Over a decade has passed since I traded the sunny, desert landscape of El Paso, Texas, for the vibrant chaos of East Coast city life. And no matter the distance, all roads lead back to Texas, my compass, guiding me home.
Although much has been said about The Texas-Mexico border, for me, it contains multitudes: it is home, my community, my comfort, and my voice—a voice resonating alongside diverse storytellers who have deeply shaped and inspired me.
This connection was especially profound when I wrote my debut poetry collection, Cowboy Park, which reflects on my upbringing in a place often misrepresented. The collection honors those who influenced me and the writers who came before me. In moments of doubt or homesickness, I turn to these poets to anchor my identity as a Tejano, a Mexican-American from the Lone Star State. In one way or another, each collection is committed to revealing painful truths and uncovering beauty within them. Their work has ignited my passion to write my truths—a calling that feels more urgent now than ever. Our stories as writers of color enrich the literary world, and these poets have paved the way for me to share my own.
In the pantheon of Texas writers, the goddess watching over us all is the incomparable Gloria Anzaldúa. Her magnum opus, Borderlands: La Frontera, is a sacred text for any writer, especially those of us who identify as queer. Born in the Rio Grande Valley, this Chicana feminist weaves her lived experiences into both prose and poetry. Anzaldua’s forward-thinking work remains timeless, challenging concepts of binaries, physical and mental borders, and gender roles. Anzaldua was one of the first writers where I truly saw myself reflected in her words, hearing an amalgamation of English, Spanish, and Spanglish. Her unapologetic code-switching defies labels like “pocha” Instead, she embraces these polarities, this split self, subverting expectations of what it means to be wholly Mexican or American. Reading her work empowers me, reminding me that dual and hybrid language are integral to who I am and the culture that raised me, as vital as any academic diction. Her work offers solace and understanding of existing as a hybrid individual. As she puts it: “To survive the Borderlands/you must live sin fronteras/be a crossroads.” Discovering her work was like unearthing a family heirloom. I am lucky to feel part of her kin, and I hope to make her proud. She is truly a treasure, the mother to us all, our glory, our Gloria, nuestra Gloria.
In this collection, Francis captures the essence of the Texas landscape with raw and radiant elements. Her descriptive lines, vernacular, and imagery create a tangible mythology, blending grit with whimsy. I appreciate her use of several Texas symbols—pepper sauce, horses, or even a Conoco station—because she elevates the ordinary, making it significant and beautiful. Francis’ keen attention to detail enlivens each poem. Through unexpected pairings and rhythmic repetition, she transports readers into a world where transformation is possible. In one poem, a speaker becomes a horse, while another explores the haunting echoes of gun violence with lyrical incantation. “What you can’t forget—you tell—or die in it.” I couldn’t agree more with this line. This unforgettable truth underscores her powerful voice of witness, ritual, and confession. Rather than merely telling stories, Francis conjures them, inviting us to explore the magical alongside the familiar, encouraging us to believe in the impossible. Her work showcases poetry’s ability to reshape perceptions and highlight the extraordinary in everyday life.
Vanessa Angélica Villareal’s Beast Meridian is a shape-shifting force of nature. This hybrid collection merges confessional poetry, experimental line structure, lyricism, photography, and portraits, making it a visually striking and collage-like book. Villareal’s work was unlike anything I had seen before, capturing the reader’s attention and never letting go. She reveals her most intimate moments with unflinching honesty. Take, for instance, the poem “Escape, a Waxwing Migration,” where she writes, “The men who love you have a backhand for every desire,” or the vivid enumerations in “A Field of Onions: Brown Study,” where she states, “To panic is to feel all your wildness at once.” Each poem is its own entity, a universe or constellation of powerful hurt, creating a world I slip into, empathize, and dwell in. What I admire most is the pure candor and vulnerability in this book. Villareal lays bare her life and heart, inviting us to see and experience it. The emotion she creates is striking and timeless, precisely because of her openness. Her work inspires me to take risks, to keep questioning, to be bold–gutsy.
There is nothing coy about this collection. Winner of the National Book Poetry Prize, Ben’s bold, in-your-face, poetry throws caution to the wind by defying conventions. His playful diction captures a voice that is passionate, confident, sexy, and a little dangerous. Garcia’s flexibility with language and grammar feels like an act of defiance, experimenting with form, language, and punctuation shows his daring move not to follow any traditions or conventions and instead reshaping them. The sonics throughout the collection calls out like a siren, seducing us into a realm of queer excellence, fierceness, and some trepidations. “this Mary is her own // talking bouquet//never let a man speak for you or call you // what he wants // I learned that the hard way // amorphophallus titanum // it sure sounds pretty in a dead tongue.” Garcia’s lush language is packed with several twists of the tongue and whips of the wrist. It is an inspiration because of its daring movements and refusal to kneel to the norm, carving a new path for others to follow. I must confess, I am a little jealous of his work because it challenges societal norms by exalting the voices of BIPOC queer folks. Garcia reshapes our understanding of queer identity. The true definition of a chingón. He raises the bar with this book.
Every story has two sides, including those less often spoken about in writing. Natalie Scenters-Zapico defies this notion in her riveting second collection, Lima: Limon. It’s a book about doubling—the domestic versus the public, and how beauty can’t exist without its counterpart. Lima: Limon explores themes of marianismo and machismo, highlighting the grip these flawed societal concepts have on the Latinx community: “Each husband takes a piece of my body home with them in every limón. A piece of my body they can slice into quarters & squeeze into their beer.” As a fellow “paisana” from El Paso, Natalie invites us to look deeper, to see the shadows and lights, the violence imposed on those living on the border. Candid and fearless, this collection is indelible; her poems leave a mark—a faded scar I occasionally outline around my body. It’s a reminder of the world I lived in, often ignored or misconstrued by the media. Reading Natalie’s books teaches me the importance of being vulnerable and unapologetic. Her work continually inspires me to push boundaries without guilt. It documents life and death. Without her voice, I wouldn’t be as courageous, both on and off the page.
Saúl Hernández’s How to Kill a Goat and Other Monsters captivates through its use of storytelling and compelling lines full of gorgeous texture. The book is a tapestry of complexity and richness, deeply personal and heartfelt. Set against the backdrop of the Rio Grande region and El Paso, the collection delves into themes of queerness, familial ties, and the impact of living in a highly militarized environment. The speaker’s journey of self-discovery is poignant, as he grapples with identity and learns self-kindness amidst adversity. His words echo with tenderness, familial bonds, and tragedy: “I unravel petals all day with my tongue, I tease a boy telling him I don’t like anything in me unless it’s love.” The poems explore the physical and emotional toll of violence, with the haunting loss of an uncle weaving through the narrative. Hernández’s lines are exquisite, full of mystery and heartache, drawing readers into a hypnotic dance before delivering their delicate but powerful impact. Hernández’s work transforms personal pain into a narrative of empowerment.
This list wouldn’t be complete without “el maestro” himself, Benjamin Alire Sáenz. A New Mexico native who has made El Paso his home for years. Dreaming of the End of War continues to resonate, given our current political climate, with its riveting storytelling and painful honesty. It’s a book about displacement in every sense, urging us to interrogate our society by first examining our own personal battles. It reflects on and exercises how to be empathetic. There is something Whitmanesque about these poems: “I am the man… I am the busboy… I am a boy… I am walking in the desert. I see that I am reaching a border. A bullet is piercing my heart.” Dreaming the End of the War challenges us to confront our difficult truths.
In Brynja Hjálmsdóttir’s first poetry book to be translated into English, women swim in radioactive pools, twist their hair into earthworms, and live in glass balls that are constantly being shaken by someone else. Invoking Old Norse mythology and Icelandic folklore, the poems in A Woman Looks Over Her Shouldersatirize our modern society and its gendered expectations.
We follow the protagonistic creature through the book’s three sections—The Fantasist, A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder, and The Whore’s City. Trapped in an oppressive patriarchal society, she longs for more and peers through the keyhole of the door that is locked, barring her entry to the kind of utopia that’s found in The Whore’s City. Eventually, she opens it. The Whore’s City, a reimagining of the world under the reign of the biblical Whore of Babylon, is a gender-equal society, quite unlike the one she has been subject to, where women are independent, self-sufficient, and free. Where “the coffee is always hot / and the doors always open”.
A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulderis a surreal, funny, and visceral exploration of what it’s like to be a woman: the desires, the fears, sufferings, and the pleasures. To be looking over your shoulder as you escape the hands shaking that glass ball to find your voice, claim it, and wield its power. While distinctly Icelandic—immersed in images of turf houses, whale fat, Ragnarök, and black sand beaches—the voices in these poems tell of familiar experiences. Of our strange and beautiful world and what it could look like.
Brynja splashed onto the literary scene in Iceland with her first poetry book, Okfruman (e. Zygote), which was awarded the Poetry Book of the Year by the Icelandic Booksellers’ Choice Awards and was nominated for the Icelandic Women’s Literary Award. Since discovering this book in the beloved Mál og menning bookstore in Reykjavík, I’ve picked up each of her books with excitement and awe at the way she uses language to craft striking, corporeal images that reflect our reality in all its surreality. After translating A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder, I had the pleasure of speaking with the poet about the process of writing it, about its unique Icelandic inheritances and context, and the promise of a utopia based on equality and hope.
Rachel Britton: A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder is quite different from your first book, Okfruman (e. Zygote), in terms of both content and form. Could you describe how you came to this project? What inspired you to write this book?
Brynja Hjálmsdóttir: I was not going to write this book at all. After my first book of poetry, I was determined to write prose, essays, or fiction. The debut was a success, as far as poetry goes, and this confused me, made me slightly paranoid. I didn’t do any writing for a few months after finishing my debut, being a bit lost. I was reading though, a lot of very different things, looking for inspiration. The book came to me eventually, I tried to stop it, but it could not be stopped.
RB: The book is vitally intertextual. Poems reference the Bible, the Poetic Edda, Under the Glacier by Halldór Laxness, and Icelandic folktales like “The Sealskin”. Invoking all of these texts in one space brings up several ponderings for me: the differences in portrayals and attitudes towards women in the Bible and Old Norse texts; how the introduction of Christianity in Iceland affected the lives of women in the country; and the dynamic between Old Icelandic folktales, myths, and beliefs with Christianity. I’m curious to know how these texts influenced the writing of this work. And how?
In [The Bible], I found this wonderful metaphor of the great Whore of Babylon as a city and I thought: Wow, that must be one great city.
BH: At the dawn of writing this, I was immersed in all sorts of texts. Poetry from all over the world, essays, and folklore. Something started to brew from this. The middle section of the book was the first to be written. It came very naturally. It is a group of poems, or a group of siblings, that all start with the same phrase “A woman …”. Once that part was finished, I felt a need to have a classic three-arc structure: an opening chapter, a middle, and an end. My first book of poems is a sort of coming-of-age story that starts with innocence and then things get darker as the “story” progresses. I wanted it to be completely reversed in this one. It starts in darkness and then gradually moves towards the light. It ends in a Utopia.
The book is very referential, but it is not necessarily very intellectual. It is not a “learned” book, and I think it can be read without knowing all the references—but they are fun to spot for readers who are into that. Poetry is about the economy of words, and through references you can say many things without saying them directly. It’s free material.
Before writing, I was reading a lot, folklore especially, and started to notice these very exciting phrases, themes, wordplay, and repetitions in older texts. I saw how poetic it all was. From this, I returned to my favorite book of the Bible: Revelation. I should probably mention that I am not a Christian, and I navigate the Bible exactly like I do folklore: as text, myth, a literary form, a rhythm, or poetry, rather than a religious document. But in Revelation I found this wonderful metaphor of the great Whore of Babylon as a city and I thought to myself: Wow, that must be one great city. This became a core concept.
RB: You have a background in film studies, as well as writing, and I’ve always found that your poems have a sort of cinematic quality to them in the sense that the images are so striking and clear. It’s like a camera zooms in on the women in these poems as they dive into radioactive pools as their skin turns purpura and scarlet. Did film, or other media—such as books, music, and visual art—impact your writing of these poems? If so, how?
