So We Can Glow: Stories

by Leesa Cross-Smith

A lush, glittering short story collection exploring female obsession and desire by an award-winning writer Roxane Gay calls "a consummate storyteller."

From Kentucky to the California desert, these forty-two short stories expose the glossy and matte hearts of girls and women in moments of obsessive desire and fantasy, wildness and bad behavior, brokenness and fearlessness, and more.

Teenage girls sneak out on a summer night to meet their boyfriends by the train tracks. A woman escapes suffocating grief through a vivid fantasy life. Members of a cult form an unsettling chorus as they extol their passion for the same man. A love story begins over cabbages in a grocery store. A laundress' life is consumed by obsession for a famous baseball player. Two high school friends kiss all night and binge-watch Winona Ryder movies after the death of a sister.

Leesa Cross-Smith's sensuous stories will drench readers in nostalgia for summer nights and sultry days, the intense friendships of teenage girls, and the innate bonds felt between women. She evokes the pangs of loss and motherhood, the headiness and destructive potential of desire, and the pure exhilaration of being female. The stories in So We Can Glow--some long, some gone in a flash, some told over text and emails--take the wild hearts of girls and women and hold them up so they can catch the light.


We, moons --
The Great Barrier Reef is dying but so are we --
Unknown legend --
Low, small --
A tennis court --
Tim Riggins would've smoked --
Surreptitious, canary, chamomile --
Winona forever --
Girlheart cake with glitter frosting --
Fast as you --
Chateau Marmont, champagne, Chanel --
Bearish --
All that smoke howling blue --
Pink bubblegum and flowers --
Knock out the heart lights so we can glow --
Get rowdy --
Re: little doves --
Out of the strong, something sweet --
The lengths --
Small and high up --
Small are dark, some are light, summer melts --
Bright --
Dark and sweaty and dirty --
Home safe --
Teenage dreams time machine --
Rope burns --
Get Faye & Birdie --
The Darl Inn --
You should love the right things --
And down we go! --
Crepuscular --
Stay and stay and stay --
Two cherries under a lavender moon --
When it gets warm --
Boy smoke --
Dandelion light --
California, keep us --
Cloud report --
Downright --
You got me --
Eine kleine nachmusik --
A girl has her secrets --
Vincent

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary, Romance, Book Club, Feminism, Literary Fiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 10, 2020

About the author

Leesa Cross-Smith is a homemaker and writer from Kentucky. She is the author of seven books: AS YOU WISH, GOODBYE EARL, HALF-BLOWN ROSE, THIS CLOSE TO OKAY, SO WE CAN GLOW, WHISKEY & RIBBONS, EVERY KISS A WAR. HALF-BLOWN ROSE received Coups De Cœur recognition from the American Library in Paris and was the Amazon Editors’ Spotlight for June 2022, the inaugural pick for Amazon’s Editorial Director Sarah Gelman’s Book Club Sarah Selects, and the Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick for June 2022. THIS CLOSE TO OKAY was a Goodreads Choice 2021 Nominee for Best Fiction, a Book of the Month Book of the Year 2021 Nominee, a Book of the Month Early Release Pick for December 2020, the Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick for February 2021 and the Marie Claire Book Club Pick for March 2021. She was longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize and SO WE CAN GLOW was listed as one of NPR's Best Books of 2020. WHISKEY & RIBBONS won the 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) Gold Medal in Literary Fiction, was longlisted for the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was one of O Magazine's 2018 Top Books of Summer. EVERY KISS A WAR was nominated for the PEN Open Book Award (2014) and was a finalist for both the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction (2012) and the Iowa Short Fiction Award (2012). Find more @ LeesaCrossSmith.com

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leesa Cross-Smith is such a beguiling writer and her skills are on full display in So We Can Glow. These are stories about breathless love, lustful abandon, all that glitters, hot summers, cool pavement, sticky skin, beautifully beating hearts. There is such authenticity to these stories and nostalgia that is tempered with just enough of a clear-eyed understanding of the world as it is, not just how we hoped it might be. It’s also refreshing to see a writer crafting stories that are so unapologetically for women, about women, a love letter to who we are, the best and worst of us, held high and true, so we can glow as brightly as we dare.

[Leesa · Rating 5 out of 5]

FIVE GLITTERING STARS BC I THOUGHT IT, I WROTE IT, I SOLD IT, I LOVE IT.

[Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one hit me at the right time. Leesa Cross-Smith, award-winning author of Whiskey and Ribbons, is back with a book stories for and about women. Stories of love, obsession, secrets, and empowerment. This book is a treasure and just what I needed right now.

I received a gifted copy from the publisher. All opinions are my own.

Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader

[Anne Bogel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this sophisticated short story collection, which takes the reader on quite a ride, emotionally speaking. My personal favorites are The Great Barrier Reef Is Dying And So Are We and Girlheart Cake with Glitter Frosting (I could have read ten more pages of that one!). Don't miss Leesa's acknowledgements, they're terrific and give such insight into her inspiration.

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wanted to love this one in part because of the hype, yet most of the collection fell flat for me. I felt some moments of emotion and longing throughout these short stories – an attraction to someone formerly forbidden, the messiness of adolescent longing, the weight of wondering if your lover loves you back. Yet, as a few other reviewers have said, these stories felt more like writing exercises, like the beginnings of what could be great. In the longer pieces, I wanted to know more about the characters and their motivations beyond their in the moment romantic desire or attraction. I felt curious about their histories, past relational experiences, their internal lives transcending their immediate object of desire. I sense that fleshing these characters out more would have helped me feel more connected to them.

Still haven’t read a 5-star read in almost two months now. Onto the next!

[Nursebookie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories that I needed in my life.

This is an exceptionally well curated collection that focuses and celebrates girls and women. I enjoyed the stories on love and desires, fantasy and fearlessness, as well as, empowerment and recklessness. The stories are pretty wild and amazing, but all just so much fun to read.

Leesa Cross-Smith's sensuous stories had me longing for memories and the nostalgia of just being a woman during the different phases of our life, from the reckless youth to the desires of the older woman. What an amazing adventure in reading this fantastic short story collection.

I highly recommend this.

[Ms. Woc Reader · Rating 1 out of 5]

Anthologies can be such hits or misses with each story greatly varying. This one was a huge miss for me. I thought having one author would make it more cohesive but for the most part it was a mess. I actually skimmed a few of the stories because they were so drab. Some stories were like bad poems while some were fully fleshed out. I went into this anthology with the wrong expectations. I expected a good anthology filled with enjoyable stories about black women embracing their desires and passion. Instead it felt very white and even the stories that weren't about teens had school girl crush type longing. And some of these stories felt like prompts. The beginning was there but the middle and end was missing or just lacked. I couldn't connect to most of the stories.

[Heather~ Nature.books.and.coffee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I zipped through this one in 2 days! I am not normally a short story reader but I loved this collection! This was a celebration of women, beautifully written and FUN! Here, we have some longer, some shorter stories of women and romance, and all the different ways they experience it! It was a perfect book for me! This would be an awesome book to lay on the beach and devour in a sitting!! So light and refreshing! I'd definitely recommend this one!! Be sure to add this one to your list! I can't wait to read more by Leesa!!

Thank you so much to the publisher for gifting me this book! All opinions are my own!

[Never Without a Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories reveal the hidden, sometimes painful, and sometimes beautiful facets of women and girls' lives. A woman escapes her suffocating grief by living in a fantasy world. A cult member extols the passion of the same man. In So We Can Glow, Leesa Cross-Smith captures the magic of summer nights and the bonds between women and girls. She evokes the darkness of loss and motherhood, the ecstasy of being female, and the headiness of desire.

So, We Can Glow is a collection of stories that explores what it means to be a woman. From the good to the bad, it shows how women can transform themselves and how they can become the best they can be. The collection begins with a bang, with We, Moons, a two-and-half page paragraph that describes the female experience. Its powerful to open a book and see how deeply we all feel about each other. Cross-Smith shows us that growth is one of the most important parts of being a woman.

Both stories are about people who use their bodies as payment for their debts. They are both about growing up and overcoming obstacles that stand in the way of achieving success. Cross-Smith has created a collection of beautiful feminist stories,I highly recommend. Thank you, Grand Central Publishing for the gifted copy.

[Sharon :) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually love short story collections but there were too many. Alot were interesting wish it were 1/2 the stories but more to each story. I would give the book a shot just my preference here ;)

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Big thanks to Grand Central Publishing for the gifted book. All opinions are my own.

I can’t think of a better book to read during Women’s History month than So We Can Glow. This collection of short stories celebrates women in all stages of life, reminding us of our first love, first loss, first heartbreak, first spark of desire.

