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A review by kell_xavi
So We Can Glow: Stories by Leesa Cross-Smith
3.0
3.5 stars (a few good ones, but many were just okay)
Received in a Goodreads giveaway! It’s taken me a while to finish this collection, but it’s been great company for as much summer as has passed while I’ve read it. This collection is a balance of teenage girl stories—who wear fruity lipgloss and live in the south and have curly hair that smells like flowers—and stories of women in their 30s—who listen to cowboy tunes in bars and think about their teenager crushes, tough and soft and wild girls who have kids and sometimes-boyfriends and still wear lipgloss. The stories are pretty consistently female-led and about straight relationships.
These are glowing stories and summer stories and American girl stories. Some, like “Girlheart Cake,” are lists of what makes the summer American girl. In music, the stories (and some of what Cross-Smith names) are Linda Ronstadt, Ravyn Lenae, Kacey Musgraves, Britney Spears, Lana del Rey, Stevie Nicks.
It’s refreshing to see the Black girls and white girls take up the same grief, music, sun, and joy. “Out of the Strong” does that too, makes a single kind of partial-fantasy world where beauty shimmers over everything. A lot of these stories are, indeed, the fantasy version of a crush or a relationship or a life. The confident, flirty girls who populate the stories are the same ones who show up in candid beach photos in flower crowns, grins and bikinis, or in drawings with tiny waists, high-waisted jeans, and arms around each other’s freckles shoulders. They’re like Shelley in Twin Peaks or the character Winona Ryder plays in Mermaids. They’re cool and sweet and motherly like Janelle Monae in Moonlight, like @_jnatae_ on Insta/TikTok.
There are daydreams of construction workers in yards (Pink Bubblegum and Flowers), of crushes on brothers’ friends (“And Down We Go!”), of safe boys who are friends (“Some are Dark”), of rockstars (“Fast as You”), poolside boys (“The Darl Inn”), finding the right man after a long time of being alone (“Dandelion Light,” “Unknown Legend”), or finding someone in a strange place (“Home Safe,” “Two Cherries,” “Crepuscular”) or realizing you’re with one who can’t make you happy (so many).
This is a blending together story collection, all of them in a similar pink-sunset-high headspace, a limbo that never quite touches on reality. Some of these stories are paired, but with so many, I had mostly forgotten the first story by the time I discovered the second. In most cases, the follow up wasn’t as strong as the original, and dragged them both down. The exception was “Chateau Marmont, Champagne, Chanel” and “California, Keep Us,” which were two of my favourites and which each became more in the reflection of the other.
Though there remained a buzzing excitement throughout this collection, I found that the format of a number of very short stories didn’t work very well for me. I prefer a smaller number of deeper stories, usually. A lot of these felt like experiments, pieces of candy like poems that were surface-level sugary but never quite satisfying.
These were my favourite few:
We, Moons
The Great Barrier Reef
A Tennis Court
Winona Forever
Girlheart Cake with Glitter Frosting*
Chateau Mormont, Champagne, Chanel
/ California, Keep Us
Out of the Strong, Something Sweet*
Some Are Dark, Some Are Light*
And Down We Go!*
Crepuscular
Received in a Goodreads giveaway! It’s taken me a while to finish this collection, but it’s been great company for as much summer as has passed while I’ve read it. This collection is a balance of teenage girl stories—who wear fruity lipgloss and live in the south and have curly hair that smells like flowers—and stories of women in their 30s—who listen to cowboy tunes in bars and think about their teenager crushes, tough and soft and wild girls who have kids and sometimes-boyfriends and still wear lipgloss. The stories are pretty consistently female-led and about straight relationships.
These are glowing stories and summer stories and American girl stories. Some, like “Girlheart Cake,” are lists of what makes the summer American girl. In music, the stories (and some of what Cross-Smith names) are Linda Ronstadt, Ravyn Lenae, Kacey Musgraves, Britney Spears, Lana del Rey, Stevie Nicks.
It’s refreshing to see the Black girls and white girls take up the same grief, music, sun, and joy. “Out of the Strong” does that too, makes a single kind of partial-fantasy world where beauty shimmers over everything. A lot of these stories are, indeed, the fantasy version of a crush or a relationship or a life. The confident, flirty girls who populate the stories are the same ones who show up in candid beach photos in flower crowns, grins and bikinis, or in drawings with tiny waists, high-waisted jeans, and arms around each other’s freckles shoulders. They’re like Shelley in Twin Peaks or the character Winona Ryder plays in Mermaids. They’re cool and sweet and motherly like Janelle Monae in Moonlight, like @_jnatae_ on Insta/TikTok.
There are daydreams of construction workers in yards (Pink Bubblegum and Flowers), of crushes on brothers’ friends (“And Down We Go!”), of safe boys who are friends (“Some are Dark”), of rockstars (“Fast as You”), poolside boys (“The Darl Inn”), finding the right man after a long time of being alone (“Dandelion Light,” “Unknown Legend”), or finding someone in a strange place (“Home Safe,” “Two Cherries,” “Crepuscular”) or realizing you’re with one who can’t make you happy (so many).
This is a blending together story collection, all of them in a similar pink-sunset-high headspace, a limbo that never quite touches on reality. Some of these stories are paired, but with so many, I had mostly forgotten the first story by the time I discovered the second. In most cases, the follow up wasn’t as strong as the original, and dragged them both down. The exception was “Chateau Marmont, Champagne, Chanel” and “California, Keep Us,” which were two of my favourites and which each became more in the reflection of the other.
Though there remained a buzzing excitement throughout this collection, I found that the format of a number of very short stories didn’t work very well for me. I prefer a smaller number of deeper stories, usually. A lot of these felt like experiments, pieces of candy like poems that were surface-level sugary but never quite satisfying.
These were my favourite few:
We, Moons
The Great Barrier Reef
A Tennis Court
Winona Forever
Girlheart Cake with Glitter Frosting*
Chateau Mormont, Champagne, Chanel
/ California, Keep Us
Out of the Strong, Something Sweet*
Some Are Dark, Some Are Light*
And Down We Go!*
Crepuscular