BH: Yes, yes, yes. All my work is deeply influenced by film. Central, always, is my favorite genre, the horror film. At a very early age I became fascinated by horror films and B-movies in general. For a period of time, it became almost an obsession. I had to get my hands on every bad movie I could see. Horror, sexploitation, martial arts, etc. The worse the quality, the better. I do love quality cinema, as well, everything from classic Hollywood to contemporary art films, but exploitation really is what gets me going. So this cinematic, often grotesque imagery, stems from this twisted fascination, I guess.
RB: Are there any books by Icelandic authors you would recommend to readers who enjoy A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder?
BH: I highly recommend reading Kristín Ómarsdóttir’s poetry. She is a rare, exceptional voice. Her poetry is available in English, translated by Vala Þóroddsdóttir. Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir is great and has also been translated by Vala. Those two are definite VIPs (Very Important Poets). I will also recommend two novels: A Fist or a Heart by Kristín Eiríksdóttir and The Mark by Fríða Ísberg.
RB: Women’s history in Iceland exhibits an independence, strength, and determination to achieve equality. Recently, the 2023 Women’s Strike brought tens of thousands of people together in the Reykjavík city center to protest gender-based wage inequality and violence in a continued effort to achieve equality. What role do you see literature and its crucial place in Icelandic culture playing in this fight for a society that is equal, where “all are welcome”?
We live in a world full of butterflies, a world where innocent children are crushed beneath buildings… All this is normal in our strange world.
BH: When I wrote this book, I didn’t really have the intention of writing something political, or specifically feminist. I just wanted to write about strange feminine stories and spaces. But it turns out, writing about that is political. Some reviewers said my book was very angry and bitter, which was surprising to me, as I feel it’s quite playful. Others thought the choice of material was old-fashioned, that I was doing what Svava Jakobsdóttir and Ásta Sigurðardóttir did sixty years ago. And it’s not wrong. I am indeed working within this framework, bringing a classic surreal-feminist vision into a contemporary setting.
Gender equality in Iceland is decent, women’s voices are heard, our bodies are not absurdly regulated. But there is still work to be done. Gender-based violence continues to exist, and then there is the economic injustice. Many people work many hours to keep cash out of our pockets and keep us too busy to do anything about it. Women’s work is hard work that is not fully compensated. Literature is as much a part of shining a light on that as anything. To be honest, though, political jargon and user-friendly slogans are not literature to me, not poetry. I believe the subject can be (and must be) approached in a nuanced and interesting way, in a fun way. And that is being done. Regardless of subject matter, I think women and queer writers are turning out the most interesting stuff in modern Icelandic literature.
RB: It’s funny that you mention Svava Jakobsdóttir and Ásta Sigurðardóttir, that some critics thought you were doing the same thing that these writers were doing back in the 1950s and 1960s, because I drew similar connections, like the illustrations throughout the book, which remind me of Ásta’s linocuts that accompanied her short stories. However, I read these poems as an evolution of what these early modernist female writers were doing in Iceland, as you say, bringing them “into a contemporary setting” and conversation. Could you elaborate, perhaps, on how (and whether) you see the poems in this book as part of a lineage of female Icelandic writers?
BH: I hope there is some evolution going on! When I’m writing something I’m not really thinking about whether it’s a part of a lineage. But this need (or urge, or addiction) to write and publish that writing, is driven by a wish to take part in some conversation—with what came before and what is happening at the moment. Once a piece of writing is finished, you may start seeing it as part of something bigger, a lineage as you say.
As I said earlier, I wrote this book when I wanted to write something completely different. When it was finished, and I knew what it was, I wanted to connect it aesthetically to this particular period in Icelandic literary history, the ’60s and ’70s, the heyday of some of my idols. I did drawings in black ink and cut out collages in black and white, that illustrate the second act of the book. The original Icelandic book cover is in red and white, very much a nod to covers of books by writers like Ásta and Svava, as well as Jakobína Sigurðardóttir and Vilborg Dagbjartsdóttir. My designer, Kjartan Hreinsson, made the cover very sexy and modern, while staying true to the aesthetic.
So, yes, this conversation is indeed happening. Inside the book and outside.
RB: Lastly, in the third section of the book, you imagine a kind of apocalyptic utopia, The Whore’s City, which is feminist, a little strange, beautiful, and, most importantly, accepting. What does your personal utopia look like?
BH: This book is about doors, about open doors and closed doors. I see the first part of the book as the closed door, the final part is the open door, and the middle is a sort of a limbo in between. The final chapter is definitely a Utopia, not necessarily apocalyptic, but certainly strange. In this part, I really allow myself to let loose my inner surrealist. I do view myself as a proper surrealist, in the way that I believe that a surreal depiction of our world can be a more honest way of portraying it than through realism. We live in a world full of butterflies, a world where innocent children are crushed beneath buildings, a world where some people eat poisonous fish and others eat bread leavened with fungus and bacteria. All this is normal in our strange world.
I don’t know what my Utopia looks like, but I know I must believe in it. We have been made to believe that Utopia is unreachable. This is the cruel, political mission of the powers-that-be. But we have to believe. We cannot succumb to total cynicism. That is why I chose to end my book like this, like an old school modernist. The Utopia, The Whore’s City in the end of the book, is as plausible a world as any. It might seem scary, but it is mostly beautiful, truly, truly beautiful.
For the 15,000 people who visit our site every day (3.5 million per year), reading Electric Lit costs nothing. For the 1,500 writers who submitted their work to us this year, submission also costs nothing.
And yet Electric Lit is not free.
If you read Electric Literature, you already know what we are about: supporting writers and making their work as accessible as possible. Our recent awards, success stories, and many accomplishments in this effort are detailed below. We’re driven by the unshakeable belief that stories matter and literature has the power to change the world.
Electric Literature is a nonprofit organization with 8 staff members and 3 paid interns. We publish 15 articles per week—essays, reading lists, short stories, flash fiction, poetry, graphic narratives, interviews, and criticism—by over 500 writers per year.
Our work costs $500,000 annually, and last year, 33% of that was donated by 2,000 of our readers—people like you! The average donation of $65 made a difference. We depend on you to keep the lights on.
Electric Literature may be free to read, but the costs are real and going up. We need to raise $25,000 by December 31, 2024 to keep Electric Literature going into next year. In these uncertain times, the only thing I know for sure is that we cannot afford to take the organizations and institutions we care about for granted. If the continued existence of Electric Literature means something to you, please make a contribution today.
Electric Literature’s Accomplishments in 2024
Both/And, EL’s groundbreaking essay series by trans writers of color, is going to be a book! Edited by Denne Michele Norris and featuring new essays by Raquel Willis, J Wortham, Akwaeke Emezi, and more, Both/And is forthcoming from HarperOne in August 2025.
Through our Banned Books USA initiative, Electric Literature gave away 2,362 banned books to readers in Florida, and partnered with 16 local organizations to distribute them to vulnerable populations, including LGBTQ youth.
We increased the number of articles we publish by 50%, from 10 to 15 posts per week. We published 462 writers and counting, leading to other significant career opportunities. For example, Taisya Kogan told us that after her very first publication, “Mrs. Morrison Corrects Her Obituary,” went up on Electric Literature, she received emails from not one, not two, but three agents.
Last year, Electric Literature made its debut inBest American Short Stories with three stories, a historic first for any online magazine. This year we have two, “Phenotype” by Alexandra Chang and “Extinction” by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi. Lauren Groff also selected “Quantum Voicemail” by Kristen Iskandrian and “Chicken-Flavored and Lemon-Scented” by Katherine Heiny (now in production to become a TV show) as distinguished stories. “Didi” by Amber Caron was selected by Amor Towles as an O’Henry Prize-winning story. Wesley Morris selected Autumn Fourkiller’s Both/And essay “I Am Three Things a Woman Should Never Be” as a distinguished essay in Best American Essays 2024.
We celebrated EL’s 15th anniversary at the Masquerade of the NEON Death, with hosts Emma Copley Eisenberg, Vanessa Chan, Deesha Philyaw, Clare Sestanovich, and Mateo Askaripour, all of whom are Electric Literature contributors.
At the Hudson Valley Craft Camp, our first writing bootcamp, 34 writers learned about revision and close reading from accomplished novelists Marie-Helene Bertino and Francine Prose.
In response to the lack of publication opportunities for nonfiction writers, we launched the new Personal Narrative series, which publishes a new essay every Thursday.
Continuing Manuscript Consultationslaunched in 2023, Electric Literature editors worked closely with 55 writers on their manuscripts. EL is also now offering revisions consultation to returning writers.
Bodies, Lakes, and Other Uninhabitable Places by AJ Romriell
Teetering on the edge, I slip from my shoes and take a seat on the sand, surprised at how comfortable it feels. The Great Salt Lake shoreline is behind me, rocky and jagged. This sand is soft, a startling contrast as I wiggle my feet and bury them deep. I lift a handful of specks to my eyes. I know about this lake, though this is the closest I’ve ever been. I know about oolitic sand: pill-shaped, oblong, and smooth—softness created by pressure and time, made of pressed quartz, carbonate grains, the tiny fecal pellets of brine shrimp. This one handful might easily contain particles up to a thousand years old. A thousand years of compression. I open my fingers and let the fragments drop back to the shore. It’s a marvel to be here.
The Great Salt Lake stretches for nearly 1,700² miles. It’s the largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere, a terminal lake, Utah’s very own Dead Sea. I’m here now because I’ve heard you can’t sink when you float in the water. People say it’s a unique experience, and I’d like to feel it for myself. But I’m hesitating now. I’m afraid to step into the water and disturb it. I’m afraid of what lurks in the depths I cannot see. There are legends of a beast living here—the North Shore Monster, some cousin to Loch Ness—but I’m trying to persuade myself it’s fake. The lake is an inhospitable environment. Nothing but brine shrimp and algae can survive this level of salinity. Only they have learned to live with poison.
The irony of being there after contracting the virus struck like cold iron against my gut.
I heard the University of Utah Hospital’s Infectious Diseases Clinic in Salt Lake City was one of the best, and after my positive HIV diagnosis, I was determined to have a good doctor for my long-term care. The clinic had even been the second in the world to provide free PrEP, a drug that when used by HIV-negative people would almost certainly protect from infection. I’d been meaning to get some for years, but the hour-and-a-half drive always felt so far. I relied on a repeated stasis of I’ll go eventually. The irony of being there after contracting the virus struck like cold iron against my gut.
After checking in, I sat on a soft, floral, purple chair in the waiting room. As a precaution for COVID-19, they taped off two chairs between each open seat. One other person sat in the waiting room—far away on the opposite side because it was 2020 and because it was much safer to move through the world at a distance during a global pandemic. I pulled Mark Doty’s memoir Heaven’s Coast from my bag. I was just over halfway through the story, unsure if I should continue. I knew Doty’s partner died of AIDS in the end, and maybe that’s why my eyes glossed over.
I put the book away and pulled out Tiny Beautiful Thingsinstead, a book full of printed advice columns. After reading through a few pages and realizing I’d retained nothing, I closed it too. I was grateful when the nurse popped open the door and called my name so I could at least get up and move.
Past the doors, I was weighed and measured. The nurse recorded my blood pressure and heart rate and asked questions about my medical history and general lifestyle. “You seem really healthy,” she said with a smile.
“Except for the whole HIV thing,” I said, trying to laugh, but she turned away again. I then told her I had no allergies, no known history of heart disease. I told her about my ADHD and bipolar medications and that in the past I’d taken antidepressants and anti-anxieties. I described my semi-healthy eating habits, my on-and-off relationship with yoga, and how, when I had sex, I let the other guy decide if he wanted to use a condom.
I felt like such a cliché: just another gay guy being dangerous, not using condoms, not asking for names, looking for hookups and one-night stands, and because I was in Utah where Mormons populated over half the state, the cliché ex-Mormon whose life was on the downhill because he left the religion. Still, if she judged me for any of this, she didn’t show it. We moved on to the next question.
