistfulness and hope. Bechdel Test: Pass. Johnson Test: Unable to determine. Rating: ★★★★★
"Survivor," by Josh Roseman -- This story, as indicated by its title, is a pure survival story -- the main character's fatness is only incidental to the plot, which chronicles her actions after a crash maroons her alone on a planet unfit for humans. It read quickly, but while I acknowledge intellectually that there need to be stories where the fatness of the main character is incidental rather than The Point, it felt like a bit of a missed opportunity after "La Gorda" and "Cartography" both managed to make the fatness of their protagonists more thematically relevant. I also found myself not buying the physical descriptions in the climax. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★★★
"The Right Stuffed," by Brian Jungwiwattanaporn -- In this future, a military organization experiments with using fat women with artistic tendencies as counterintelligence agents in the Void, an under-underworld of the Grid. Because they can eat the information. Their fatness lets them devour it in a way that skinny people have too strong a mental block against. The point of the story may have been to mock the mindset which Others fat people, but it read to me like it was just mocking fat people. And because I was so turned off by that tone I was unable to care about the thriller plot or any of the characters. Bechdel Test: Pass. Johnson Test: Unable to determine. Rating: ★
"Tangwystl the Unwanted," by Katharine Elmer -- This is a surprisingly sweet Rapunzel retelling. There isn't a whole lot to it, and the main character's fatness is almost completely irrelevant, but I enjoyed this nonetheless. Bechdel Test: Pass. Johnson Test: Unable to determine. Rating: ★★★1/2
"Flesh of My Flesh," by Bonnie Ferrante -- In this story, a fat woman is the only human capable of communicating with a cannibalistic alien race. I felt like this story was trying to be a James Tiptree, Jr. story: full of alienation and death, both literal and spiritual. Like in Tiptree's stories, the aliens highlight imbalances of power within human society, eventually either breaking or freeing the main character, depending on one's level of horror at the ending. It was not as beautifully written as Tiptree's stories are, but it was uncomfortable, as it should be, and I can't say I liked it, but it will stick with me. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★★★★1/2
"How Do You Want To Die?" by Rick Silva -- This story is about a 300-pound female mercenary turned escaped slave who gets caught in a sandstorm. The titular question is all that provides a narrative structure to the story, which otherwise feels like a middle chapter in an old-school sword-and-sorcery novel. I liked it, but probably would have liked it more if I hadn't spent the entire story trying to figure out what other story I've read also used that refrain. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Unable to determine. Rating: ★★★
"Nemesis," by Nicole Prestin -- As described on the jacket, a size 14 "soccer mom" superhero joins a superhero team in the big city and discovers they want her to wear spandex. I might have liked this story if I had found it funny, but instead the jokes just kind of lay there on the page. The characters were sketches at best, the action wasn't particularly thrilling, and the resolution made me roll my eyes. Bechdel Test: Pass. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★1/2
"Davy," by Anna Dickinson -- This is a magic-realist story about a woman battling post-partem depression; she's fat because of the recent pregnancy, and her fatness far less important to the story than her depression. It's one I can't even attempt to talk about objectively, because depression is too personal an issue for me. I felt about it the same why I felt about this post at Hyperbole and a Half: Dickinson captured the experience of depression so perfectly, then threw me completely out of the experience by giving it a resolution. Which, of course, was probably necessary from a narrative standpoint, but which nonetheless alienated me. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★★★★1/2
"Sharks & Seals," by Jennifer Brozek -- I have absolutely no idea what the point of this story was. If "How Do You Want To Die?" felt like a middle chapter from a novel, this felt like the set-up of a confrontation in a middle chapter of a novel -- it had no middle and no end, and it barely even had a beginning. Some rudimentary googling indicates that perhaps it's an RPG-related story (Demon: The Fallen is my best guess at which RPG, but I'm just not interested enough in it to investigate further), so if that's the case maybe there is more here than I have the background to see; but given that this is a general-interest anthology, I really do not think the story works. Bechdel Test: Pass. Johnson Test: Unable to determine. Rating: ★
