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Book Review: Herculine by Grace Byron
Summary:
Herculine’s narrator has demons. Sure, her life includes several hallmarks of the typical trans girl sob story—conversion therapy, a string of shitty low-paying jobs, and even shittier exes—but she also regularly debates sleep paralysis demons that turn to mist soon after she wakes and carries vials of holy oil in her purse. Nothing, though, prepares her for the new malevolent force stalking her through the streets of New York City, more powerful than any she’s ever encountered. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to rural Indiana, where her ex-girlfriend started an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods.
The secluded camp, named after 19th-century intersex memoirist Herculine Barbin, is a scrappy operation, but the shared sense of community among the girls is a welcome balm to the narrator’s growing isolation and paranoia. Still, something isn’t quite right at Herculine. Girls stop talking as soon as she enters the room, everyone seems to share a common secret, and the books lining the walls of the library harbor strange cryptograms. Soon what once looked like an escape becomes a trap all its own.
While trying to untangle the commune’s many mysteries, the narrator contends with disemboweled pigs, cultlike psychosexual rituals, and the horrors of communal breakfast. And before long, she discovers that her demons have followed her. And this time, they won’t be letting her go.
Review:
Just like any horror reader, I have my favorite settings, and a commune gone wrong is one of them. (Do communes ever go right? Certainly not in horror). But I also like unique takes and twists in my horror, so when I saw this was an own voices trans woman horror (or trans girl, as the characters say), I smashed the request button on NetGalley. I was preemptively thrilled when I received the download, but that just increased as I read the book.
A note on my perspective:
For new blog readers, hi, I’m a queer, progressive Christian who was raised fundamentalist evangelical in the rural US.
Demons in the book:
What immediately struck me about this book is that the narrator literally was put through conversion therapy as a teen and yet still has a functioning relationship with God. Unlike a lot of representation we see in literature, there isn’t this binary thinking that you must either be straight and Christian or a wounded queer kid who grew up to be an atheist scientist. The narrator is wounded (and nameless), yes, but she still finds comfort in her faith. And the demons are not good guys here to help her. Absolutely not! In fact, one aspect that I particularly enjoyed is that the demons latch on to both straight religious folks (her conversion therapist) and other trans folks (people at the commune). The demonic influence has nothing to do with gender identity or sexual orientation. That was absolutely delicious to me.
A wounded yet powerful character:
Our narrator is wounded by life and allowed to be. She struggles with dating and exes and her own history of conversion therapy and yet she is able to articulate just how human her experience really is.
I was not special in my grief. And strangely, I was not alone.
And yet. She makes so many powerful choices. Precisely because she holds onto that humanity. Because she knows she just is who she is. She’s a trans girl, as she would say. She’s from rural middle of the country. She’s having a really hard time making it in NYC.
Own voices trans representation
It’s impossible to read the narrator without seeing her as a full and complete character. Unlike other trans characters I’ve read, her being trans wasn’t something that was the constant center of attention, even with the trauma from conversion therapy. Her being herself was. And yet of course she also reflected on being trans, not just herself but being a part of the trans community.
Loving trans girls is hard, even when you are one. Loving us is like reaching into a waterfall and trying to pull.
My only complaint:
Like a lot of good rock songs that start of strong but don’t know how to end, Herculine doesn’t seem quite sure how to end. The ending fizzled for me compared to the rest of the book. But the progressive Christian in me loved the last word. Selah. It is a word that appears in the Psalms and Habakkuk. We aren’t quite sure what it means. That, in and of itself, is a beautiful way to end a book about the trans experience, I think. But also it’s often interpreted as a liturgical pause or a call to reflect. In the church I grew up in, I was taught to treat it like an exclamation akin to the “So say we all” in Battlestar Galactica. Like a “hear hear.” Any of these meanings make it a cool way to end. I just personally think the rest of the final chapters weren’t quite there compared to that.
