BOOK REVIEW: Your Body Is Not Your Body edited by Alex Woodroe with Matt Blairstone

 

I meant to post this book review back in October for Halloween, but I got super busy with class and work and couldn't get to it until now. But the cold and darkness of winter is still a fitting setting for horror, so here you go.

For some trans, nonbinary, and intersex folks, their body can become a kind of nightmare prison. Things feel wrong or off (though obviously, this isn’t true for every gender non-conforming person, and everyone expresses their gender differently). They might feel that their body is not in their control. And sometimes, even when they do start to take command of their own appearance and presentation, someone else tries to take that autonomy from them.

This anthology was created in response to the recent attempts by the Texas government to criminalize trans and gender non-conforming youth and their families. It is an angry cry and push-back against those who try to steal a person’s basic rights to their own body.  

The stories within explore all manner of body horror, existential dread, and bizarre imagery. There are medieval monks experiencing demonic pregnancies; A housewife baking up her own Frankenstein creature; a trans boy summoning Hellish powers so he can join the fencing team; a space cathedral carrying the corpse of God to inter in a dead star; high school girls holding in their frustration and anger until they literally explode; and even more bizarre, phantasmal sights.

Horror is about exploring the dark, often uncomfortable places of the human experience and these stories can get bloody raw, exploring themes of physical and emotional abuse, sexual assault, violence, and transphobia. I definitely had to put the book down a few times to take a breather. However, these stories are not meant merely for shock value or torture porn. They are catharsis for writers and readers both. A way of capturing and dragging the horrors out into the daylight. The edits are aware of how upsetting some of these tales can be, though, and have included an appendix of content warnings for each one.

Your Body is Not Your Body is also steeped in the genre of Weird fiction, defined as a mix of horror, fantasy, and sci-fi that is experimental, and often transgressive. Several stories play with the structure of narrative, occasionally breaking it down to the point that one may need to read a few times to figure out what is going on. Or maybe you’re meant to piece together your own explanation for what is happening. This may be a bit off-putting for readers who prefer a more linear horror narrative, but the stories run through many styles, and there is something everyone can appreciate.

Your Body is Not Your Body is available in paperback from Tenebrous Press.