The stories in this collection plumb the performance of womanhood. Daughters, wives, girlfriends, and caretakers writ large reflect on their prescribed familial roles, their bodies, their professions, or their solitude with dry wit. Broken into three sections\u2014\u201cExternal Riots: Threats and Violence,\u201d \u201cInternal Riots: Secrets and Lies,\u201d and \u201cLaugh Riots: Growing and Trying\u201d\u2014the book grapples with what it means to come of age, as well as understand oneself, within a still very gendered world. In the opening short story, \u201cMore Restrictive Than Supportive,\u201d the narrator\u2019s controlling mother warns her at every opportunity that she may be kidnapped. As a result, \u201cmy wildest private daydream was to walk down the aisle of fake flowers at Joann Fabrics, alone, imagining that the plastic flowers were catcalling me while demeaning me passive-aggressively, like those golden afternoon blooms from Alice in Wonderland.\u201d In \u201cFull Stop,\u201d a housewife joins a voice actor to drive to Jefferson City to protest the most recent abortion ban. Rather than enraged or emboldened by the political mission, the jaded narrator palpably feels the futility of their efforts. \u201c[My sign] was surrounded by signs that said \u2018TRUST WOMEN,\u2019 which in our present circumstances seemed like an advanced directive. Perhaps we should have started with \u2018SEE WOMEN\u2019 and worked upward from there.\u201d In \u201cSafe Distances,\u201d a mother goes through her closet with her daughter though she\u2019d \u201crather not admit to my child that, for me, distance is the key to closeness.\u201d In all of Bassett\u2019s narratives, there is a tension between knowing someone versus being known, seeing versus understanding. Though characters may make attempts at community building or closeness, there remain the persistent, prevalent internal riots that make people strangers to others\u2014and to themselves. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The stories in this collection plumb the performance of womanhood. Daughters, wives, girlfriends, and caretakers writ large reflect on their prescribed familial roles, their bodies, their professions, or their solitude with dry wit. Broken into three sections\u2014\u201cExternal Riots: Threats and Violence,\u201d \u201cInternal Riots: Secrets and Lies,\u201d and \u201cLaugh Riots: Growing and Trying\u201d\u2014the book grapples with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}