babendir-machado

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/reviews/magical-monstrosity-everyday-oppression-collide-body-parties/"></div>Carmen Maria Machado begins her debut by asserting control. The first story in Her Body and Other Parties, “The Husband Stitch,” starts with a parenthetical guide to reading the story aloud. There are five instructions, but two stand out; the first is for the narrator’s father: “kind, booming; like your father; or the man you wish was your father.” The second is for “all other women,” for whom the reader is instructed to use a voice “interchangeable” with the one they use for the narrator. This dynamic largely shapes the book, as Machado and her narrators recognize and battle against the heteropatriarchal structures that have tried to shape their lives. <a href="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/reviews/magical-monstrosity-everyday-oppression-collide-body-parties/#more-5431" class="more-link">Read more</a>
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Magical Monstrosity and Everyday Oppression Collide in Her Body and Other Parties

Magical Monstrosity and Everyday Oppression Collide in Her Body and Other Parties

Still Lives

Bradley Babendir is a fiction writer and critic. He has written for The New Republic, The Millions, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Boston, where he is the editor-in-chief of Redivider and an MFA candidate at Emerson College.

Bradley Babendir

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Bradley Babendir is a fiction writer and critic. He has written for The New Republic, The Millions, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Boston, where he is the editor-in-chief of Redivider and an MFA candidate at Emerson College.