Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Mutants, Slayers and Freaks

by Emily Pohl-Weary (Editor), Nalo Hopkinson (Contributor), Larissa Lai (Contributor)

Bombshell spies, slayers, witches and assassins: kick-ass female stars have taken over blockbuster movies like Charlie's Angels and Kill Bill as well as prime time TV hits such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed. These characters kill as quickly as they brak down in tears, and beat guys up as easily as they toss them into bed. With very few exceptions, they're young, white, beautiful, straight and skinny. How are young women to respond to these images of women who fight (or bite) back? As the product of corporate media, are these icons of "female power" merely cons?This one-of-a-kind anthology of new fiction, essays and comics recognizes the seductiveness as well as the limitations of such contemporary pop culture heroines. Contributors - including Nalo Hopkinson, Larissa Lai, Shary Boyle, Nikki Stafford, Mariko Tamaki, Sonja Ahlers and Sherwin Tjia - critique constructs of female power and invent alternative role models.

Genres: Nonfiction, Canada, Gender

360 pages, Paperback

First published April 21, 2004

About the author

Award-winning author Emily Pohl-Weary's latest novel is How to Be Found (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023).

She has published seven previous books. Her poetry collection, Ghost Sick: A Poetry of Witness, won the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. And her biography, Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril, won a Hugo Award and was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award.

Her 2022 audio play The Witch’s Circle, a retelling of a Baba Yaga folktale, can be streamed at theotherpath.ca/listen

Emily holds a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development from the University of Toronto (OISE) and teaches at the UBC School of Creative Writing in Vancouver, Canada.

Reviews

[Althea Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Previously read in Neil Gaiman's 'Unnatural Creatures.' Then, I said: "Teenage girls should be happy with their bodies and stick up for themselves against attempted date rape. Yes, fine, I agree. But I didn’t love the story."

This time, I felt slightly more charitable toward it (I did re-read). It's very well-written, and you do feel for the main character. But the Message For Teenage Girls definitely overwhelms anything else about the story.

['Nathan Burgoine · Rating 3 out of 5]

As always with a collection of writings, it's hard to decide where to stand on the collection as a whole. I daresay that Pohl-Weary did a damned fine job thematically and with the organization (there is a definite sense of, well, sense to the order in which the pieces are presented), but the quality of the works does vary quite a bit.

The highlight, for me, was "'Cuz the Black Chick Always Gets it First," by Candra K. Gill, a solid bit of work on the dynamics of race in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' - it's refreshing to find a fan who can deconstruct a show for its weaknesses, not just its strengths, and balancing both in the same entry was a nice touch.

The lowpoint, for me, was actually an artwork piece. Shary Boyle has a panel of five or six pages, which ran the gamut of a wonderful piece with a frumpy lady flying with birds, to a very angry looking woman with a baseball bat. But the piece that really threw me off was one where three young girls of various racial descent are holding a man pinned in a kneeling position - one little girl holding his hands behind his back, one with her foot on his groin, in a pose that speaks of pressure application, and one with a knife to the man's throat.

Now - I think there was an aim for role-reversal here - the typical (and factual in the majority of cases) white male pedophile. Reversed, this picture would be a disturbing violent piece about a pedophile, a predator, a sick tableau of violence. Instead, we have a sick tableau of violence where three little girls threaten a man's life, and we are left to assume the man has done something bad (since, for all that I can attempt to project here, it's not like one can point a finger at a row of men and say "Normal, normal, pedophile, normal...") Like I said, I think it aimed for role-reversal; it missed.

All in all, however, this was a solid bit of editing - prose and nonfiction both, some graphic novels, some artwork (the rest of the pictures by Shary Boyle, I should note, I quite enjoyed), all of it of a decent enough calibre to be substantive in total.

Definitely worth a bite.

[Three O'Clock Press]

Bombshell spies, slayers, witches and assassins: kick-ass female stars have taken over blockbuster movies like Charlie's Angels and Kill Bill as well as prime time TV hits such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed. These characters kill as quickly as they brak down in tears, and beat guys up as easily as they toss them into bed. With very few exceptions, they're young, white, beautiful, straight and skinny. How are young women to respond to these images of women who fight (or bite) back? As the product of corporate media, are these icons of "female power" merely cons?This one-of-a-kind anthology of new fiction, essays and comics recognizes the seductiveness as well as the limitations of such contemporary pop culture heroines. Contributors - including Nalo Hopkinson, Larissa Lai, Shary Boyle, Nikki Stafford, Mariko Tamaki, Sonja Ahlers and Sherwin Tjia - critique constructs of female power and invent alternative role models.

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mixed bag. I love the essays on Buffy and some of the works of art & fiction, but others were just meh.

I am totally in the mood for a Buffy binge now!