Leesa Cross-Smith writes beautiful prose, sensual and poetic in the way she describes life in the south, the lives of bored housewives, the lives of struggling mothers. You can practically taste the cherry-flavored lipgloss worn by her teenage characters. You can practically smell the beer-drenched breath of the hardened men that bring pleasure and pain to their women. You can practically picture the summer days of your youth as a hot, sticky, pink-colored time when life was as good as it was ever going to get.

So We Can Glow is an anthology that discusses all the ways women need to be set free. All the ways women need to come into their own, accept their own sexuality and desires, and admit what they really want in order to let their own light shine—in order to glow. Some of the stories were a bit too short, but I was able to really connect with the longer ones, especially the stories that were revisited later on in the book. (Here are a few of my favorites: Chateau Marmont, Champagne, Chanel, Some are Dark, Some are Light, Summer Melts, Get Rowdy and And Down We Go!)

For me, So We Can Glow felt like a conversation with Taylor Swift, Carrie Bradshaw, and Elizabeth Taylor. It was like openly discussing all the secrets you’ve always kept hidden in the walls of your mind because you were afraid of facing judgment if they were ever to be set free. So We Can Glow is an honest exploration of the fears and longing women feel but don’t always feel comfortable vocalizing.

[Alayna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh wow, oh wowwww. Beauty. I love this collection so much. These stories are sometimes not more than a moment or two, so short, but plenty to encourage the reader to fill in the blanks—which I love!—and ache and wonder or hope. Told in letters sometimes, or texts, and varying tenses and different points of view, the common thread is one that incorporates self doubts and love in spite of or because of, and all sorts of love, and little things to love, too: lip gloss flavors, good nicknames, song lyrics, words repeated just because of the way they sound. Reading it felt like a brain massage, or like a message from the writer to the reader that sometimes is simply just: this feels good to me and I hope it feels good to you, too.

There are also so many good names in here that I do think it could double as a book of baby names.

Reading this in public (on the train, on a bus) had a fun side effect of making me more observant. I tell myself stories like this all the time but the way Leesa tells them stirred up all the most imaginative parts of me and made me wanna tell them, too, if only to myself. It’s about empathy, and humanity. One read-through and I've got so many corners of pages bent down so I can go back just to feel stuff again, and that seems fitting. Feel it all. LCS gives you no choice.

[Renée | Book Girl Magic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had the pleasure of reading So We Can Glow by Leesa Cross-Smith last week and absolutely L O V E D this collection of short stories. A 4.5 star read for me!

I’ve loved Leesa’s writing since reading Whiskey & Ribbons a couple of years ago and this collection of short stories is no different. I could see myself in so many of the women written about in these stories. Love, wonder, heartbreak, heartache, to be young, wild and free, life lessons, strength, adventure, motherhood, being a wife, daughter and friend. You name it. Everything it means to be a woman and so much more.

I also loved how many of the stories intertwined and circled back to characters that were previously mentioned. It sometimes gave us a alternate perspective of the same story. Beautifully written collection and I’m glad I was able to add it to my summer reading list!

[Lucy · Rating 1 out of 5]

From the narrow-minded opening poem to the confusing, abstract prose, I made it through barely half of this short-story collection before giving up. I had such high hopes for this highly-rated
female-focused collection, but was completely turned off by the first piece and completely lost for
the rest. Maybe I just didn't get it?

[Richelle Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Amazon Vine Review*

This is a nice collection of short stories. I loved seeing characters crossover from other stories and it was nice to get closure. This was my first time reading this author and I will be checking out her previous novels.

Teenage Dream Time Machine , You Should Love The Right Things and California, Keep Us really stood out for me.

[Sophia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a difficult one to review since it's packed with so many stories and most of these stories are incredibly short. I liked the idea of the collection and the theme, but I just found it so difficult to get into a story when it was ending after just a couple of pages and I had to re-focus myself on a new one. That being said I did like the longer stories and I think that the Leesa Cross-Smith is a good writer and story-teller. If I come across one of her novels I'll read it, but I don't think I'll read another set of short stories from her if they're this short. As someone else pointed out, it kind of feels like there just idea fragments and the start to stories that have a lot of potential which gets frustrating when you never get to read more about it. There were two instances when stories were re-visited which I liked a lot but it also made me worry that some of the other stories were connected but were too short and I wasn't paying attention enough to notice. I think this probably would have worked better if I had read it and not listened to it on audiobook.