In the video game, The Last of Us, gamers play as Joel, a smuggler who’s escorting fourteen-year-old Ellie across a post-apocalyptic landscape. It’s 2033, twenty years after the cordyceps infection caused the collapse of civilization. The infection, passed through bites and spores and blood, comes from a fungus—a living ecosystem that has spread across the world. As you travel across the broken, disparate country, you have to sneak past or fight through the innumerable infected, as well as marauders and cannibals and the army, to stay alive. It’s simply a game of survival.
What makes Ellie so important is that she is infected, but she never turned into a monster. She’s somehow immune. No one knows why, but there’s a group trying to find out: The Fireflies. A collective of the only remaining people hoping for a better future. They have a doctor in Utah who thinks he can reverse engineer a cure. Ellie just has to make it there first.
Joel discovers Ellie’s infection status early in the game. On the night he smuggles her out of Boston, as rain slams against the broken stones of an apocalyptic city, they get caught by the army. The soldiers scan their blood for the virus. And the scan comes back positive for Ellie. After escaping, Joel nearly shoots her, and Ellie only stops him by showing the bite scar on her arm, a scar that wouldn’t have healed had she gotten sick.
And perhaps what’s most interesting about all this is the fact that Ellie is actually infected. It’s not that she couldn’t catch the virus. The disease is alive in her body. Something inside simply stopped the infection from taking over her mind. She’s learning how to survive in a body that was meant to die.
Maybe what lives here now only gets to live by default.
Only four life-forms have found a way to live in the Great Salt Lake. Brine shrimp. Brine flies. Algae. Photosynthetic Bacteria. That’s it. They are the only ones who have found a way to live within the vast salinity of the water. And I wonder if it’s because they’re born strong. Maybe because the life that came before helped them evolve enough to adapt. Maybe what lives here now only gets to live by default.
The famous grave robber, Jean Baptiste, was once exiled to Antelope Island, a little landmass in the middle of the lake. In 1862, he was convicted of robbing three hundred graves in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. In addition to his exile, Baptiste also had his ears cropped and had a tattoo forced onto his forehead that read Robbing the Dead.
He disappeared after six weeks there. Vanished. Many think he floated away on a cow hide boat, or that he ripped apart the boards of his little shack to do it. One man said he saw Baptiste working in a mine in Colorado. Another said he found Baptiste’s skull in the lake. Others said he drowned and now haunts the shores, forever Ghoul of the Great Salt Lake, nothing more than an apparition, stalking the still water each night.
I can’t help but wonder if he might’ve gotten swept into the whirlpool drains rumored to exist beneath the lake’s surface. They would have spit him out into the Pacific Ocean. At least, that’s how the North Shore Monster got here. Swam right through it, up the drain. A snake in a pipe. Searching for a way out.
The nurse left after her questions, and the doctor came in soon after. She walked me through the scientific language of HIV: CD4 counts and viral loads and numbers I didn’t understand. She told me how HIV attacks blood cells that help the body fight infection. It clogs those cells, copies them, multiplies, disperses the disease, poisons the blood, would make me a person more vulnerable to other infections and diseases. She told me if HIV remains untreated, it will lead to AIDS: the moment a body can’t fight off infection well enough to survive. She told me medication could reverse the progression of the virus. She told me I could live with HIV, but that didn’t make sense to me. I thought back to the two-day sex-ed portion of my sophomore year health class, learning the world had progressed far in its understanding of HIV since the first diagnosis in 1981. But I could only really remember two things about HIV from those lessons:
HIV progresses to AIDS, and AIDS leads to death.
HIV & AIDS were associated with gay men.
There was this monster inside me that had always felt inevitable. The diagnosis I always feared would come. But the doctor said I could survive. I just didn’t know if that was true. The only thing I knew was that I would never fully recover from this.
As Ellie and Joel cross the country, they lose people along the way. This is to be expected in a story such as this. And it hurts to see them pass. It hurts because, no matter how hard you try, you cannot save them. Take Joel’s friend Tess for example, who’s bitten while protecting Ellie from the Infected.
The first time I played through this portion, I moved quickly. Joel gets separated from the others and has to pass through his own area of Infected to find them. I sprinted through, found Tess and Ellie as quickly as possible, slammed my body against a blocked door to get to them, smashed the controls so I could break through, as if I could save them if I just pressed that square button hard enough. When I found Tess fighting off one of the Infected, I body slammed it off her. I saved her. Or I thought I did. It’s not too long before she reveals that she had been bitten in that encounter. She goes on to sacrifice herself, holding off the army so Joel and Ellie can escape.
I stand outside that door for as long as I can because I don’t want to fail again.
When I played through the second time, I tried to reach her faster, as if I could change her fate by sheer force of will. But it doesn’t work. You break through that door and she’s there fighting off the Infected, in the same position she’s always in. So, now when I play, I stay outside the door longer. I carefully explore through rooms downstairs so I can find every resource available. I stand outside that door for as long as I can because I don’t want to fail again. But failure is inevitable. You don’t get to choose.
In 2011, Brigham Young University produced a movie about Jean Baptiste and his exile to The Great Salt Lake islands. They called it Redemption, and the questions it raised were divisive ones: did Baptiste’s punishment fit his crimes? And how long does it take to forgive—if we can forgive at all? They’re interesting questions. I also don’t know if they need to be asked because—how could the deceased grant him forgiveness anyway?
Still, David Stevens who played the role of Jean Baptiste wanted to create some form of humanity within the character he was playing. He said, “Someone’s got to forgive him,” but even Stevens had a hard time figuring out how to give someone who had robbed countless graves human qualities. Eventually, he claimed that Baptiste was able to forgive himself in part because Baptiste believed in a life after death. “It’s just bones,” Baptiste says in the movie, concerning the people he graverobbed, as if this can excuse his choices. “They don’t need these things. I do.”
Logically, I understand that he is right. Technically, dead bodies in the ground don’t need rings and necklaces and money. It still feels wrong to me. And yet, I’m not sure whether Baptiste deserved the punishment he got. I don’t know if he deserved worse.
“So when was the last time you got tested?” my doctor asked.
“For HIV?”
“Yes. Or any other STIs.”
I paused, my cheeks burning. The last time I came in, I was told I should get tested at least every six months to be safe. I knew it would be unproductive to lie at this point, but the shame still slammed against my jaw as I tried to wrap my tongue around the words, “Probably about six years.”
“And have you been sexually active that entire time?” she asked, seemingly unphased by my answer.
“Yeah,” I said, choking on my admittance. “So, I guess it could have happened anytime over those six years.”
“It’s likely to be more recent,” she said, voice steady, her words holding the weight of my body, our very own trust fall. “Our bodies tend to know when something is wrong, and they tell it to our brains. We often seek help right in the moments that we need it without knowing why we were seeking at all. It’s only afterwards that we understand why our bodies were calling out for help.”
The fabric of the chair crinkled under the pressure of my nails. “I should have been coming this whole time, I know.”
She met my eyes, and I could nearly see the silhouette of myself in them. “So, why didn’t you?”
I paused. It wasn’t a question I knew how to answer. Years later, I still don’t know how to answer. But I tried to come up with something. “I guess it just felt inevitable, you know? Like, if there’s no stopping it—why care? Or maybe I just believed if I ignored it, it wouldn’t happen.”
I would go on to learn that when the first diagnosed wave of HIV came in 1983, nobody knew how to treat it. By 1987, HIV had infected 32,000 people in the US alone, and over half of them had already died. It was a miracle of sorts when they discovered a failed cancer drug stopped HIV-infected cells from multiplying in the body. Not a cure, but a treatment. The downside: it destroyed the liver and lowered blood cell counts to a deadly amount.
HIV fought back. It mutated, and the drug eventually stopped working.
HIV fought back. It mutated, and the drug eventually stopped working. What came next were years of taking twelve to twenty-four pills a day that helped a person with HIV live longer, but it also made them a bedridden kind of sick. Many people with HIV just stopped taking them, determining a short life was better than never experiencing the world at all.
“You’re not alone in these feelings,” she told me. “A lot of my patients have said similar things.” And I got that she was trying to make me feel better, make me feel part of a larger community: people just trying to keep living and moving and thriving, but it didn’t feel good to know other people had been this confused and hopeless too.
You meet Henry and Sam about halfway through The Last of Us. They’re brothers. Survivors. The only ones from their group to remain alive. You find them while running from marauders in Pittsburgh. You quickly find out they’re also seeking the Fireflies—for a safe place to land. Together, you help each other make it out of the city. You journey through a maze of sewers where a group of survivors once lived—at least until the Infected got in and killed everyone. You then pass through a town that’s been abandoned, where the overgrowth of plants has crafted the streets into gardens.
And then there’s this moment, another one of these moments, when I pause because I don’t want to move forward, because I know what comes next. The Pittsburgh marauders are about to find us again. They’re going to bring their Humvee turned tank, and all I’ll have is a rifle on the top floor of a house to try and defend us all. Henry, Sam, and Ellie will run away from the tank. They’ll run toward me, and the tank will follow. A man will poke his head out from the top to throw a Molotov, and I will kill him. The bomb will explode in his hand. It will cover the tank in flames.
And you know where this is going don’t you? It’s come to that point in the story where inevitably something bad has to happen. I will stand there, in that house, in a neighborhood that was once a home but is now a graveyard, and all will quiet. They will be outside, just a few feet away from the house where I stand, and they will feel safe. They will feel happy. For one final moment, they’ll laugh at their own impossible survival.
I know apocalypses don’t allow this for long, so I pause. I hold this last moment before the world shatters.
There’s a legend that Jean Baptiste’s ghost remains here in the water. And though it’s not like he killed anyone, I’m still afraid of what that haunting could mean. I’m even more afraid that the North Shore Monster might live here too, swimming too deep for me to see. Still, I step into the water.
I watch for monsters in whirlpools, but I’ve yet to find one.
My heart thrums against my ribcage and throat. I study the crystalline surface and search for brine shrimp. I place my hand against the water and swipe my fingers through the surface. Liquid swirls as it moves around the breach, crafting tornados in the water. I watch for monsters in whirlpools, but I’ve yet to find one. Still, it’s like I can feel them just beneath the surface. As if they’re waiting. For what I can’t be sure.
When I remove my hand from the water and let it dry beneath the sun, a soft layer of white salt remains. Caked to my skin. Crackling apart as I move my fingers. Bits of dust crumble back into the lake as I move. Leftover minerals. I hate the feeling—like chalk dust stuck beneath my fingernails. I drop my hand back in, and the white evaporates into the great big body of water. And I wonder if I could just rest in a place like this rather than being placed in the earth. I could disappear into the water like Baptiste. Sink away. Become a mystery. Refuse to answer their questions: Why didn’t you use a condom? Why didn’t you ask him to pull out? What were you thinking?Did you even know his name?
I’d rather become the unanswerable question: never let anyone know what became of this body that once housed me.
My doctor handed me a pill. Biktarvy. She told me, taken once a day, the pill would reverse the progression of HIV and AIDS. She said I may have a few weeks of sickness while the medication acclimated, but after that, I shouldn’t feel any side-effects. And as long as I took it every day, at the same time every day, HIV likely wouldn’t find a way to fight back. I could live a long and healthy life.
But Ryan White died at eighteen. Rock Hudson died at sixty. Characters in the musical Rent died too.Heaven’s Coast, which still sat in my bag: the story of a man whose partner slowly, agonizingly, dies of AIDS. These are the only stories of HIV I knew. And I hadn’t even finished Heaven’s Coast. I couldn’t go any further. I didn’t want to know how the story ended. Because these are the stories that built my history, that time when scientists didn’t know how to treat the infection. Proof that my survival is really just contingent on the fact of my birth to a time when science knows how to treat me.
And as I looked for clarity, for any ounce of relief, I asked my doctor, “Can HIV be reversed then? And AIDS too?” I paused, staring into her eyes. “Does that mean I can come back from this?”
She reached out then to take my hand. She smiled, and she nodded. “That’s what it means.”
