Sub Rosa

gwen — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

The story of Sub Rosa is bizarre, surreal, intensely wonderful, and horrible at the same time. You must read this with an open mind and heart. The story focuses on Little, a runaway girl who is lost in the world and herself, who gets rescued by a "daddy" and whisked away to the land of Sub Rosa, a magical street of Glories and their working families. Glories are sex workers with charms—they all have different magical powers. There's always food and sunny days on Sub Rosa—no one gets killed or cries. You're taken care of. But there is an underlying feeling of loss on Sub Rosa, too. Your real name can be forgotten, and cherished memories of your life before coming to Sub Rosa are hard to dig up. You're protected on Sub Rosa, but you still lose your identity. There's plenty of work, filled with "live ones" (johns) and some of the nights detailed in the story seem to drain all the energy and power out of the girls. They are empowered though, by the large sums of cash they receive and the ability to heal the live ones and make them "right" again.

I embraced these characters. They are decked with butterfly adornments and glitter make-up, eat pastries from a bakery called Babycakes, and wash and buy their gorgeous clothes out of the most appealing sounding laundromat I've ever heard of. They study science and marine biology. They live on a street where people make offerings to the tar patches in front of their houses. There was so much weird beauty in their existence. At the same time, I felt weighed down by their constant need for attention from the men, both the daddies (pimps) and the lives ones. I had to think about this journey again and again. Do Little and the rest of the Glories really live a life of salvation? What I realized is that I don't think that's the main point of this story. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this magical tale of prostitutes and a street where goodness prevails is showing the light and dark of sex work. It's where the grit of working streets becomes a fantasy rich with complexity. A hint of glow-in-the-dark nail polish flashes through my mind, the smell of freshly laundered dresses. Little's story and the rest of the Glories' stories continue to stay with me, a testament to Amber Dawn's vivid storytelling.

Written by: Maleka Fruean, March 24th 2011

Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire

admin — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:34:00 +0000

Edited by Amber Dawn

Arsenal Pulp Press

A clever play on the seminal novel Kiss of the Spider Woman by Argentine writer and political exile Manuel Puig, Amber Dawn’s anthology Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire promises a transgressive alternative to traditional horror literature and its stereotypical, categorical portrayals of women and their sexuality. Packed in this slim volume are seventeen individual works by sixteen authors, primarily short stories with poems dispersed in between. The very existence and formation of a work like Fist of the Spider Woman is deeply political and feminist through its aggregate of queer and progressive writers as well as its subversive representations of women, sex, love and relationships.

That being said, I really wanted to like this book. I wanted to love it with a capital L. Unfortunately, for such an exciting and politically charged production, this book ultimately failed to hook me as its reader. As is a reality for many anthologies, the quality and effectiveness varied from work to work. I did not expect shivers, gasps nor stiffened hairs as part of my reading experience; however, most of the pieces failed to render any kind of response other than blasé tolerance as I turned their pages. The promise this book carries is great, but unfortunately lacking in its execution. They did, however, contain an element of playful twistedness and imagination. I appreciated that the writers did not shy away from taboo subjects, with stories such as Michelle Tea’s “Crabs” (which I found quite enjoyable, and ended being my personal favorite) exploding in raw, corporeal descriptions fused with humor.

Overall, Fist of the Spider Woman's countering portrayal of women characters (especially its villains) is refreshing in comparison to the saturation of femme fatales and damsels in distress one is offered in typical literature, but these radical character productions are sadly overshadowed by tepid prose. Queer horror literature has such transformative potential, and though I wouldn’t say this work embodied that, it is an honest start.

Written by: Yujean Park, May 14th 2009