"Marilee and the S.O.B." by Barbara Krasnoff -- The main character in this story likes to play Harriet the Spy, so she spends an afternoon following an unusual looking man into a bit of fairyland in New York City, where she discovers something she did not know about herself. Unfortunately, if you've read any stories dealing with fairyland, this one is pretty predictable, and I found the message (True beauty comes from within!) trite. It also feels too much like an excerpt from a larger story, though in this case it feels like the first chapter so it worked better standing alone. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★★1/2
"Blueprints," by Anna Caro -- In the future, all of humanity is leaving dying Earth behind for a new life on Terra Nova. . . or at least, all of humanity that the FTL trip is "safe" for. This main character is one of those not allowed to emigrate, so she works at a school for children who have been similarly left behind. The story is made up entirely of her journal entries, and despite the dystopian premise it is one of the few stories that is truly hopeful. It was just the teeniest bit too one the nose for me, but I liked it nonetheless. Caro managed to convey quite a bit of atmosphere despite the journal format. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★★★1/2
"Lift," by Pete "Patch" Alberti -- The final story is rather darling. The teenage protagonist gets told by her friends that she's too fat to come with them as they tool around the solar system on their private spaceship, so she takes matters into her own hands. Sparkles are involved. The tone is pitch-perfect, the length exactly right, and it left me smiling. Bechdel Test: Pass. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★★★★1/2
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"La Gorda and the City of Silver," by Sabrina Vourvoulias -- As the jacket says, this is the story of a woman who wants to become a luchadora but who becomes something bigger instead: a folk hero. This story reminded me quite a bit of Jacqueline Carey's novel Santa Olivia, all atmosphere and deft characterization. The fantasy content was minimal or nonexistent, and the main character's fatness was beautifully done -- it was relevant to the story, but only one aspect of her character, and the story as a whole felt fairly body-positive. Unfortunately, the ending didn't work for me; I found it too wish-fulfilmenty. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Pass. Rating: ★★★★
"The Tradeoff," by Lauren C. Teffeau -- In the future, mandatory, identical food rations have made everyone skinny; however, the physically grueling nature of terraforming planets requires the main character to gain a great deal of weight for her job. This felt like an Issue story to me, and the main character's extreme discomfort in her body made me uncomfortable in my own. There was also a romantic subplot that I found neither interesting nor convincing, and the ending seemed glib. I found the whole story slightly distasteful. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★★
"Cartography, and the Death of Shoes," by A. J. Fitzwater -- Despite the unusual second-person narration, this story delighted me, and reminded me of Catherynne M. Valente's Palimpsest: lyrical and surreal, full of the magical minutiae of modern urban life. The narrator, alienated from this world, has developed obsessions with maps (because she's an explorer) and shoes (because she walks each new pair into the ground within 6 months). An encounter with a very special cobbler changes her life. Like in "La Gorda," her fatness has shaped her character, and is an essential component of the plot, but is not the be-all and end-all of her existence, and unlike "La Gorda" the ending was a perfectly calibrated mix of wistfulness and hope. Bechdel Test: Pass. Johnson Test: Unable to determine. Rating: ★★★★★
"Survivor," by Josh Roseman -- This story, as indicated by its title, is a pure survival story -- the main character's fatness is only incidental to the plot, which chronicles her actions after a crash maroons her alone on a planet unfit for humans. It read quickly, but while I acknowledge intellectually that there need to be stories where the fatness of the main character is incidental rather than The Point, it felt like a bit of a missed opportunity after "La Gorda" and "Cartography" both managed to make the fatness of their protagonists more thematically relevant. I also found myself not buying the physical descriptions in the climax. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★★★
"The Right Stuffed," by Brian Jungwiwattanaporn -- In this future, a military organization experiments with using fat women with artistic tendencies as counterintelligence agents in the Void, an under-underworld of the Grid. Because they can eat the information. Their fatness lets them devour it in a way that skinny people have too strong a mental block against. The point of the story may have been to mock the mindset which Others fat people, but it read to me like it was just mocking fat people. And because I was so turned off by that tone I was unable to care about the thriller plot or any of the characters. Bechdel Test: Pass. Johnson Test: Unable to determine. Rating: ★