The infected seemingly come out of nowhere, sprinting toward Ellie and Henry and Sam. I turn my weapon to them. Fire shot after shot after shot. But somehow, no matter how hard I try, one breaks through. It tackles Sam. For only a second. I shoot it off him, and he gets up. Terrified, Henry asks him if he’s okay, and Sam says yes. Henry asks if he’s sure. Sam says yes.
The scene changes. Joel, Ellie, Sam, and Henry are safe in another house. It’s night. Ellie sits beside Henry and Joel are laughing, chatting about motorcycles, and Henry, who was only seven before the virus hit, begs Joel to tell him what it was like to ride one. Ellie stands and says she wants to check in on Sam who is taking stock of their food in the other room, counting cans of peaches and determining how long they can last on all they have.
When Ellie enters, Sam seems especially agitated. He moves to the window, facing the moonlit landscape outside. His dirty white shirt and green hoodie droop loose down his body, maybe just a little too big for him, maybe something he’s supposed to grow into. He takes a deep breath. He looks down. He asks Ellie, “How is it you’re never scared?”
“Who says that I’m not?” she says.
Sam walks toward her, shaking his head. “What’re you scared of?”
After making a joke about creepy scorpions, Ellie says that she’s afraid of being by herself. Her eyes glisten just a little bit more. “I’m scared of ending up alone.”
She then asks Sam what he’s afraid of. “Those things out there,” he says. “What if they’re trapped in there without any control of their body?” He pauses. Looks down again. Blinks quickly. “I’m scared of that happening to me.”
Ellie tries to console him, tells him that those things aren’t people anymore. They talk about the Infected and heaven and fears. Then Ellie leaves, and Sam collapses into a chair. He sighs. Winces. Pulls up his pantleg to reveal a bloody tear in his calf. He will become one of the infected by morning. Sam will attack Ellie, and Henry will kill him to save her. And because he’s so horrified by what he’s done, he’ll turn the gun on himself. The scene will end. Ellie and Joel will be alone again.
The very thing that killed him is the thing she gets to survive.
And I can see the way Sam’s death weighs on Ellie. She carries Sam’s toy robot with her, like a necessity, as important as food and bandages and weapons. And years later, that robot will stand on the shelf beside her desk as she journals about what it means to live with infection. Because that’s the weight—a kind of survivor’s guilt. Because the very thing that killed him is the thing she gets to survive.
Salt. Gold. Iridium. Calcium. Magnesium. Any other mineral fragment from mines in the mountains nearby, fragments that fill the body of The Great Salt Lake. These are both good and bad. Salt regulates fluid balance in our cells, the nerve impulses in my body. The balance of water and electrolytes allows lungs to breathe, a heart to beat, a stomach to digest. Magnesium is vital for the health of the heart and bones. Zinc affects cognitive function and the immune system.
But these minerals are a type of pollution in the lake. As the concentration of these minerals in the lake grows, it threatens the lives of what naturally lives inside. Lowering levels of the lake have exposed eight hundred square miles of the lakebed with contaminated soil, earth infected with toxic compounds and heavy metals.
I once found a business named Ocean Alchemy that sells the water, or “Great Salt Lake Manna,” for $50 per 32 oz. Bottle. They claim the salt is “magical” and “life-giving” like alchemists of old described the philosopher’s stone: an elixir of life. I want to believe that by ingesting the waters of that lake, I could somehow find healing. But the idea of drinking this water makes me shiver.
Maybe instead, minerals can enter by some simple touch, seep into my body and soothe: my muscles, my skin, my marrow and blood. And I know salt doesn’t heal so much as it preserves, so maybe that’s all I can wish for here—to live just a little longer. And I want to live. I want to survive. Perhaps it’s a selfish action, but if I could, I would stick out my tongue, let it pickle against the water’s surface, ingest enough of this world to cure a poisoned body.
Ellie wasn’t alone when she was bitten. She was with her best friend. Riley. And Ellie was in love with her. In a mall, after riding a carousel and playing arcade games and putting on Halloween masks to scare each other, they turn on music and dance on a circle of glass-topped counters. They laugh. They kiss. They look deep into each other’s eyes, and the infected burst into the room.
They decide to wait it out, become infected together, fight for whatever life they have left.
They’re not fast enough, Ellie and Riley. They’re both bitten, and while they could make their end a quick one, they decide to wait it out, become infected together, fight for whatever life they have left. And this is the last we hear of their story. We aren’t shown the rest, but we don’t need to see it. We can surmise what happened next. Only Ellie is still around.
A year later, Ellie and Joel find themselves standing at a ledge—the hospital in Salt Lake City, their final destination, close in the background. The Fireflies are stationed there. They’re still looking for a cure. We’ve come all this way. We’re nearly there. The game’s almost over, and Joel turns to Ellie. “We don’t have to do this. You know that, right?”
“What’s the other option?” Ellie says.
“Just… be done with this whole damn thing.”
Ellie shakes her head and backs up. Just a step. “After all we’ve been through. Everything that I’ve done.” She pauses. Looks away. Sighs. Squints against the bright afternoon sun. A bird chirps in the background, and Ellie nods as if steeling herself, making her decision. “It can’t be for nothing.”
I was walking on this golden path in the woods. Nearing the end of October, on the day I was diagnosed with HIV, my friend took me to a nearby riverside trail. We kept pace together, silent for a long time. Fresh fallen leaves lay like bricks I wanted to follow home, away from this place, this diagnosis, this person I had become. Fall had always been my favorite time of year: brightly colored leaves, the snap of chill air, my grandma’s spiced apple cider and sticky maple cookies. Though she had died of cancer years before, something still sparked within my veins when I would take out her old recipes, like some part of her might linger beyond the confines of her disease. Death had felt close to me when she passed. It felt even closer now, as golden leaves broke from their dark branches and my vision cracked with tears, the path blurring in front of me.
“I’m so sorry,” Kylie said, and I nodded. My voice was lost in the void of cold wind sweeping against my arms, bumps rising on my skin. I couldn’t say it was okay. I couldn’t say it wasn’t okay. We both knew both of those statements were true. But my doctor had told me the infection wouldn’t kill me, wouldn’t change my life nearly at all. My diagnosis wouldn’t be a death-sentence. It sure felt like a life-sentence.
And when I told my friend what my doctor had said, she responded, “Well, that’s good, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” I said, stopping on the path, holding my breath just a little longer. “I guess I just—well.” I could feel tears breaking against my eyelids again. “This may sound weird, but I want this to be a moment where everything changes. Where I become a different person—someone who cares about his body, cares about what happens to it. I want to tell the story. I want it to mean something.”
She smiled at me like she understood, and I think she did. I’m still trying to figure it out.
On Halloween night, only two weeks after my diagnosis, I found myself paralyzed in the shower. I had agreed to throw a party for my friends, but a certain terror in doing so had overtaken me in the few hours before. I stepped from the bathtub amid a haze of hot and humid air, and my gut churned. I paused on the steps of the doorway. My new boyfriend, Terrence, sat on the living room couch and glanced up when I appeared. A sly smile crossed his face but dropped away. Even with our relationship being so new, he saw the pain within me.
“What’s up?” he asked me, his voice somber. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” My muscles knotted tighter. My legs weakened and I dropped onto the steps.
Terrence ran to me, catching me in his arms. He peered deep into my eyes and said, “Talk to me.”
“I just don’t want to do this,” I told him, trying to understand the weakness of my own body. “I want to call it off. Just spend the night with you.”
He paused. Said “We can do that. But you were excited for this. What happened?”
A small noise moved in my throat, not an actual word. I still dug for an answer. We sat in silence, the air between us still and soft. “Well,” he said, rubbing my shoulders, “I could be completely wrong. But is it because they don’t know about your diagnosis?”
And though he kept talking, I didn’t hear the rest. Tears dripped down my face, sliding into the crease of my lips, a salty flavor tracing my tongue. My hands clenched tight, nails digging into my palms, and I stared at him blankly, my body shivering. “It’s just—they don’t know about me,” I said. “They don’t know what’s inside me. They don’t know I’m poisonous.”
“Oh babe,” Terrence said, pulling me closer, wrapping his arms around me, pressing me to his chest. And I wept—cried out every fear, every ounce of terror I held beneath my skin.
He, of course, said I wasn’t poisonous, but I fought the urge to push him away.
He, of course, said I wasn’t poisonous, but I fought the urge to push him away. I wanted to tell him I wasn’t worth the risk, wanted to save him from the apocalypse in which I had found myself. But I didn’t. Instead, I lifted my arms and wrapped them around him too.
I can’t tell you how long we stayed on those steps, the hot, misty air dissipating above us, my body still wet from the shower, my skin pressing against his shirt, tears soaking into the cloth. But I know I felt his heart beating in time with mine, life pulsing beneath the surface of blood and marrow and skin. I know he held me still tighter.
A cure is not found. It all seems meaningless, doesn’t it? Ellie and Joel traversed the entire country, and it doesn’t work out. There is no cure. Ellie will keep living. Others will keep dying.
In the final moments, as Ellie and Joel walk over a spring green field, wind whipping at their clothes and hair, Ellie stops. She tells a story—the story of how she became infected. “I wasn’t alone,” she says. She tells him about Riley, about the moment they both got bit, how they huddled together as they cried and Riley said, “Let’s just wait it out. Y’know, we can be all poetic and just lose our minds together.” Ellie pauses in her story, then adds, “I’m still waiting for my turn.”
Joel tries to speak, but Ellie pushes. “She was the first to die. And then it was Tess. And then Sam.”
“None of that is on you,” Joel says, his arms crossed. The sun dips deeper behind the mountains that lay just beyond.
“No, you don’t understand,” Ellie says, and there’s a desperation in her voice. A frustration. Because how could he ever understand what it means to live like this?
“I struggled for a long time with surviving,” Joel says. He drops his arms, fidgets with the watch his daughter once gave him, the daughter who didn’t survive the end of the world. “And you—no matter what, you keep finding something to fight for.”
There are people who bathe in the Great Salt Lake, saying the water heals their arthritis, their muscle pains, their headaches, their spirits. They claim this so-called “Lake in the Sky” is a place of transcendence. I want to believe them.
And when I think about surviving, I think about all those who didn’t get to. It makes the feeling complicated. Somehow both grateful and angry, joyful and sad. I so often hate myself while I’m also trying to learn how to not. I want to reach back through the chasm of time and tell those who came before that I’ll make my life mean something. For me. For them, that I’ll tell it—this story of death and disease and life. I don’t know why I was born in this time. I don’t know why I get to live. I don’t know if I deserve to. I’m still searching for answers.
I spread my arms wide, lay my back against the water’s surface, allow my feet to drift up and meet the air. As the sun rises higher into the sky, I close my eyes and let light burn red through my eyelids. I float effortlessly: head, back, knees, feet. I’m held up by salinity, a salt water so dense it can lift a body, a bed of minerals I can almost imagine would heal me. But I don’t think that’s the point. And if there’s a monster in this lake—beast, robber, whirlpool, grave—I know it lies far beneath me. It’s a fascinating thing I think: to know I don’t have to sink.
Stories by and for intersex people are sparse. Throughout history, stigma has prevented intersex authors from publicly sharing their identities, so we don’t have an extensive intersex archive. We don’t yet have an intersex “canon.” But we’re making one. We’re acknowledging and celebrating the legacies we do have. We’re creating legacies for future intersex folks.
When I first received confirmation of my intersex variation, I knew a grand total of one out intersex person. I felt alone, especially because many intersex conditions are rare or rarely diagnosed. (I’m currently 1 in 58 million.) So I picked up a book, then another book, then another. I saw parts of myself reflected back that I hadn’t yet translated into words. I saw possibilities for my own life and advocacy in the world.
I’m a big proponent of reading, writing, and dreaming up what we want our futures to be. There’s still work that comes next to make them happen, but without those blueprints, we can’t make anything happen.
So consider these 10 books, all by openly intersex authors, as blueprints. In their own ways, each is filled with visions of expansive intersex futures that will benefit us all.
