Reviews

How to Wrestle a Girl: Stories by Venita Blackburn

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bakar's review

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4.0

stories reminded me of my partner 🖤

mosso's review

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4.0

How to Wrestle a Girl is a delightfully queer collection of short stories. All taking place in the same universe and gaining cohesion over time, I loved Blackburn's play with form. We have a quiz, crossword, and exercise log. I loved how Esperanza kept coming back and how moments from previous stories would be revisited later with more context. The continuous theme of queer adolescence in its many forms was a pleasure to explore. Quick and worth the read.

forgottenwitch's review

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Unfortunately, I just don’t think this book was for me. I really liked several of the stories in this collection and there were a few formats that I thought were fascinating — the grief log gets a particular shout out. However, a lot of this collection just didn't land for me personally.

There’s a somewhat stream of consciousness writing wrapped up in each of these stories, which not only made it difficult for me to follow what the message in the story was supposed to be, but also made me feel disconnected from the narrators. I was really hoping that a lot of these stories would grab me and pull me into their narrative, but that just never really happened. There are also various style changes between the stories, sometimes there quotation marks and sometimes there are not, so it can get a little confusing as to what is actually being said and when.

Part 2 of this collection follows a consistent narrator, so the style becomes a lot more stable and the stream of consciousness isn't as disruptive since you're following the same girl from story to story. I definitely enjoyed this part of the book way more that Part 1, unfortunately Part 2 is only about 37% of the whole book, so for me it was a bit of an uphill battle to get there. There are lines in Part 2 of the collection that do reference back to various short stories in Part 1, so it can be fun to link those together.

I feel like anyone who likes poetic prose or stream of consciousness, and is looking for a collection of short stories about the unease that can be found in girlhood, will enjoy this book.