![]() ![]() ![]() Machado studied writing formally at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop as such, her stories often straddle the line between “literary” and “genre” fiction, to the point that such distinctions cease to have meaning. This contradiction, this push and pull between autonomy and powerlessness, so present in the everyday lives and experiences of women, is burned into each of the eight stories in Machado’s collection, which uses the idea of “genre”-horror, fantasy, science fiction-to explore the surreality of what it’s like to be a woman. On the other, more insidious hand, there’s the sense that “her body” is a party thrown for the benefit of others, something to be enjoyed by everyone else but its owner. On one hand, the title refers to the empowerment of taking pleasure in one’s own body, that the body can and should be a cause for celebration for its owner. There’s a contradiction inherent in the title of Carmen Maria Machado’s debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties. ![]()
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