THANKS FOR THIS RIOT

An acerbic examination of family and femininity.

The stories in this collection plumb the performance of womanhood. Daughters, wives, girlfriends, and caretakers writ large reflect on their prescribed familial roles, their bodies, their professions, or their solitude with dry wit. Broken into three sections—“External Riots: Threats and Violence,” “Internal Riots: Secrets and Lies,” and “Laugh Riots: Growing and Trying”—the book grapples with what it means to come of age, as well as understand oneself, within a still very gendered world. In the opening short story, “More Restrictive Than Supportive,” the narrator’s controlling mother warns her at every opportunity that she may be kidnapped. As a result, “my wildest private daydream was to walk down the aisle of fake flowers at Joann Fabrics, alone, imagining that the plastic flowers were catcalling me while demeaning me passive-aggressively, like those golden afternoon blooms from Alice in Wonderland.” In “Full Stop,” a housewife joins a voice actor to drive to Jefferson City to protest the most recent abortion ban. Rather than enraged or emboldened by the political mission, the jaded narrator palpably feels the futility of their efforts. “[My sign] was surrounded by signs that said ‘TRUST WOMEN,’ which in our present circumstances seemed like an advanced directive. Perhaps we should have started with ‘SEE WOMEN’ and worked upward from there.” In “Safe Distances,” a mother goes through her closet with her daughter though she’d “rather not admit to my child that, for me, distance is the key to closeness.” In all of Bassett’s narratives, there is a tension between knowing someone versus being known, seeing versus understanding. Though characters may make attempts at community building or closeness, there remain the persistent, prevalent internal riots that make people strangers to others—and to themselves.

Stories that will amuse and entertain fourth-wave feminists.