In this stunning debut memoir, Pidgeon Pagonis describes a childhood filled with secrecy and shame, shuffled between doctors who urged, “Nobody needs to know.” When they discover the truth of their intersex identity as a college student, Pagonis must confront who they want to become in a world dictated by a harsh gender binary. Pagonis shares hard-earned wisdom from their years of advocacy, including co-founding the Intersex Justice Project and successfully pressuring Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago (where Pagonis had been a patient) to become the first hospital in the nation to publicly apologize for nonconsensual “corrective” surgeries on intersex infants.
In 2017, Alicia Roth Weigel made history when she came out as intersex in front of the Texas state legislature, testifying against a discriminatory “bathroom bill.” Told as a series of stories about each of her tattoos, her memoir explores her unconventional, at times turbulent coming-of-age, through which she came to understand and embrace her intersex identity. If you’re a committed reproductive justice advocate who’s new to conversations about intersex rights, this is the book for you.
Amidst increasing hostility against athletes—especially Black and brown athletes—whose bodies do not match rigid gender norms, Caster Semenya’s memoir is an important read. Semenya is a South African two-time Olympic gold medalist and three-time World Champion in the 800-meter race. In 2019, World Athletics barred her from competing due to her genetic condition, 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, which falls under the intersex umbrella. (In July 2023, Semenya won an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights as she fights to compete again without taking harmful testosterone-reducing medications.) Semenya’s book is a rallying cry to protect athletes like her who may be “a different kind of woman,” but women nonetheless.
In this anthology of essays and interviews, Zena Sharman weaves an imaginative tapestry of what ideal LGBTQ+ healthcare and healing could look like. Although Sharman is not intersex, she interviews Intersex Justice Project co-founder Sean Saifa Wall on his dreams for future intersex care. He envisions reparations for those harmed by invasive surgeries and new practices that celebrate intersex individuals’ unique bodies.
Although many intersex people do identify as disabled, intersex and disability rights movements have not historically collaborated as much as they could. In their first academic book, Dr. Celeste E. Orr examines the history of intersex medicalization through a feminist disability studies lens. They consider how nonconsensual surgeries have disabled intersex infants in the name of “normalization,” how strict policies around hormone-testing in sports emerged, and how modern methods that test embryos for genetic conditions including intersex variations rely on ableist and interphobic logics. This one isn’t for a lay reader, but it provides a thorough and socially engaged layout of contemporary intersex issues.
In their most recent poetry collection, Matt Mitchell recounts their childhood in Appalachia, looking back to determine how to look forward. Mitchell has an intersex condition that also causes infertility, which shapes how they imagine bringing a child into the world. Following their discovery of their intersex identity, Mitchell unpacks generational legacies of toxic masculinity to determine where they might fit within their family. This collection acts as a love letter to themselves, their future child, and other intersex poets everywhere.
Dear Herculine by Aaron Apps
Most aptly described as historical docu-poetry, Aaron Apps addresses his poems as letters to Herculine Barbin, who wrote extensively in the 19th century on her experiences as an intersex person. When so much intersex history has been obscured and erased, it can be miraculous to discover an ancestor who seems to reach across time and say, “You’re not alone.” This conversation through centuries is what Apps constructs, linking Herculine’s story to his own.
The classic Icarus myth meets queer YA thriller-romance in K. Ancrum’s fifth novel. The main character, Icarus, is entangled in his father’s art forgery, but he begins to question everything he knows when he falls in love with the son of a wealthy man that his father is targeting. This novel explores grief, love, and the messiness of growing up. Ancrum wrote Icarus’s love interest as an intersex boy so that readers will come to understand and care for him alongside Icarus. Intersex people deserve to see themselves in love stories, too!
Rough Paradise by Alec Butler
In only 124 pages, this novella by Alec Butler packs a punch. Set in the 1970s, Rough Paradise follows an intersex and Two Spirit teen, Terry, as they navigate hatred from parents, teachers, and doctors in a working-class neighborhood. Terry finds solace in an intense relationship with another queer and Indigenous teen, but the very forces that bring them together also threaten to tear them apart.
Rivers Solomon has released a slew of impressive, lyrical books in recent years. An Unkindness of Ghosts was their debut novel. In a dystopian world drawing on histories of the Transatlantic slave trade, residents on a spaceship live akin to a pre-Civil War plantation. The main character, Aster, lives on the lowest deck amidst those with the darkest skin and highest prevalence of intersex traits. As she discovers more about the ship, Aster must decide whether to initiate a rebellion at potentially terrible cost. This book is rife with questions about what it takes to reach a better world for one’s self and descendants.
Florida is one the most diverse and fastest growing states in the United States. It is also, tragically, the epicenter of book banning in America. Thousands of books have been banned from public schools and libraries in an attempt to silence dissenting voices that explore the experiences of diverse, marginalized, and underrepresented communities. To be clear, these are not fringe, controversial titles—we’re talking about Harry Potter and the Sorcerers’ Stone; four of Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison’s books (Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, and Sula); Slam!, Monster, and other classic young adult novels by Walter Dean Myers; and, depressingly, books about book banning, like Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
Banned Books USA stepped into the breach and worked to counteract the pernicious effects of censorship for the past year. Conceived and supported by Paul English and Joyce Linehan, in partnership with Bookshop.org and Electric Literature, Banned Books USA gave Florida residents free access to over 900 censored books. Any state resident could order a banned book for the cost of shipping via the Banned Books USA website. As a result, nearly 1000 books were mailed to individuals from Pensacola to Key West.
This map represents a fraction of Banned Books USA’s donations across Florida.
In order to foster community strength and have the broadest impact possible, Banned Books USA also made targeted donations to sixteen Florida organizations—providing Gainesville’s Pride Community Center of North Central Florida with 100 banned books for their LGBTQ+ community library and Read Aloud Florida with books to giveaway at their children’s storytelling series, among so many other vital groups. Altogether, Banned Books USA donated 2362 books, sponsored 14 events, and impacted the lives of thousands of vulnerable Florida residents.
In 2024, Banned Books USA donated to:
SEE Alliance (Sarasota)
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Venice (Venice)
Broward County Democratic Socialists of America (Fort Lauderdale)
GLSEN Collier (Naples)
Zebra Youth (Orlando)
Out Arts & Culture (Gulfport)
Pridelines (Miami)
Read Aloud Florida (Sarasota)
Orlando Youth Alliance (Orlando)
Osceola Youth Alliance (Kissimmee)
Naples Pride (Naples)
STAMPED Film Festival (Pensacola)
Pride Community Center of North Central Florida (Gainesville)
451 Avengers (Riviera Beach)
Free to be Florida (St. John’s County)
Leer para Crecer (Santa Rosa Beach)
Banned Books USA sponsored events made an effort to reach Florida teens and young adults who are unable to access stories that reflect their experiences. One of over fifty high school students who attended GLSEN Collier County’s Night of the Noise prom went home with Alice Oseman’s graphic novel Heartstopper and told organizer Amy that “It was the first book that made me feel seen.”
At a Read Aloud Florida event, an African American community leader and guest reader was struck so deeply by Lupita Nyong’o’s Sulwe that he fell silent and began sharing the personal story of his granddaughters growing up with the gathered crowd.
While giving away Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flagat the St Petersburg Pride festival, OUT Arts & Culture board president, Paul Raker, was surprised to have the book’s author, Rob Sanders, serendipitously appear and sign every single copy they gave away!
The books that Banned Books USA donated became beacons of light and helped create space for community engagement. Across age, identity, class, and cultural background, people need to see themselves represented to feel seen, have their personhood recognized and, in turn, recognize the personhood of others. Literature is the oldest, and maybe the best, way people have of telling their stories. The leader of Orlando Youth Alliance, Michael Slaymaker, put it best in his thank you note to Banned Books USA: “You made the difference in a child’s life today.” As of October 31st, Banned Books USA has spent down the book funds that were the result of a one-time donation from Paul English and additional community support, but the fight against censorship and book banning is far from over. In the coming years, it will take a diverse coalition to insist on the right to read widely, dangerously, and freely.
Have you ever read a story about women that was so horrible and so fantastic it made you cringe? Did you cringe because the story depicted a latent female horror, something that could emerge from the seams of our present moment, yet is packaged as fabrication?
You may have been reading a work of speculative feminism. This genre captures feminist truths in the guise of alternate worlds, magical settings, and fantastical plots. Margaret Atwood claimed the speculative genre should explore a future that is possible from our present reality, something that could happen, but which has not yet occurred. Since the time of The Handmaid’s Tale, the definition of the genre has evolved into a super category to define anything that departs from an imitation of reality.
My novel The Flat Woman moves between the magical and the mundane in a world on the brink of ecological devastation. In a world very much like our own, the natural world of The Flat Woman is just starting to deal with the effects of climate change. Instead of taking responsibility, the government has held women exclusively responsible. When a young woman begins a relationship with an environmental activist, she begins to question her detachment from the issues that matter.
When combined with feminism, these stories can amplify concerns about women’s rights. The presence of the unusual—whether that be magic, another world, or elements of fantasy— can turn our understanding of feminism on its head. Here are 7 trail-blazing books of feminist fantasy:
Published in 1993, this novel takes place in California in 2024 against the backdrop of environmental failure. Sound familiar? The story centers around an eighteen-year-old named Lauren Olamina who suffers from a syndrome called hyper empathy, meaning she can feel the physical pain of others. Unfortunately, she lives in a world where people are constantly hurting.
Written in epistolary form, the story documents Lauren’s journey from California to Oregon as she forms her own religion, Earthseed, among a community of the displaced. Known as the mother of Afrofuturism, Octavia Butler wrote this story from the point of view of a young Black woman at a time when very few women of color were represented in science fiction.
A Pulitzer Prize finalist, this book of short stories is delightfully strange. According to Kelly Link, this collection was named after the characters who populate its pages: possessing poor impulse control, these characters all have the tendency to get into trouble. But these stories are not solely surprising on the grounds of their behavior. These nine stories frequently blur genre boundaries, subverting the reader’s expectations.
In “Two Houses,” six astronauts tell each other ghost stories. In “The New Boyfriend,” a high school girl falls in love with a friend’s birthday present: a ghost boyfriend. In “Light,” a woman’s husband leaves her for a pocket universe. These stories channel the dreamy, romance of late adolescence. They remind the reader that the interior lives of teenage girls are just as an important source of high literature as stories about middle-aged men.
Set in the undetermined future, in The Left Hand of Darkness, a human envoy named Genly ventures to a different planet whose inhabitants are biologically androgynous for most of the year. At the core of the story is Genly’s relationship with Estraven, a diplomat who tries to help Genly gain acceptance in this foreign land.
The novel is structured as a series of documents penned by Genly and Estraven as well as myths and legends of the imagined world. Some of the narrative friction comes from the sharp juxtapositions of the styles of the different documents, which demonstrates how digressions are an effective narrative engine. Some of Le Guin’s best writing describes the scenery of this distant planet, especially in the second half of the book where the story of Genly and Estraven reaches its full pitch.
What if you were born with a black hole floating above your head? What if you worked at a soul-crushing tech job that barely pays you enough to make rent? Meet Cassie, the protagonist of Ripe. As Cassie navigates a life in San Francisco, Sarah Rose Etter shows us a world that is both hyper real and endlessly strange. The story explores the intersection of the marvelous and the mundane in vivid imagery. Despite the oddness of the magic, the depiction of a lonely woman’s slow burn-out in a soulless city is extremely relatable. This is a story driven less by plot than by ideas—one woman’s slow suffocation under the burden of late-stage capitalism is a searing indictment of America’s toxic work culture.
Sultana’s Dream contains two works of short fiction published in 1905 by Royeka Hossain, a self-educated Bengali writer and a pioneer of science fiction. The standout piece from this collection is the titular short story, a work of feminist utopia which describes a world where men are confined to the domestic sphere and women, literally, run the world. Formed as a philosophical dialogue between two characters, the story is structured in a Socratic seminar style. The fourteen-page story shows us what the world is by showing us what the world could be. On the way, Hossain implements a unique visual language, which memorializes the world through its unique technology, such as flying cars and solar-powered kitchens.