[Tess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished SO WE CAN GLOW and my heart is full and my skin is clear and my soul is light. You know that feeling you get when you finish a book and you know you found a new author to add to your favorites list and you immediately look to see what else she has written and how you can get your hands on it? Yep, that’s Leesa Cross-Smith. Her stories are beautiful drops of unexpected surprises. The women in them are richly developed, nuanced yet expansive, and you feel like you have met them as they jump off the page (even when they are only with you for a few pages total.) The stories in this collection are short (mostly flash fiction) but they are all memorable and heart-stopping. I gush, but this book deserves it. It’s for all the girls and women, this one. I can’t recommend it enough. If she made any one of these into a full novel, I would be ecstatic!

[Christine (Queen of Books) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for a free e-arc for review. (I switched back and forth between that and an audio copy from my local library.)

So We Can Glow is a lyrical collection of short stories, a few of which play with form. Some of the stories are quite short, others a bit longer, but I couldn't help feeling that each just gives you a taste. I wouldn't call any of them satisfying - Cross-Smith reels you in, then drops you back on into the water, over and over again.

My favorite aspect of these were that some of the (42!) stories were linked (i.e. featuring the same characters you'd already met). That helped me to get my bearings a bit. Often, though, I struggled to connect with this (very good!) collection. Frequently it felt like, just when I'd get into a story, it'd be time for a new one! And then I wouldn't have the easiest time getting into the following story, because my brain/heart wouldn't be done with the previous one.

I'd recommend this collection to anyone who's a fan of metaphors in particular or Sally Rooney's books in general. I also had a much more enjoyable reading experience when I blew through half of it in a day - I know short stories can often be read in isolation, but I think this one works best if you read it in big chunks.

(One caveat: The publisher blurb says that the stories "drench readers in nostalgia for summer nights and sultry days" and I think that's true. I read this collection while staying at home during the coronavirus outbreak. It's possible I'd have loved it, had I not felt so separated from summer nights as they used to be.)


Content warnings: cutting, death of a teenager, prostitution, cigarette smoking, reference to man who gambled and was killed in prison, reference to brother who hanged himself (and grief), miscarriage/grieving over that, unintentional pregnancy, reference to abuse and assault, cheating

[Shawna (what.shawna.reads)]

3.5 stars. Short stories aren't my favorite because too often I'm left wondering what the point was, but I enjoyed every moment where I was able to go "oh these relate to each other!" Also important to note that this was something I picked up and put down a lot, not because I wasn't interested, but just because that's how I like to read collections and you might have a different experience if you read all of them together.

Thanks to Grand Central for my copy to review.

[David Abrams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short-short and medium-short tales of love and longing are packed into what is simply one of the best books of the year. As a writer, I was in awe of how consistently great each and every story in SO WE CAN GLOW turned out to be--it's really, really hard to pull off an all-great collection. I mean, normally even the best of short story collections have one, maybe two weaker members. Not this book: ev'ry damn story GLOWS with the heat of beauty.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of vignettes...lots of them...with a mostly romantic theme. Well written, but absolutely not my cuppa. These appeared to be random thoughts about love and lust and life. My life is just not in that mode these days. I read half of these and decided that I need not invest another moment on this one. Glad to have gotten exposure to Cross-Smith. She's a good writer. But this book was not for me.

3+ Stars

Read on kindle

[Kanmani · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just didn’t really get it, maybe abstract short stories are not for me?

[Lulu · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wonderful collection of 42 short stories that celebrate the versatility of girls and women and what love means to us…how we acknowledge it, live with it, and overcome it! It can’t be denied that Leesa Cross-Smith is a magnificent writer.

[Jls33 · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars rounded up. This was so compelling, and made me feel a lot of feelings about being a woman (some nostalgic, others "nostalgic" for experiences I've never had.) Leesa Cross-Smith has a true gift for engrossing the reader immediately--it's hard to do in a short story collection, (at least when I'm reading) but she did it.

My only small quibble is that a lot of the stories called back to each other or had characters that overlapped, which is not my thing in short story collections. I tend to read collections over a long period of time, and when there are this many stories in one collection, there's no way I'm keeping it all straight. To her credit, many of the call backs really took pains to help you remember the previous story the character appeared in--way more than I've seen in other short story collections that do this--but it still rarely works well for me. The exception to this was the "M" stories; that was done masterfully.

