Book Review HOW TO WRESTLE A GIRL Venita Blackburn
I found HOW TO WRESTLE A GIRL by Verita Blackburn on the Libby app. Check for your local library on the app and read great books for free!📚
The audiobook is read by a group of individuals, who each perform their stories beautifully. Some, brilliantly. I recommend this form for a short, gripping listen.
Mini reviews of the contained stories:
1. "Part I: Fam"
A brilliant very short piece on internalized anti-blackness.
2. "Bear Bear Harvest"
Cousins are plentiful in all the ways, in numbers and size and feelings, just roaming through the house like mad geese, tearing breadcrumbs off our asses. I have to tell Trixie, the youngest, to respect my person space. Don't press into my hip like a horny puppy all the time! But, she's cute, and round, and probably in love with me, so... it's hard to be cruel.
3. "Biology Class"
This subtle piece places in opposition two characters with opposing needs, who both need to be seen by larger society, but don't have the resources to see each other. Wonderful tension in this piece.
4. "How to Wrestle a Girl"
I love the list form of this story, full of unexpected observations about gender in sports and the male gaze.
5. "Easter Egg Surprise"
An eerie story about trying to ptovide the best for our next generation.
6. "Inappropriate Gifts"
A beautiful examination of the definition of manhood and how it changes over the course of one man's life.
7. "Lisa Bonet"
An emotional piece about the shortcomings of empathy and faith in victims of violence.
8. "Still Birth"
A strange flash piece about birth: Nell told her, when a fruit falls from a tree, it falls down, not sideways. Which is easier, dropping a sack of flour, or throwing it across the room?
9. "Thirteen Porcelain Schnauzers"
An interesting little piece about having a healthy skepticism for "experts."
10. "Not for Resale" This piece uses a clever form in which the author describes girl and womanhood as a series of Barbie dolls.
11. "Smoothies" This briliant piece opens, "You look like a man." And the story progression unpacks what the speaker might mean, and what the words do and could mean to the narrator, from a gendered place and not.
12. "Blood, Guts, and Bile" This long short story is about Queer women of color, trans and cis, about the patriarchy they navigate together, and the power and strength the all posess, or don't, and use against each other, and how. It's a beweildering at times, and always beautiful piece. Top Three!
13. "Young Woman Laughing into Her Salad"
A brief, intense piece about human trafficking. Sounds of an amusement park echo sround them as the pillow transforms into a blue sky. They are on a rollercoaster. They are on a bed. They are on a rollercoaster. They are on a bed.
14. "Side-Effects Include Dizziness, Ringing in the Ears, and Memory Loss" A list prose poem describing dementia.
15. "Difficult Subjects" A poignant story about education of youth.
16. "Trial of Ghosts" This is a piece built on gorgeous internal monologue and dialogue between two old friends, recently reconnected. It explores the power of childhood friendship and the flowerings of queer love.
17. "Part II: Grief Log"
A list prose poem in which each section sets with a set of numnbers like a workout -- weight, exercise, sets, goals.
18. "Fat" The story of a female athlete who suffers a terrible athletic injury and becomes obssessed with her weight gain after comments from her doctors.
19. "Lizarrd Sex" lizard sex is a lot like wrestling. This is a very clever piece about how children and adults (not just parents) relate to each other. It was a feeling older and bigger than anything we could hold onto, something inhereted in the way the adults talked about their children....T would just do laps, ans return to grab us by the ankles, and drag us under, everybody laughing and drowning. Top Three!
20. "Dick Pic"
A difficult to read piece about a trusted figure violating a young parishioner's trust by sexually harrassing her.
21. "Black Communion" A continuation of the previous story, exploring how this figure impacts other members of the women of color community. My mother figured out, that at any moment, we women could remove our hands from the air, take back our obedience, our bodies, swallow our devotion, and the whole establishement would cave in like hollow bread.
22. "In the Counselor's Waiting Room With No WiFi" This story takes the clever form of a list prose poem, in which each item is a clue for a crossword puzzle.
23. "Halloween" A short, intense piece about the dangers lurking in the dark that little girls accidentally find.
24. "Quiz" Another experiment in form, not great on audio.
25. "Menstruation" A brilliant flash pieceabout the price of not giving our children sexual education.
26. "Ambien and Brown Liquor" A poignant piece about how suicide attempt affect the society around the pateint, at varying depth, from daughters to doctors to societry in general.
27. "Parthenogenesis" An interesting take on 'family vaction'
28. "Tis the Season" A short piece about the power of holidays to connect powerful formative moments in our lives.
29. "Answer Sheet" Another clever form experiment in which the meat of the story is delivered as the answers to a crossword puzzle's clues.
30. "Ground Fighting" Another story staring Ezparanza, whom the narrator has observed through several stories as a representation of early objects of queer feelings. I wonder if love begins that way-- hoping to erase other people's bodies.
Rating: 👩❤️💋👩👩❤️💋👩👩❤️💋👩👩❤️💋👩 / 5 first queer loves
Recommend? Yes!
Finished: June 28 2023, July 6 2023
Format: Audiobook, Libby
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