“Padmarag,” the other text in the collection, depicts a feminist utopia like Sultana’s Dream, though it stays within the confines of literary realism. The novella illustrates the world of an Indian women-run school and welfare center. The setting for this novella is no surprise considering the author’s real-life passion for educating women, illustrated in the school for girls Hossain founded in Kolkata.
House of the Spirits is a feminist, socialist work of magical realism. Modeled after Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Isabel Allende’s novel follows four generations of the Trueba family in post-colonial Chile. Some of the book’s characters are thought to be based on real-life figures, such as Salvador Allende, a prominent Chilean socialist, and former president, as well as Pablo Neruda, poet and senator of the Chilean communist party.
This book blends a story of a country’s history with the story of a family, focusing on the magical and the fantastic like One Hundred Years of Solitude. But, unlike its predecessor, House of the Spirits focuses on the relationships between women: mother and daughter, sisters-in-law, and grandmother and granddaughter. Using a roving, omniscient point-of-review, the book highlights the impact of toxic masculinity on the women of the Trueba family.
This book of short stories retells the fairy tales you remember from your childhood, but not as you remember them. Unlike the sanitized Disney adaptations, the ten stories in this collection are laced with violence, gore, and sex. The standout story from the collection is the novella titled “The Bloody Chamber,” a retelling of Bluebeard that revises the story to be spooky, atmospheric, and surreal. A truly important feminist revision, this book intentionally reframes the original fairy tales to emphasize the horror and misogyny latent in 17th through the 19th century storytelling.
“Tang-Kue-Tê / Winter Melon Tea” by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King
“Lí-ya!”
A slur for Islanders, used by Mainlanders.
Half a year into my time on the Island, Chi-chan and I found ourselves trailing behind F-sensei, a woman teacher and dormitory supervisor at the Tainan County First High School for Girls, who was giving us a tour of the campus founded in the sixth year of Taishō. [1]
The school gates opened to a passage lined with flower patches on both sides. The first row of buildings along the path were administrative offices, followed by a row of educational facilities— including a newly completed building equipped with an art classroom and an exhibition space for scientific specimens. The remaining three rows were student quarters. There were two dormitories and a third building that held the bathhouse, cafeteria, kitchens, and other communal spaces. The area was bookended by a swimming pool to the east and four tennis courts to the west.
According to F-sensei, those who seek to provide an education for the modern woman must nurture students into well-mannered, well-informed, multitalented persons of excellence first and foremost, and only women of excellence second—
“Furthermore,” she concluded in a voice that rang with authority, “any one of our students or faculty members can say with their heads held high: our school’s hopes for our students are thoroughly reflected in our architecture.”
Hm. The “First” Girls’ School certainly lived up to its name.
I said, “Seeing as there is a First Girls’ School, there must also be a second?”
“Indeed. The Second High School for Girls is but two streets away.”
“I see. And how are the two different?”
“The Second Girls’ School mostly takes Islander students, and the campus is roughly half the size of ours. Indeed, some local residents have objected to this division, but you see, all of Tainan’s female students who excel in their studies name our school as their top choice. There is no Islander student who does not take pride in herself for testing into our school—and that, in the end, is the proof of our excellence!”
Excellence, excellence, excellence.
I glanced at Chi-chan, who stood next to me wearing a smile as immaculate as white jade.
“F-sensei,” I said, “would you say that even within this community of all-around excellence, there are still Mainlander students who would call Islanders ‘lí-ya’? I only learned about the word very recently, you see.”
F-sensei stopped walking. She turned to first look at me, and then at Chi-chan.
“I would very much like to say that such ill-mannered words are not uttered within our school, but—Aoyama-sensei, if you intend to write on this subject, please do make it clear that the school dealt with the matter fairly!”
“I have no intention of targeting the school. It was just something I happened to hear about on my travels.”
“Hm. What a coincidence.” F-sensei evidently found my explanation unconvincing. Nevertheless, she took it upon herself to elaborate. “Recently, an incident took place between two fourth-year students in the same class, Ōzawa Reiko of Mainland citizenship and Tân Tshiok-bi of Island citizenship. Both are very popular students who, over time, unwittingly attracted something like two opposing camps among their classmates. That said, the two used to be very close friends! I suppose a bit of friction is inevitable when young women are at the peak of adolescence. They have since reconciled, however.”
“Really? The opposing camps disbanded so easily?”
“Well, dividing into cliques is common for students their age, no? Some Islander students protested that Ōzawa-san had addressed Tân-san as lí-ya. The school took the complaint very seriously and was able to resolve the conflict very quickly. In fact, it is only because the school has no tolerance for such poor behavior that this small affair was ever regarded as an ‘incident’ at all. I only say this because, after the uproar died down, some of the students came to us privately to say that it had all been something of an inside joke.”
Inside joke.
A Noh mask took extraordinary skill to maintain. I couldn’t emulate Chi-chan, and instead stared directly into F-sensei’s eyes.
F-sensei gave a small chuckle.
“Of course, whether or not it was in jest, the school addressed the issue with an appropriate response. In fact, we hoped to reconcile the two students through a suitable educational approach, and therefore arranged for them to share the responsibility of receiving Aoyama-sensei on your visit. Ah, there they are.”
She gestured toward the path between the classrooms and the dormitories. At the dormitory doors, a bougainvillea tree teemed with plum-red and violet-purple flowers.
Two students stood shoulder to shoulder under the tree, both gazing up at the resplendent bloom.
A slow breeze rose, brushing some of the blossoms off their branches.s
One of the girls, who had the build of a star athlete, raised a hand to brush the fallen petals off the shoulder of the shorter, slighter girl.
I could not wrap my head around it: one of these two shōjo novel characters had called the other a lí-ya.
Allow me to start again, this time from the beginning.
I first heard someone use the term lí-ya the day we arrived in Tainan.
While the Taihoku Railway Hotel was the premier Western-style hotel on the Island, I was much more interested in the newer Tainan Railway Hotel in the south. In the former, the attractions are pretty much limited to: one, good Western food, and two, guest elevators that save you the effort of stairs. Although its Tainan counterpart was also Western, fully equipped with a restaurant, bar, entertainment center, and telephone room, it boasted an additional distinction of being located within the train station itself. The hotel had just nine guest rooms total, and its lobby was right past the ticket gate on the second floor of the station. I looked forward to what I thought would be a delightful experience of drinking my fill, falling into a boozy sleep, then waking up to the noise of an engine and wheels hurtling across the tracks as the first train pulled into the sunlit station.
With this in mind, I’d asked Chi-chan to arrange a trip to Tainan. Our itinerary would be much like the one in Takao: arrive on day one, give a lecture on day two, return to Taichū on day three.
Despite its being October, there wasn’t one trace of autumnal cool in Tainan’s air. By the time we got past the ticket gate, I was much more invested in getting my hands on an ice-cold soda than in seeing the hotel.
“But Aoyama-san, you can get a soda anywhere—would you not be interested in Tainan’s winter melon tea instead?”
“Oh! What’s that?”
“There are a few traditional Islander beverages for combating the heat: tshenn-tsháu-à tea, plum tea, lotus tea, and tang-kue-tê—winter melon tea. This is made by stewing winter melon with sugar until it boils down to concentrated blocks, which are then dissolved in cold water. For those of us living in the tropics, winter melon not only cools us down but also replenishes our energy. Mainlanders have a hard time getting used to tshenn-tsháu-à tea, but they tend to be very fond of the sweet winter melon tea.”
“By winter melon, you mean the green gourds with the white spots? You make that into sweet tea?”
“Precisely. You should definitely have a taste.”
“But of course!”
I was ready to head straight out of the station in search of this wonderful drink, luggage and all. But Chi-chan touched my arm and began steering me toward the staircase that led to the hotel’s check-in.
Alas.
I suppose I should give an accurate account of the hotel. In keeping with its low room count, Tainan Railway Hotel had but a petite staircase. Only the lofty arched window that flooded everything with sunlight possessed the grandeur of a high-end hotel. Heading up the stairs, one is faced directly with the front desk. To the right is a long hallway, whose main source of light is a row of smaller arched windows along the western wall rather than the glass chandeliers overhead.
I walked over to the main window and looked down at the train terminal. Countless heads crisscrossed below: panama hats, floppy straw hats, fedoras, as well as baseball caps, military caps, and student caps. There were women with intricate updos and boys with clean-shaven, monk-like skulls. I could not tear my eyes away, thinking that this was perhaps the most entrancing view of Tainan Station one could find.
It happened then.
“Lí-ya!” A deep, gruff voice.
I turned and saw Chi-chan standing not far from the reception desk. Her profile was backlit and therefore obscured from me. Her silhouette was stiff and straight-backed—her shoulders rose and fell ever so slightly with each breath.
She walked toward the desk.
I hurried after her in time to see the receptionist’s disgruntled face.
“We’re full. Now get out of here.”
It was impossible to believe that such spiteful words could come from the staff of a luxury hotel. Chi-chan, however, was calm.
“Would you kindly confirm the reservation for Aoyama Chizuko-sensei under the Nisshinkai Organization?” She presented her business card to the glowering man. “I am her Islander interpreter. Aoyama-sensei is a writer visiting from the Mainland at the invitation of the Taiwanese Government-General itself. If you have any questions, you may direct them to Mr. Mishima Aizō at Taichū City Hall.”
I did not possess her patience. “Enough! There’s no reason why we should take this boorish treatment. So this is the best that the Tainan Railway Hotel has to offer!”
I began pulling Chi-chan away, but the receptionist darted out from behind the desk and gave a deep bow.
“Please accept my deepest apologies. It is my fault entirely. We have heard from City Hall earlier—you may access your rooms immediately if you wish.” When he raised his face again, it had transformed from the scowl of a Niō warrior to the jolly grin of Ebisu.
The sudden transformation stunned me into silence. Was this part of some avant-garde play?
While I had my guard down, several of Ebisu’s servant boys materialized to take our luggage away. The goddess Benzaiten— who, until moments ago, had simply been a woman attendant blatantly ignoring our presence—greeted us with a broad smile, as though we were honored patrons who had just donated a large fortune to her temple. [3]
“Did Aoyama-sensei arrive on the last train? The journey must have been exhausting in this heat! Ah, here is Aoyama-sensei’s suite, and Interpreter-san’s room is just across the hall—very convenient. We will arrange for you to dine at the railway restaurant tonight. Dinner is at six, but please just say the word if you would like to have it earlier or later. We will bring you cold beverages in a moment—would you prefer fresh juice, soda, or milk? Shall we bring the beverages to your rooms separately?”
Her enthusiasm was so over the top that it was almost comedic.
“Dinner at six is fine. And please bring two glasses of juice to my room.”
The chilled drinks soon appeared on an ornate tray.
Inside the suite was a Western mattress with springs, curtains with elaborately woven patterns, and chairs with curved armrests. Chi-chan and I sat at opposite ends of the room and finished our juices in silence. The farce and chaos that had pummeled us since we set foot in the hotel only now began to recede.
A leftover ice cube gave a small crackle from the bottom of a glass.
Chi-chan sighed quietly. “I am so sorry to have caused Aoyama-san alarm.”
“It wasn’t your fault at all.”
“But it was. Wearing a chōsan was negligent on my part.”
It was then that Chi-chan explained it to me.
Lí-ya!
The word meant “You there!” in Taiwanese. While at first it was simply a crude way of addressing Islanders—implying that they could be ordered around at will—somewhere along the way it had become a derogatory slur in itself.
Chi-chan and I had checked out of Tainan Railroad Hotel before traveling to the campus. At my request, Chi-chan had made prior arrangements with the school for us to spend the night in their dormitories following my lecture, hence F-sensei assigning students to serve as our hosts. Under the bougainvillea tree, F-sensei transferred us into the care of Ōzawa Reiko and Tân Tshiok-bi, two young women who lived up to their respective names. Ōzawa, like the kanji characters for “vast waters” and “beauty” in her name, was broad-shouldered and full-bosomed, with a comely face and a grounded carriage. Tân Tshiok-bi, like her kanji characters for “sparrow” and “slight,” was as delicate and spindly as a prepubescent boy.