The whole time reading this, I kept thinking, "I hope she writes a novel" because I didn't want the shorts to be so short. I'm thrilled to see she has one coming out in 2021. I will definitely be buying it!

[Raegan Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another wonderful rec from my soulmate, Madeline Bryce

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leesa Cross-Smith is an absolute master of voice and narration. Each story’s narrator is so authentic that I forget an author actually wrote the story. Multiple times a found myself flipping to the author photo on the dust jacket in awe that someone could write like this.

[Steve Karas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the PERFECT book to read during trying times, an escape from the real world. For me, these stories have an old-timey, Americana, almost fantastical feel, the characters existing in a world where much of the ugliness and pain lurks on the outskirts, never quite penetrating the bubble. These stories are about love, and especially lust, booze and crushes, first kisses on front porches, and the cat and mouse games boys and girls play. As Cross-Smith writes in the story, “You Got Me,” “The clacking of those pool balls was the soundtrack of our relationship,” and it often feels like the soundtrack of this collection too. There are men named Bo and Cash who have rough hands, ride motorcycles, and carry Swiss Army knives, men who lie under trucks and fix things, chivalrously light women’s cigarettes, and climb on roofs to hammer “in the wavy morning sun.” Men, who most importantly, don’t hurt women, but protect them. There are women who wear red lipstick and “shiny lip gloss,” flirt in low-cut tops, and read romance paperbacks. Make no mistake—the women in these stories are always in control. As Cross-Smith writes, “Men are most powerless when a woman pretends to be vulnerable because she is pretending and they are not.” There are bad men, womanizers and abusers, who do bad things, but Cross-Smith protects us, the reader, by mostly keeping them on the periphery. She writes, “She remembered seeing him with a woman, but maybe she was making that up. Everything before was on the other side of the champagne curtain.” Of course, Cross-Smith’s signature writing is beautiful and poetic throughout, and there are so many lines that crackle. She describes “goose bumps of rain popping on tent-skin,” mouths that taste like “the pepper-metal of vodka, the bright, starry bite of lime,” “breath sugar-heavy with blood-red wine and honey,” nightswimmers’ “tender splishes echoing off the white-weathered concrete and blackness,” “eighteen-year-old wink of night-black ink on amber milk-cream,” and the sunset light that “aches at the windows.” This is an excellent collection by an incredibly talented writer.

[Faith]

"'What a relief not to be scared to death of you, here alone,' I'd tell you. 'That's why the only men I give my heart to live in my TV."

Leesa Cross-Smith's SO WE CAN GLOW is a collection of 42 stories around the concept of female desire. No matter how short the vignette, the reader is immediately pulled into the lives of these women or the emotions of the situation. Cross-Smith is a masterful storyteller, managing in even one sentence what many of us can only dream of achieving in pages of work. My personal favorite story was Girlheart Cake with Glitter Frosting, which is a list of "possible ingredients" ranging from experiences to song titles and everything in between. With that one list that had me stopping to yell "Yes!" in the middle of the living room, she won me over and I will pick up everything she writes in the future.

Thank you to Grand Central for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Content Warnings for miscarriage, cheating, and general explicit sexual content.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

an ARC was provided by the publisher (my first one)!

Grand Central Publishing was kind enough to provide ARCs of this short story collection when my class visited Hachette Book Group’s headquarters in NYC. I was immediately smitten- not only is the book gorgeous (I love the diner theme on the cover, and the neon lights really complete the aesthetic while at the same time mirroring the content of the stories). Plus! It’s a short story collection! I love short stories because you can read, but you can also take long pauses between each one, and not forget something important. They’re perfect for those busy times, and as a college student, I have a lot of busy days.

Read the rest of my review on Megan's Book Stacks: https://megansbookstacks.wordpress.co...

[Jacqueline · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories are very well-written & evocative; kind of remind me of a modern-day Francesa Lia Block but for the south, mostly. They made me feel like spending all day watching Winona Ryder movies, buying Dr. Pepper Lip Smackers, & rolling around in glitter or something. The only thing is that I didn't really feel any sort of true, deep emotional attachment or investment for any of the characters.. which might be expected since most of the stories are very brief, but even the longer ones didn't capture my attention. I do agree with some reviews that these stories feel more like a writing exercise than anything. But still, definitely evocative.