The final guest post in “About the Girls” this year is from EK Johnston. After reading Exit, Pursued By A Bear, her most recent novel, I had expressed a few questions that felt left open for me as a reader. They weren’t criticisms, but rather, threads of thought I wanted to toy with. She reached out to me to answer them — and thus, here’s a really thought-provoking post about power, about girls, and about how sometimes realistic fiction can be the most fantasy of fiction. 

E.K. Johnston had several jobs and one vocation before she became a published writer. If she’s learned anything, it’s that things turn out weird sometimes, and there’s not a lot you can do about it. Well, that and how to muscle through awkward fanfic because it’s about a pairing she likes.

You can follow Kate on Twitter (@ek_johnston) to learn more about Alderaanian political theory than you really need to know, or on Tumblr (ekjohnston) if you’re just here for pretty pictures.

E.K. Johnston is represented by Adams Literary.

____________________

There’s a thing that I keep saying: this book is the most fantasy that I have written. The worst part is that it’s true.

I have unleashed a plague of dragons across the globe, turned a girl into a god so that she could save the world, and I’m in the process of re-writing history from the Victorian Era onwards, and yet Exit, Pursued By A Bear is my fantasy novel.

To write it, I imagined a world where a girl is believed and supported; a world where adults do their jobs and children are gracious; a world where a bear of a girl can heal, and then save herself. And it’s the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever done.

It’s made slightly less fantastical by the setting. Canada, particularly southwestern Ontario, is a much easier place to access abortion clinics, therapists, and necessary medication, but it’s not perfect. Hermione has access to a car, which not every rural teenager would – especially if they didn’t have their parents’ support. Other Canadian places, like PEI, which has no clinics at all, and the Territories, need attention and funding.

I don’t regret writing any of it the way I did.

I didn’t set out to write a different kind of rape story. Or, rather, I did, but I don’t want to set books like SPEAK, ALL THE RAGE, FAULT LINE, SEX & VIOLENCE, etc, etc, aside. Those books are important. Those books are real. BEARS!!! is a “how it could be” book, a “how it should be” book. It’s the world I want for children who have been violated.

I think what I ended up with was Polly Olivier in book form; the girl who will hold your hair while you vomit and your flower when you duel. The VERONICA MARS comparison was deliberate on my part: this is a Veronica who never had to build that shell, and, more importantly, Lily and Meg don’t have to die to kick-start the story.

Because that’s what I want too: stories for girls that don’t revolve around what they are to their families, teachers, and boyfriends, where their reactions aren’t dramatic fodder. I wasn’t able to do this entirely in BEARS!!!, but I could have my characters be aware of the roles they played in other people’s lives, and redefine themselves accordingly.

I tend to view writing YA less as coming-of-age stories, and more as deciding who you want to be with who you are, but both of those imply a certain level of arrested development. We love to tell stories, especially tragic ones, and lock the protagonists into that narrative as if they can never be anything else, but that’s not how life works.

The world expects so much of girls, with no guidance and a myriad of contradictions. Hermione learns to give herself permission to live outside of that, despite what happened to her and how people want to view her as a result. I give you permission to do the same thing.

Today’s piece for “About the Girls” comes from debut author Samantha Mabry. Her novel, A Fierce and Subtle Poison, hits shelves April 12. I read it a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t shake the story from my head. I’m thrilled she wrote this piece about Isabel, who is the main character of the story, but whose story isn’t told by her. 

Samantha Mabry grew up in Texas playing bass guitar along to vinyl records, writing fan letters to rock stars, and reading big, big books, and credits her tendency toward magical thinking to her Grandmother Garcia, who would wash money in the kitchen sink to rinse off any bad spirits. She teaches writing and Latino literature at a community college in Dallas, Texas, where she lives with her husband, a historian, and her pets, including a cat named Mouse. A Fierce and Subtle Poison is her first novel. 

____________________

The girl in my story begins without a body. She exists somewhere apart from but tied to everyone in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. She lives –if you could call it that –behind the walls of a house that’s been afflicted with a curse. She haunts the dreams of an entire community. She’s a myth, a girl with green skin and grass for hair. She’s a witch who grants wishes.

The story goes on, however, and the girl begins to make herself known. She creeps from dreams into the realm of reality. She leaves the confines of her house and slips letters under doors. She reveals her name –Isabel. Then, finally, she reveals herself. That doesn’t mean the stories stop about her stop, though.

Isabel is a girl. She’s trying to figure herself out, yet others are intent on figuring her out for her. They tell her who she is and what she means, and they’re intent on clinging to the stories they’ve made up about her. They heap those stories upon her, layer on top of thick layer, until she’s nearly smothered: all stories, no girl.

Take, for instance, Isabel’s father: he claims she’s a miracle, unlike anyone who has ever come before or will come again. Lucas, the boy with the all-consuming desire to lift the curse from her house, isn’t sure if she’s a miracle or something more sinister, but he’s fascinated with her nonetheless.

This is what happens to girls, and not just girls in books. Stories get made up and told about them. Some of those stories are true. Some are false. Some are sort of true and sort of false. Some of those stories slide right off; some of them stick. Some of them get notched right into the bone. People –known and unknown –say, “Because you are a girl, you should do this.” Or worse, “Because you are my girl, you should do this.”

What I wanted to do, ultimately, in A Fierce and Subtle Poison, was give Isabel some amount of control over her own story. Even if her own life had largely been controlled by outside forces, I wanted her –in just the right moment –to take control of and steer her life in the direction of her choosing. 

I think that girls need to keep hearing that they can do this, that they can decide which of the stories about them are useful to keep and which are worthless. They can then shed those useless stories, like shrugging off the dirty coats of strangers. They do not have to be what they are told they should be, or act the way they are told they should act. They can choose to define themselves and wrestle back the control of their narrative. I’m not saying this is easy; it can be difficult and terrifying, a strange and solo trip. But still: it’s possible and sometimes necessary to just set a course and go.