incurable graphomania by Anna Krivolapova
described as "14 stories of voyeurism, paranoia, defense contractors, Russian stewardesses, venomous WASPs, and more," not mentioning the author's obsession with physiognomy
racism
A tall girl with a flat, Kazakh face brought a bundle of my wife's coat and purse back to me. She and my wife were the only smiling women in the room. I wondered if I was wrong to interpret the Kazakh's high cheekbones and narrow almond eyes as warmth when they were probably just frozen into an ambiguous Steppe expression.
i mean, this sucks, but it's the second story in the book - maybe it's ironic, or purposeful, some type of commentary on eastern european immigrants being racist towards specific regional ethnic groups. it can also be an attempted commentary on racism and STILL be racist.
but then we get to another story and see a different description:
Chiomara had a flat Mayan face, a face carved in stone somewhere below the equator. Wide forehead, high cheekbones, dark eyes.
also a flat face, but instead of frozen and ambiguous, it's carved in stone, both instances highlighting the lack of expression/emotionality the narrator sees in their faces - though these get framed as neutral facts about their physical features.
in the same story, this exchange:
"Can I call you Chief?"
"Sure. Why?"
"You have the face of an Indian Chief, you look powerful, quiet. The stoic type. Your name would be...Dark Horse Crouching Behind a Storm Cloud. Or Mountain Lion Climbing Up Concrete."
"Indians don't have concrete."
"Of course they do. You think those casinos are made out of leftover wigwams or something?"
a completely separate person associates a third ethnic group's face with stoicism and lack of emotion - this just makes me feel it's an unexamined bias on the author's part. i won't even get into the "haha, those backwards Indians and their casinos" part because jesus christ.
trans(phobia/misogyny): "skin in the game"
all of those working class folx getting their gender switched around...isn't that funny? doesn't that make you laugh??? this story takes place in 2044 and the main worldbuilding info you need to know is "skin - it's the new currency.
"People are selling cubes of skin to plastic surgeons. Funeral homes and the obese are making a killing." ...
"What's the skin for?"
"Skin grafts. Fake tits and phalloplasties. Neck lifts and face transplants. Height surgeries, too. They glue it on in strips." ... He waved a hand in my face. Some kind of youths of today gesture.
with the inclusion of "phalloplasties," trans people are positioned early on as consumers of other people's skin.
later in the story, the narrator is at a bar, where the conversation turns to the arrest of a woman named Mitzy, who lived with her child and shared a duplex with an obese woman named Pam.
(Mitzy's) preteen son, Rain, stayed locked in his bedroom. One day when he was at school, she decided to snoop. She found stockings in his drawer and support groups in his open tabs. She started going on those same forums, pretending to be a trans teen herself. She started chatting with her son, bonding with him as 'Robin.' The further Rain transitioned, the more Mitzy's social life blossomed. Then came the two failed breast augumentations- necrosis, infection, total loss of skin. When she found out how much a skin transplant costs, she started to come up with a plan.
the first time i read this, i thought (maybe due to the name Rain) that she had a trans son, but it sounds like she has a trans daughter that the speaker is misgendering. this is from the mouth of a random dude at a bar, so i'm even willing to be like, okay, this only means ONE CHARACTER is transphobic, but there's still a few more key problems with this narrative:
- we have the "adults invading kid's spaces to encourage them to transition" scare narrative, completely presented as true within the story, and
- not only is the mother augumenting the breasts of her preteen, this relatively safe surgery somehow utterly fails
then there's the next part...
- mitzy intentionally disables pam and, as her "caretaker," starts carving chunks of her skin off so she has a cheap source of skin grafts for rain's boobs.
are you fucking kidding me?? this is 2023 and you are writing a short story about parents of trans kids literally taking skin from cis women in order to further their kid's transition? what the fuck is wrong with you!!!!
anyway that was uh, the worst bit of this story by far, but a few pages later there's 'a "humorous" paragraph describing the narrator's thoughts about the bar employee:
I bet her name isn't even Melba. Name changes have gotten really popular among the barista class. You can change your name and gender in ten minutes. The DMV website sends you a new birth certificate and you're off to begin your new life as Kish/Flax/Grae/Morrow. I met a woman named Tic in the deli this morning.
that's right. in the near future, it's just TOO EASY to change your name and gender these days. and all of those POORS are hopping onto the trend, with ridiculous names to make their pathetic lives seem a little more interesting. isn't that funny? doesn't that just make you laugh?
racism AND transmisogyny: "expert witness"
set in 2066, an unknown killer is stalking the city streets...we follow jem and carden, a straight couple, trying to survive in their shitty apartment.
Every ten months, Jem braided Carden's hair in two and cut them off right at the base. They sold the hair to Hilde, the Hatian woman downstairs... Jem biked to Carrefour, Hilde's soul food restaurant, on his way to work. Hilde was six feet tall with mean pink palms that snatched Carden's chestnut braids out of his hands before haggling over the price. Her tendinous catcher's mitts stroked the hair with a vigor that made him want to accept any price and leave.
okay, there's a couple things here, namely hilde being described in oafish terms and being strangely desirous of specifically a white person's hair. also haitian cuisine is not the same as soul food but maybe the author knows that.
neighbor kid asks Jem why a pet cat needs a leash and Jem responds:
"Have you ever seen a stray cat around here? If she escapes, Hilde will make her into a meat pie."
granted, this was published in September 2023, exactly one year before neo-Nazis in Springfield, OH spread the rumor that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pets, a rumor then amplified by JD Vance, Musk, and others, but still seems insanely tone deaf just considering....fucking everything that has been going on for the last decade-plus regarding immigration in the US!!
the boyfriend, Jem, then gets arrested for allegedly being the serial killer. his girlfriend, Carden, isn't so sure, and goes to the "expert witnesses" - basically a community watch group that collaborate with the cops to solve crimes. she tells them that Jem can't have been the killer, as he's arrested and the bodies are still being found. she invites one of the witnesses, Donovan, to talk over lunch at Hilde's soul food restaurant.
(Carden says) "I'm taking mine home in a box, I'm not so hungry."
"Really? You suggested this place. Good pork, very tender."
"It's chicken, allegedly."
"Nah, there ain't no way. This is the other white meat. Well, this chunk has a bit of a navy blue tinge..."
Carden took her cup and meat pie to the police station.
a few pages later, a group of neighbors talking outside of the (now former) restaurant...
"Can you believe it? She was feeding us stray cats, pigeons, rats, and homeless women. Someone found part of a tattoo in their meat pie."
"Disgusting." Another woman whispered. "They'd kill her if she did that back in Haiti."
"She? They ran her prints and found out her real name is Louis Cadet, a human trafficker that escaped from a Miami prison. She put on heels and a wig and started a new life up here."
...that's right. this story is about a haitian trafficker who, on top of killing (white) people (and their pets) and buying their hair, is also "a man masquerading as a woman". great case study of how transmisogyn(y/oir) interlap.
the story ends with hilde getting captured and carden's boyfriend being released from prison. so, uh, that's it. a black woman is "actually" a criminal, immigrant man.
TLDR
this book sucked badly
do not recommend