“Does Aoyama-sensei stay in dormitories when lecturing at other schools as well?” Ōzawa asked.
“To be honest, yours is the first school where I’m staying overnight.”
“Oh! But that must mean Aoyama-sensei is interested in our dormitories specifically. Why is that, may I ask? Are our housing facilities particularly well known?”
I grinned. “Well, before I came to the Island, I read a book written in the Taishō era by an English traveler who visited a girls’ school in Tainan—which I think must be this one—and noted that the dormitories housed three students per room. Why an odd number? Generally speaking, even numbers are much easier to manage from an administrative standpoint. You see, mine is the type of idle mind that fixates on such trivial details, so I wanted to witness the mystery for myself.”
You see, mine is the type of idle mind that fixates on such trivial details, so I wanted to witness the mystery for myself.
“I see! Did they have three people to a room during Taishō? But the dormitories we use now were only completed recently, and there are eight people to a room—an even number! Has Aoyama-sensei heard of the Second Girls’ School? Their housing is also eight to a room, and seeing as we are both prefecture-run schools, it makes more sense for us to share the same system, I think. Oh, but that means Aoyama-sensei’s mystery will remain unsolved. What a shame!”
Ōzawa had a manner of speaking that radiated openness and candor. Sparrow, next to her, nodded and smiled, affirming everything that came out of Ōzawa’s mouth. It was impossible to detect any sign of friction between the two.
No, that wasn’t all. Let me put it this way: as we made our way across campus and the South Country sun climbed higher overhead, I saw Ōzawa reposition herself multiple times in order to shade Sparrow from the harsh sunlight with her own body.
Could this same Ōzawa Reiko really have called this Tân Tshiok-bi a lí-ya?
The two of them gave Chi-chan and me a thorough tour of the living quarters. Ōzawa explained, “The boarders have free time after dinner, then study hall from eight to ten. Lights out is at ten, after which there is no talking allowed until six in the morning. Oh, but since Aoyama-sensei and Ō-san are not familiar with the buildings, please feel free to come to me if you have any concerns after lights out. My room is directly next to yours.”
It was Chi-chan who responded first to this curious afterthought. “Ōzawa-san, are there any specific concerns that we should be aware of?”
A tactful yet incisive question. Chi-chan never disappointed.
Sparrow chuckled before Ōzawa could reply. “We would advise against going to the lavatory outside Building One after curfew, if possible.”
“Oh? And why is that?”
“No real reason,” Ōzawa cut in, but I gestured for Sparrow to continue.
An intriguing smile danced on Sparrow’s lips. “There are tales about a mythical dimension in that lavatory.”
“Mythical dimension? Do you mean to say that a student was spirited away or something like that?”
“Yes, something like that. At least that is the rumor among the boarders. After curfew, an unknowable space opens up there, and people disappear into—”
“Tân-san,” Ōzawa said firmly.
Sparrow shrugged, her expression as cheery as ever. Huh. Huh!
A shōjo romance? Or a supernatural thriller?
My lecture concluded at the end of second period, but the students did not have lunch until after third period, so Chi-chan and I politely declined the administrators’ invitation to a luncheon and hailed a taxi to the famous West Market.
Lóo-bah over glutinous rice, ricefield eel and vermicelli noodles thickened with corn starch, soup with hand-molded fishcakes and oysters—we filled our stomachs with an exquisite feast. Dessert was fresh fruit: plates and plates of sliced watermelon, mango, tomato, papaya. Standing by a vendor’s cart on a street corner, we downed winter melon tea and star fruit juice from coffee cups—sweet, unrivaled nectar. Ah, the flavors of the South!
Seeing as we were in Tainan, Taiwan’s historic capital and cultural center, there was a sense of obligation to visit some famous tourist attraction like Senkan Tower, but this felt too much like being told what to do. [4] Instead, we ambled over to the nearby bustling neighborhood known as the Ginza of Tainan, which included both the Tainan Shrine and the Tainan Confucius Temple. We concluded our stroll at a department store, where I bought a new fountain pen and some pencils while Chi-chan picked out two novels.s
On our way back to the First Girls’ School, I sneaked glances at Chi-chan’s profile. The Noh mask seemed to have relaxed a little after she’d found the books that she wanted. I instantly felt more relaxed as well.
“I didn’t expect to find such different ways of eating braised pork over rice between Tainan and Taichū! We’ve had lóo-bah with hōrai short-grained and zairai long-grained rice before, but the sticky rice!”
“Aoyama-san seems to have enjoyed all three.”
“Because all three were delicious! If I had to be critical, I’d say that long-grained rice is rather too dry and loose for this dish. Most of the broth ends up pooling at the bottom of the bowl, so you’d have to add more rice to soak it all up—but once you add more rice, you’d have to add more lóo-bah, too. In which case, don’t you fall into an endless spiral of pork and rice and pork and rice?”
Chi-chan chuckled. “I’ve heard of a local dish called bah-kué, where they grind the rice down to a pulp and steam it into a palm-sized savory cake, which is then fried and drizzled with lóo-bah. I’d hoped that we would come across it today, but no such luck.”
“My goodness, Chi-chan, where on earth do you get all this information? I’ve never found such detailed accounts of the Island in any newspaper or magazine!”
“An interpreter never reveals her secrets.”
“Ah! I do beg your pardon,” I said, laughing.
Chi-chan, too, laughed—the kind of laughter that made her shed her Noh mask altogether. “Aoyama-san.” “Yes, miss?”
“I’ve heard people say that Mainlanders think lóo-bah has a displeasing stench. I have also been warned that Mainlanders only eat sashimi. But Aoyama-san seems to regard lóo-bah and sashimi with equal esteem.”
“Bah! Anyone who can discriminate against lóo-bah must be completely incapable of appreciating good food.”
“The demarcation between the Islanders’ lóo-bah and the Mainlanders’ sashimi is the distinction between the dirty and the pure,” Chi-chan said, her voice low. “The same applies to the Islanders’ chōsan and the Mainlanders’ kimono.”
“I . . . have never felt that way.”
“That is because Aoyama-san is a good person.”
“No—I don’t know why or what or how. This is much too difficult for a simpleton like me.” The train of thought twisted into my mind knots that took a few more silent steps to straighten out. “Perhaps I should put it this way, Chi-chan: lóo-bah and sashimi are both delicious, chōsan and kimono are both beautiful. To me, the essence of a thing is by far the most important. I’m sure there are plenty of people who choose not to understand the beauty of lóo-bah and chōsan, but there are also plenty of people who do.”
Without replying, Chi-chan raised her purse to cover her own face.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked.
“Because it isn’t fair—how Aoyama-san always manages to say the exact thing that people want to hear . . .”
“Is it what you want to hear, Chi-chan?”
She said nothing. I took the purse from her hands. Behind it, Chi-chan’s dimpled cheeks had a subtle flush. I saw neither the sweet yet impenetrable Noh mask nor the coy grin she sometimes wore when she was chastising me. It was, instead, the expression she once bared to me in the kitchen at the Yana River cottage: a softening as gradual as the thawing of frost in early spring. It was also the smile that she once gave me when our train crossed the Katansui River Bridge—with true warmth shining out from the depths of her eyes.
I laughed and laughed, hooking my arm around hers.
“What a tease you are!” she cried, nudging me with her shoulder. I dug my elbow into her side, still laughing with a bounteous mirth that seemed to overflow from the core of my chest. Ha! Ha! Ha!
As we walked arm in arm in this merry mood, wind brushed against our cheeks—a wind strong enough to lift bougainvillea blossoms off their branches. Did that mean we, too, were characters in a shōjo romance?
If we’d been standing under that same tree, I, too, would have brushed the vivid petals off of Chi-chan’s shoulders.
No—that wasn’t all. Let me put it this way: had arrows showered down on us instead of flowers, I would have shielded Chi-chan’s body with my own.
We had dinner that night at the dormitory cafeteria along with the faculty and students. We also washed ourselves in the dormitory bathhouse, soaking in the same public tub as the young girls. Ōzawa and Sparrow stayed by our side for most of these evening activities, all the way until the nighttime roll call at lights out.
Chi-chan and I slept in the same room on traditional futon bedspreads laid out on the tatami floor. Lying there in silence, I suddenly thought of the “myth” Sparrow had mentioned. I said, in a small voice, “Chi-chan.”
She laughed. “Can it be that you need to visit the lavatory?”
“Hahaha.”
“And, specifically, the one outside Building One?”
“Do you plan on stopping me?”
“There’s no need to stop you from doing something that isn’t dangerous.”
“Can it be that you actually want to go with me?”
She said nothing. But when I climbed out from under my blanket, she did too.
Moonlight permeated the room, lighting up her grin.
Ha.
The dormitories were two-story buildings; we were staying on the first floor of Building Two. The lavatories were housed in two freestanding structures to the northwest of Buildings One and Two.
The dormitories were silent. I lowered my voice. “Isn’t the northwest the direction of the so-called demon gate?”
“Is Aoyama-san a believer in fēngshǔi?”
“No, but the students must know about this, too.” “Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether you’re a novelist or a scientist.”
“I am Sherlock Holmes, the great detective.”
“Does that make me Doctor Watson?”
We were fast approaching the Building One lavatory.
The lavatories were the only sources of light in the dark mass of the dormitory buildings. Their solitary brightness on the pitch-black campus gave them an otherworldly air. The buildings were all made of wood, and the floor beneath us creaked softly with every step. Everything about the place screamed It’s scary in there! I was surprised that there was only one supernatural rumor rather than a whole host. Chi-chan, however, seemed completely unaffected.
We went around the staircase and stepped onto the path to the lavatories.
Lí-ya. A small yet bright voice coming from inside.
“Lí-ya, why didn’t you come sooner?”
Chi-chan and I stopped in our tracks and exchanged a quick look. “Who’s in there?” I asked at the top of my voice.
Silence.
I began to walk farther toward the lavatory, but Chi-chan held on to my arm. “I can’t let you go where there’s danger.”
“Aren’t you curious?”
She nodded, then walked in before me.
I hurried after her. Inside, there were multiple stalls, and all of the doors stood open. Spotless sinks stood to the other side of the stalls. There was no door on the opposite wall—the one through which we’d come was the only means of entrance and egress. Yet the room was empty.
The only thing that stood out from the ordinary was a piece of paper on the floor under the sink counter. I picked it up and immediately felt from the texture that it was a photograph. The image had been taken indoors, against a backdrop of a tea table with a vase of blooming lilies. A young woman stood in the photograph’s center, as lean as a young boy. She looked masculine and strapping in a double-breasted suit jacket, riding pants, and long boots as well as a beret angled to cover one of her eyebrows, which together with her crooked grin made her look rather mischievous.
It was Sparrow—Tân Tshiok-bi.
Neither shōjo nor horror, but a mystery.
“What are your thoughts now, Holmes-san?”
As always, Chi-chan’s mind was on the same page as mine.
I put on an aristocratic voice. “Jolly good question, Watson.” I had no clue. Where would a detective start investigating? The answer came to me immediately: examine every inch of the lavatory.
Unfortunately, that was when F-sensei, who was on her rounds as the dormitory supervisor, appeared. She was instantly suspicious. “Aoyama-sensei, Ō-san, why are you here? The Building Two lavatory is much closer to your room . . .” But then she seemed to cotton on. “Ah, there must have been a line! You see, there is a strange rumor about this lavatory, so many of the students now opt to line up at at the one near Building One . . . it’s been quite the headache.”
Chi-chan and I both kept quiet about the “mystery” we’d just witnessed. Chi-chan, her eyes wide and brimming with innocence and concern, asked, “Sensei, what do you mean by ‘strange rumor’? Is it something frightening?”
“No, nothing frightening. Please do not worry.”