Overall:
This is a unique read in both horror and trans main character books. For horror, everything about the characters make the commune gone wrong plot unique. For trans main characters, a main character who went through conversion therapy, remained living her trans identity, and has sorted out faith for herself in her own way is something that isn’t seen so often. (See my reviews of other books with trans characters). This book is worth picking up.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 272 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: NetGalley
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
Women and the Vietnam War – 5 Nonfiction Reads
To celebrate Women’s History Month, I thought it’d be fun to assemble a reading list looking specifically at the women’s history aspect of a particular historical event. When I thought about it, I couldn’t easily think off the top of my head of any books about women and the Vietnam War, so I decided to build my list on that. It taught me something while I was assembling the list for you.
I tried to cover both women part of the War, as well as women protesting the War or part of the counterculture. All book blurbs come from either GoodReads or Amazon.
Daughters of Aquarius: Women of the Sixties Counterculture
by: Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo
Publication Date: 1997
Blurb:
“Hippie women” have alternately been seen as earth mothers or love goddesses, virgins or vamps-images that have obscured the real complexity of their lives. Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo now takes readers back to Haight Ashbury and country communes to reveal how they experienced and shaped the counterculture. She draws on the personal recollections of women who were there–including such pivotal figures as Lenore Kendall, Diane DiPrima, and Carolyn Adams–to gain insight into what made counterculture women tick, how they lived their days, and how they envisioned their lives.
This is the first book to focus specifically on women of the counterculture. It describes how gender was perceived within the movement, with women taking on much of the responsibility for sustaining communes. It also examines the lives of younger runaways and daughters who shared the lifestyle. And while it explores the search for self enlightenment at the core of the counterculture experience, it also recounts the problems faced by those who resisted the expectations of “free love” and discusses the sexism experienced by women in the arts.
Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC
by: Faith S. Holsaert, et al
Publication Date: 2010
Blurb:
Fifty-two women–northern and southern, young and old, urban and rural, black, white, and Latina–share their courageous personal stories of working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement.
The testimonies gathered here present a sweeping personal history of SNCC: early sit-ins, voter registration campaigns, and freedom rides; the 1963 March on Washington, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the movements in Alabama and Maryland; and Black Power and antiwar activism.
Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam
By: Lynda Van Devanter
Publication Date: 1983
Blurb:
On June 8, 1969, a patriotic, happy-go-lucky young nurse fresh out of basic training arrived in Vietnam to serve a year’s tour of duty as a second lieutenant in the Army. It was a year that was to rob Lynda Van Devanter of her youth, her patriotism, her innocence – and her future.
Unfriendly Fire: A Mother’s Memoir
By: Peg Mullen
Publication Date: 1995
Blurb:
Outspoken, fearless, and wickedly humorous, Peg Mullen tells the story of her transformation from an ordinary farm woman into a nationally recognized peace activist following the death of her oldest son, who was killed by artillery misfire in the Vietnam War.
The Valiant Women of the Vietnam War
By: Karen Zeinert
Publication Date: 2000
Blurb:
From journalists and nurses to those who mobilized to protest or support the war effort on the home front, women of all ages took advantage of the changing social climate of the 1960s to break free of their traditional roles. A discussion of Vietnamese women’s roles in the conflict is included.
Book Review: I Am Hutterite by Mary Ann Kirkby
Summary:
Mary Ann Kirkby recounts her unique childhood in her memoir. She was born into a Hutterite family. The Hutterites are a religious sect similar to the Amish only they believe that living communally is a mandate for Christians. Mary Ann recounts her childhood both in the religious sect (her particular group was located in western Canada), as well as the journey and culture shock she went through when her parents left the Hutterites when she was nine years old.