"Tangwystl the Unwanted," by Katharine Elmer -- This is a surprisingly sweet Rapunzel retelling. There isn't a whole lot to it, and the main character's fatness is almost completely irrelevant, but I enjoyed this nonetheless. Bechdel Test: Pass. Johnson Test: Unable to determine. Rating: ★★★1/2
"Flesh of My Flesh," by Bonnie Ferrante -- In this story, a fat woman is the only human capable of communicating with a cannibalistic alien race. I felt like this story was trying to be a James Tiptree, Jr. story: full of alienation and death, both literal and spiritual. Like in Tiptree's stories, the aliens highlight imbalances of power within human society, eventually either breaking or freeing the main character, depending on one's level of horror at the ending. It was not as beautifully written as Tiptree's stories are, but it was uncomfortable, as it should be, and I can't say I liked it, but it will stick with me. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★★★★1/2
"How Do You Want To Die?" by Rick Silva -- This story is about a 300-pound female mercenary turned escaped slave who gets caught in a sandstorm. The titular question is all that provides a narrative structure to the story, which otherwise feels like a middle chapter in an old-school sword-and-sorcery novel. I liked it, but probably would have liked it more if I hadn't spent the entire story trying to figure out what other story I've read also used that refrain. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Unable to determine. Rating: ★★★
"Nemesis," by Nicole Prestin -- As described on the jacket, a size 14 "soccer mom" superhero joins a superhero team in the big city and discovers they want her to wear spandex. I might have liked this story if I had found it funny, but instead the jokes just kind of lay there on the page. The characters were sketches at best, the action wasn't particularly thrilling, and the resolution made me roll my eyes. Bechdel Test: Pass. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★1/2
"Davy," by Anna Dickinson -- This is a magic-realist story about a woman battling post-partem depression; she's fat because of the recent pregnancy, and her fatness far less important to the story than her depression. It's one I can't even attempt to talk about objectively, because depression is too personal an issue for me. I felt about it the same why I felt about this post at Hyperbole and a Half: Dickinson captured the experience of depression so perfectly, then threw me completely out of the experience by giving it a resolution. Which, of course, was probably necessary from a narrative standpoint, but which nonetheless alienated me. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★★★★1/2
"Sharks & Seals," by Jennifer Brozek -- I have absolutely no idea what the point of this story was. If "How Do You Want To Die?" felt like a middle chapter from a novel, this felt like the set-up of a confrontation in a middle chapter of a novel -- it had no middle and no end, and it barely even had a beginning. Some rudimentary googling indicates that perhaps it's an RPG-related story (Demon: The Fallen is my best guess at which RPG, but I'm just not interested enough in it to investigate further), so if that's the case maybe there is more here than I have the background to see; but given that this is a general-interest anthology, I really do not think the story works. Bechdel Test: Pass. Johnson Test: Unable to determine. Rating: ★
"Marilee and the S.O.B." by Barbara Krasnoff -- The main character in this story likes to play Harriet the Spy, so she spends an afternoon following an unusual looking man into a bit of fairyland in New York City, where she discovers something she did not know about herself. Unfortunately, if you've read any stories dealing with fairyland, this one is pretty predictable, and I found the message (True beauty comes from within!) trite. It also feels too much like an excerpt from a larger story, though in this case it feels like the first chapter so it worked better standing alone. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★★1/2
"Blueprints," by Anna Caro -- In the future, all of humanity is leaving dying Earth behind for a new life on Terra Nova. . . or at least, all of humanity that the FTL trip is "safe" for. This main character is one of those not allowed to emigrate, so she works at a school for children who have been similarly left behind. The story is made up entirely of her journal entries, and despite the dystopian premise it is one of the few stories that is truly hopeful. It was just the teeniest bit too one the nose for me, but I liked it nonetheless. Caro managed to convey quite a bit of atmosphere despite the journal format. Bechdel Test: Fail. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★★★1/2
"Lift," by Pete "Patch" Alberti -- The final story is rather darling. The teenage protagonist gets told by her friends that she's too fat to come with them as they tool around the solar system on their private spaceship, so she takes matters into her own hands. Sparkles are involved. The tone is pitch-perfect, the length exactly right, and it left me smiling. Bechdel Test: Pass. Johnson Test: Fail. Rating: ★★★★1/2
