A review by tregina
Bearded Women: Stories by Teresa Milbrodt

5.0

I started out worried that this collection was going to be at least a little exploitative or dehumanizing, based on the title and theme, but it wasn't that at all. It was the opposite of that. I never anticipated how moved I was going to be. The stories all explore the body and identity in different ways, some bodies falling within the breadth of human variation (conjoined twins, gigantism, ichthyosis) and a few not (cyclops, medusa). In all of them we explore the person, the way they negotiate their life and the way they relate to other people and to themselves, the way they confront the varied and mundane challenges of the everyday.

The more I read of this, the more I loved it.