Review:
I actually read this memoir because of the situation in which I first ran into Hutterites and have been fascinated with them ever since. For a couple of years, my father and brother lived in Montana. I went to visit them and was shopping in Victoria’s Secret at the mall and rounded the corner to discover traditionally-garbed Hutterite women buying thongs. I had no idea what a Hutterite was, but instantly hunted down my brother elsewhere in the mall to find out who these people were. All that the “English” seemed to know about them was that they lived in a commune, dressed kind of like the Amish but different, traveled all together to town in a few big vans, and the Hutterite women were always buying thongs at Victoria’s Secret. Hutterites are rather quiet about their lifestyle though, so when I stumbled across this on a new releases list, I knew I needed to read it to find out more about the community.
This is a completely fascinating memoir that I devoured in one day. Mary Ann is able to see both the faults and the beauty of various experiences in her childhood with the clear eye of an adult. Yet simultaneously she harbors no ill-well toward either the Hutterites or her parents or any of those who made her transition from a Hutterite girl to an “English” woman more difficult. Kirkby writes with a sympathetic ear to all those she encountered in her life, which is a refreshing change in the memoir genre.
Additionally Kirkby’s writing offers an immersion into the fascinating world of communal living with a religious belief system to hold it all in place. Kirkby recounts a childhood where no homes were kept locked, everyone was always welcome in everyone else’s home, and most meals of the day were eaten communally with your age-mates. In fact, one of the biggest changes for Kirkby when her family left the Hutterites was suddenly needing to interact with her siblings on a regular basis instead of her same-age female friends. She also had trouble understanding the English need for privacy in the home or the relative silence with which meals were eaten.
Another point of interest is that Kirkby’s father was from a Russian family that was persecuted in Europe and had to run to Canada to escape the Nazis. His father sought refuge and a sense of safety in the community of the Hutterites. Conversely, her father who grew up in this safety found himself craving more freedom than the strict rules and constructs of the commune would allow for. The book thus not only recounts a unique girlhood and insight into the Hutterite way of life, but also addresses the age-old question of freedom versus security.
Anyone interested in the Hutterite communities or unique childhoods will absolutely enjoy this memoir. It is well-written, intriguing, and contains not a trace of bitterness. I highly recommend it.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
Book Review: S by John Updike
Summary:
Letters, both hand-written and recorded onto tapes, tell the story of Sarah, a North Shore housewife of a wealthy Massachusetts General Hospital doctor who one day in 1986 decides to go and join a commune in the Arizona desert. Gradually through the letters both her past and her experiences in the commune are revealed.
Review:
I was intrigued by this book for multiple reasons. I’ve always enjoyed epistolary novels. I found Updike’s more famous novel, The Three Witches of Eastwick, endlessly entertaining. Also, I’ve always been fascinated by communes and cults. This book certainly contains all three elements. Sarah’s letters compel the reader to get through them as quickly as possible. Whether she’s discussing the commune or her past life on the North Shore, the letters are truly fascinating. Perhaps this is partly because there’s a Stepford-wife like quality to Sarah’s past life, and her current life is so over the top from anything most modern Americans experience. It provides a fascinating contrast.
The book therefore starts out strong, but falters more and more the further toward the end it gets. The more about Sarah is revealed, the less sympathetic she becomes. Additionally, due to the nature of the epistolary novel, some of her actions are not entirely revealed, thus leaving the ending a bit confusing. Frankly, the ending simultaneously surprised and disappointed me. I was left wondering what on earth Updike’s point had been. Was it a feminist stance? Was it misogynistic? Was it just a portrait of a person? The great variety between all these possibilities should demonstrate how confusing the ending is.
It’s interesting to note that Sarah is depicted as a descendant of Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter. I’m sure this plays into the interpretation of the book a great deal, although personally, I am not sure how.
Overall, this epistolary novel starts out strong and engaging, but the ending leaves the reader a bit confused and let down. If you’re a big Updike or epistolary novel fan, you will still enjoy the book enough to make it worth your while to read, but all others should probably give it a pass.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Swap.com
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This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
