Reviews

Horse Girls: Recovering, Aspiring, and Devoted Riders Redefine the Iconic Bond by Halimah Marcus

theyellowbrickreader's review

adventurous informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Suicide

not_ya_p's review

- cried several times 
- left me feeling full, powerful, nostalgic, grieving, hopeful
- intersectional 
- the childhood experience of gender, the queer body, and the horse if you get it you get it if you don’t you don’t 
- a big hug and apology and love letter to my inner child

heathernicole20's review

medium-paced

2.5

Maybe 3-5 of these essays were actually about women who love or have loved horses. I’m not sure the rest of the writers even like horses, let alone self identify as horse girls. 

notallbooks_mp's review

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

liralen's review

3.0

Once a year for the last five years, I have taken this path, moved from this kind of day into this same muted space and then, the Coliseum. Each year I have ridden to win a World Championship in Junior Exhibitor Hunter Pleasure, a division made up of girls under eighteen years old, and their Morgan horses, all of us outfitted for a hunt we'll never ride. We ride, instead, in circles, performing the commands of a disembodied announcer: walk, please, ladies, come down to the walk, reverse directions at the trot, canter please, riders, canter please. The most beautiful pair to follow these commands without fault wins. (Allie Rowbottom, 180)

I was never a horse girl—enchanted by the idea of horses as a child, yes, but with the clear sense that riding lessons were something for girls of a different class, that they would never be for me. My father and siblings and I went on trail rides a few times, in places far, far away from cities, and that was good enough.

And yes, the sense I get here is that riding as a sport—as it is practiced today—is something that is largely about image and class. Custom-fit riding boots costing hundreds of dollars, and time and money applied to the care and keeping of big animals, and travelling for competitions with no practical purpose...most major sports have no practical background that I know of, but it feels particularly striking here, where some of the competitions (see above) mimic something with a real-life application but in a way that is entirely divested of that application.

Some of the most interesting parts of the book connect to race, and to who thinks about race:

One day, because I’d been following some accounts connected to prominent Black travelers, I stumbled across photos from Outdoor Afro, a group of Black outdoor enthusiasts that included horseback riders. Besides photographs of myself, I couldn’t remember seeing images of a Black person on a horse before. (Sarah Enelow-Snyder, 136)

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Our history classes also taught them [white classmates] that Natives were dangerous “savages” who were vanquished by our forefathers because they were intellectually inferior. We learned that the first “American Dream” was “Manifest Destiny,” the delusion, veiled as divine purpose, that Christian settlers were destined by God to expand across the New World. I’ve lost count of how many times children and adults alike have said, “I didn’t know you still existed” to my face. Off the Rez, I was either invisible or an uncivilized relic on horseback. (Braudie Blais-Billie, 173)

Not surprisingly, it's the non-white riders who have the clearest sense of just how much whiteness and privilege there is in this form of riding. Don't get me wrong—riding was clearly a financial sacrifice for many of the writers' families—but the level of awareness varies.

If I imagine riding horses now, it's a more practical version than this: Wyoming, or Montana, or Saskatchewan, somewhere that it has a practical purpose (and wide, wide-open skies) and doesn't culminate in competitions where your posture is judged. But then, I was never a horse girl.

torifaye's review

5.0

I can't even begin to fully explain how much I loved this book. The deep dive into how many horse girls don't get to become horse women or have a 10-20 year gap between the two identities was phenomenal. I learned so much about my younger self and it gave me hope for my future self. This quickly became not only a favorite book of 2021, but probably a life long favorite.

sara_jex's review

challenging hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

I felt very validated by this book. Many of the authors’ experiences were different from mine, but I found relatable challenges, emotions, passions, and thoughts in each story. The authors also broadened my perspective of what it means to be labeled, or claim, or reject the label “horse girl.” Very illuminating read.

pghbookfanatic's review

adventurous hopeful inspiring slow-paced

4.0

sayhar13's review

emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

5.0

lonestarwords's review

4.0

I tell my friends with children that it's good for a girl to grow up around horses; I think it's true. It teaches you about power--how to wield it responsibly, when you must let go. It teaches you self-possession and the ability to stay calm when you're afraid. It makes you strong...
Horse Girls
Recovering, Aspiring, and Devoted Riders Redefine the Iconic Bond
Halimah Marcus/C.Morgan Babst
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Horses are a huge part of my family's life and Horse Girls was a perfect little book because it combines two of my greatest loves. It is is a compilation of essays from some big names in the literary world (Jane Smiley, Carmen Maria Machado, and Maggie Shipstead to name just a few) that aims to debunk some of the glamorous and stereotypical images of women and horses and replace them with real life experiences from horse women. Not women who ride competitively for a living, but women for whom horses have either filled a void, calmed a fear or healed a wound. Those of us who have been blessed to have horses be a part of our lives know that these animals have a power to do all of these and more and these essays bring those powers to life.
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I am often asked how our daughters turned out so hard working and resilient and my husband and I always have a one word answer: HORSES.
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This book is the perfect gift for the "horse girl" in your life. It will help you understand her devotion to these magnificent creatures and give you a unique perspective on a very special and hard to describe bond, one I feel the pull of every day.
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"If we could entrust this planet to only one kind, I'd stake my life on the horses.
May they inherit the earth."
Last quote, but there are many.