“I see . . . but I suppose it’s human weakness that makes us more afraid of the unknown than of the things we know for certain. The students probably misinterpret the facts all the more because they have few facts to go on.” Chi-chan then added in an appeasing voice, “Oh, but I apologize. We would not wish to hold up F-sensei’s rounds. We will return to our room and ask Ōzawa-san about the tale tomorrow.”
F-sensei sighed. “It really isn’t anything horrific at all. To tell you the truth, it’s something of a heartwarming story.” She seemed to let down whatever guard she had up and grew more talkative. “There were once two students who each told their respective roommates that they were going to the lavatory at lights out, but neither returned for a long time. Their roommates each felt uneasy and went searching for them separately, which led them to run into each other at the bottom of the stairs. That was when one of the two missing students came out of the lavatory. The roommates asked her if she’d seen the other missing student, and she said no. They all went inside to search, but there was nobody there. In fact, there was no need for them to search—the two so-called missing students did not get along, and would no doubt have argued had they been in the same place.”
I couldn’t help but interrupt. “What can possibly be heartwarming about this?”
F-sensei smiled ever so slightly. “The rumor that spread among the students was that the second missing student had been hidden by the gods. As in, the gods hid the two students from each other in order to foster peace and harmony in the dormitories.”
“That would be quite an outrageous thing for the gods to do just for maintaining peace in the dormitories.”
That would be quite an outrageous thing for the gods to do just for maintaining peace in the dormitories.
“Yes . . . well, that is the gist of the story. Do you remember the way back to your room?”
I’d already scanned the whole lavatory as we were speaking, and since F-sensei now looked ready to usher us all the way back to our rooms, we had no choice but to follow her.
But what had happened in there? In the bedroom, Chi-chan and I sat cross-legged facing each other. A moonbeam struck the photograph that lay on the floor between us.
“It couldn’t have been supernatural.”
“Does Aoyama-san have any theories?”
“It was Ōzawa Reiko who spoke.”
“Oh? And what is the reasoning behind that answer?”
“When we got near the lavatory, the person inside said ‘lí-ya,’ correct? ‘Lí-ya, why didn’t you come sooner?’ They were waiting for somebody. But when they heard that it was us, they rushed out of the bathroom and dropped the photograph. As for the other party involved in this lí-ya incident—that would be Tân Tshiok-bi, the subject of the photograph.”
“Hm—indeed, out of the hundreds of students here, Ōzawa-san might not be the only one who would refer to an Islander student by that word, but it seems too great a coincidence that the photograph is of Tân-san.”
“Yes, and it seems to be quite a personal photograph. So, the photograph somehow came to be in Ōzawa’s possession, and she made a secret arrangement to meet with Tân-san in the lavatory tonight. As an upperclassman who is familiar with campus legends, she cleverly used everybody’s fear of the ‘mythical dimension’ to give them privacy. But how did Ōzawa exit the lavatory?”
“To leave that aside for a moment. If Aoyama-san is correct and the person inside was Ōzawa-san, then what was her intention in asking Tân-san to meet her tonight? Was it blackmail?”
“Hm—”
Our gazes met, and we fell silent at the same time. I couldn’t get the earlier image out of my head: the falling bougainvillea blossoms, and Ōzawa gently brushing the petals off of Sparrow’s shoulder.
Plum-red and violet-purple petals swirled in the wind. Slowly, slowly, they drifted to the earth . . .
“Aoyama-san.”
At Chi-chan’s voice, I woke from the reverie.
When had I drifted off? I sat up and rubbed my eyes at the gentle light in the room. What time was it?
“Aoyama-san, let’s go to the lavatory again.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. But Chi-chan tapped my shoulder playfully and said, “I’m not asking because I’m scared to go alone.”
“All right, all right.”
We retraced the now familiar path. Once we got there, Chi-chan placed the photograph on top of the sink counter and pulled me toward the stairs. She sat down at the staircase’s landing.
“Chi-chan?”
“Shh . . . Aoyama-san, I believe that she will come back for the photograph.”
“Huh?”
Her whisper was so low that I had to lean my ear toward her lips. She said, “The wake-up time in the dormitory is six o’clock. Since there was a nighttime roll call, there must also be a morning roll call. The student in charge of taking roll would rise before six. It is now 5:30 a.m., and recently sunrise has been around 5:50 a.m. Whoever she is, she would definitely come retrieve the photograph before it gets bright outside.”
I looked at her and saw that she was watching me with serene eyes. There was no trace of sleepiness in her face, though the skin under her eyes was darker than usual; she must have spent the whole night dwelling on the mystery while I slept.
Who said that she was Watson?
Birds were beginning to trill and chirp. The gray sky grew whiter by the minute. Chi-chan’s dark-circled eyes were brighter than both the birdcall and the sunrise.
It happened then.
Creak, creak. Steps on the wooden floor in the midst of birdsong. Creak, creak. Nearer and nearer to the staircase. Creak, creak. Past the staircase. Creak, creak.
Chi-chan and I stood up at the same time and peeked through the gap between the staircase and the building. A young woman was walking into the lavatory.
“But that’s—”
I almost cried out with shock, but Chi-chan looked unfazed— as though she’d predicted everything. She counted from one to five under her breath, then strode purposefully down the stairs, her footsteps loud against the wood. I hurried to keep up with Holmes-san.
We entered the lavatory just as we did earlier in the night. The lights were still on, the stall doors ajar, the sinks spotless, the opposite doorless.
It was empty.
And yet, and yet, the photograph on top of the sink counter had disappeared. Chi-chan put a finger to her lips, took my hand, and slipped back out of the door.
We returned to our room. No long after, the six o’clock bell rang. The whole dormitory sprang to life, drowning us in the buzz and hum of chatter and movement. The din blended together with the calls of the birds. After listening for a moment, Chi-chan smiled at me. “You can speak now.”
“It was Tân Tshiok-bi! How could it have been Tân Tshiok-bi?”
Per our itinerary, we left on the 11:40 a.m. train back to Taichū. On our way, we bought two bags of black water caltrops from a street vendor. After the train departed from Tainan Station, we unfolded the newspapers that contained our water chestnuts and spread them on our knees.
The water caltrops looked like bats with their sharp, pointed ends—and seemed entirely impenetrable to me. Thankfully, Chi-chan came to the rescue with her ever-nimble fingers.
Nimble fingers, nimble mind.
How could it have been Tân Tshiok-bi?
Back in the bedroom, Chi-chan had grinned. “I guessed it. An incredibly lucky guess, don’t you think?”
Naturally, I wasn’t about to let her off with such a cursory explanation. When I pressed, she asked, “When we first met Tân-san and Ōzawa-san, did you notice how Ōzawa-san used her own arm to protect Tân-san from the falling bougainvillea flowers?”
“Yes, of course.”
“The two of them were walking in front of us as our guides. Once, when turning a corner, I noticed a magenta blossom adorning Ōzawa-san’s hair, just behind her ear. That same flower was originally tucked inside Tân-san’s uniform collar, where it had been barely visible. But I am roughly the same height as Tân-san and saw the flower early on. From what I saw, I believe that between the two of them, Ōzawa-san is the protector, and that Tân-san as the protectee sometimes commits small acts of rebellion.”
“Huh . . . rebelling against her defender, eh?”
“Indeed. Therefore, the slur of lí-ya has also been reversed between them, becoming an endearment that Tân-san uses on Ōzawa-san. In this sense, ‘the lí-ya incident’ between them may have been a total misunderstanding.”
“That Tân? Calling that Ōzawa lí-ya?”
“I cannot guess at what passed between them, but Tân-san asking Ōzawa-san to meet her in the ‘mythical dimension’ on a night that outsiders like us are staying on campus was likely also a form of mischief. But I don’t believe that it was blackmail. Both of them will be graduating this coming spring, and it’s common for students to exchange personal photographs in girls’ schools. For those two particular students to exchange photographs, however . . . well, let’s just say that the minds of young women are the most unsolvable mysteries in the world.”
“But that’s hardly enough information to deduce that it was Tân!”
“You’re right. The first clue was that Ōzawa-san lives in the room next to ours. She was responsible for the nighttime roll call, which meant that she returned to her room late, and perhaps did not have time to step out again before we left for the lavatory. She would have heard us leaving, and would have waited to avoid running into us. With eight roommates to one room, there are bound to be one or two people visiting the lavatory at night. If it had been Ōzawa in the lavatory on our first visit, she would have returned to the bedroom after us. But I listened for movements next door the whole night, and there was always the sound of someone leaving before the sound of someone returning. Which meant that my hypothesis was right: Ōzawa must have been in her room at the time of the first incident.”
“But isn’t there also the possibility that Ōzawa—after vanishing from the lavatory through unknown means—managed to return to her room before we got back to ours?”
“It would be extremely difficult not to make any detectable noises in a silent dormitory, and even more so for someone of Ōzawa-san’s stature. We would have definitely heard her steps on that wooden floor had she been rushing back to the room.”
“That’s true—she’s got quite the athlete’s build! Then why was there nobody inside the lavatory?”
“Well, this is another clue. None of the stall doors were closed, which made it look like they were empty. But this was a blind spot. I agree with Aoyama-san that there is no mythical dimension, which makes the answer simple: the person did not vanish; she was simply hiding in the stalls. Back in public school, some of the bolder students used to hide right behind the lavatory stall doors during hide-and-seek. Ōzawa-san couldn’t have, not with her stature—but Tân-san, who is as petite as a child . . . I made a lucky guess.”
“Chi-chan, Chi-chan, Chi-chan—”
“Yes?”
“You are neither Watson nor Holmes.” I announced in my most serious voice: “You are Chi-chan, the Great Detective!”
The room was flooded with golden sunlight. Chi-chan sat cross-legged on top of her futon; her face was radiant—even more so than usual. I felt dizzy.
“Aoyama-san,” came her voice. “Please have some.”
I snapped out of my daze, my mind returning to the first-class car of the northbound express train. Chi-chan had, I saw, stacked a small pile of cream-white water caltrops—freshly extracted from their sharp-ended black shells—into my palm.
When had this happened?
“You struggle with peeling these kinds of things, do you not?” she explained cheerfully. “Water caltrops have to be cracked between the teeth, and extracting the flesh also takes some skill. It’s no easy task for a novice.”
“Huh. I feel that we’ve had this conversation before.”
“Ah, indeed. When we first met. It was kue-tsí that time.” “Ah, kue-tsí! I still struggle with those.”
“And that is why Aoyama-san needs me.”
Her smile reached her eyes.
I pinched a water caltrop between my fingers and offered it to her. She put it in her mouth, still smiling.
I could not say why, but in that moment I thought of the emptied glasses in my suite at Tainan Railway Hotel. The leftover ice cubes. Their gentle crackle.
The drinks they brought us had been winter melon tea, but its sweetness seemed to have eluded me until that train ride.
King: Shōjo, translating roughly to “young woman,” is a literary genre popularized in Japan beginning with the Meiji era in the early 1900s. The novels were serialized in magazines that targeted an adolescent fe- male readership. ↩︎
Yáng: The Niō warriors, Ebisu, and Benzaiten are all folk deities in Japan. The Niō warriors are guardians of Buddhist temples, who are often represented with menacing expressions. Ebisu and Benzaiten are two of Japan’s Shichifukujin (Seven Gods of Fortune), who are known for their smiling expressions. ↩︎
King: Senkan Tower (Mandarin: Chìhkǎn Tower) is also known in Dutch as Providentia. The structure was originally built in 1653 during Dutch colonization of Taiwan (1624–1662, 1664–1668). ↩︎
About the Translator: Lin King’s writing and translations have appeared in Boston Review, Joyland, Asymptote, and Columbia Journal. She is the translator of the Taiwanese historical graphic novel series The Boy from Clearwater by Yu Pei-Yun and Zhou Jian-Xin.
DON’T MISS OUT
Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.
YOUR INBOX IS LIT
Enjoy strange, diverting work from The Commuter on Mondays, absorbing fiction from Recommended Reading on Wednesdays, and a roundup of our best work of the week on Fridays. Personalize your subscription preferences here.
