You Can Vibe Me On My FemmePhone

by Kamala Puligandla

You Can Vibe Me On My FemmePhone follows three friends, in a near-future Los Angeles, who are trying to improve themselves using a phone with a feminist operating system. Join Veronica, Phoebe, and Remy on their absurd adventures to seduce artists, entrap local Proud Boys, and enter a kinky queer horse-play scene. Their FemmePhones, programmed with their personal values, guide them toward the transformative love and professional passions they seek. But what choices will they make when they disagree with their phones and what does this mean about their feminist values? Kamala Puligandla’s heartfelt, humorous novella takes you on a wild ride about queer love, self-knowledge and growth.

Genres: Queer, Fiction, Science Fiction, Gay, Feminism

97 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2021

Reviews

[laura]

queer tech beyond my greatest expectations

[carmen! · Rating 4 out of 5]

i thought this lil book was cute and fun EVEN BEFORE i learned about the sexy centaurs!!

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a treat. Puligandla's novella imagines a smartphone that acts on your interests (and ethics) - "It guides your praxis," one character explains. "...Imagine if your phone shared your values, instead of prodding you with its capitalist boner all the time." It will also call you a Vantasy--"like Uber, but with shea butter hand cream and lavender laced joints, and without the anti-blackness and transphobia." Add centaur BDSM subculture and two cute queer romances - a fast read and a fucking gift.

[Pooja Sathyanarayanan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it lying horizontal on my couch with an entire bag of Pirate’s Booty. Fun, endearing, and thought provoking when you least expect it. A queer friend group’s misadventures in near-future LA in the lens of femme phone influence surprised me in the best way.

[Asher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some fun ideas about what a friendly phone might look like (reminiscent of All the Birds In The Sky) and I am predisposed to like queer stuff, but this fell a little flat for me. Partly that was the length and associated paucity of plot, partly that was the way that I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and the character to face some hardship, and partly it was that I couldn't tell if this was intended to be a view of what radical queerness could look like or a parody of the same.

[Kendrik Icenhour · Rating 4 out of 5]

really more of a 3.5 but i can’t give half stars.

entertaining read, could have been longer. biggest issue with it is that it was very meta in that i couldn’t tell if it was preaching radical queerness or if it was satire of radical queerness. i’m guessing a bit of both, but the writing style made it a bit clunky at times.

[Vic Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seriously so fun and what I needed this afternoon. Get some femme healing and love from this novella.

[Clara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny, charming, and delightfully queer. I want to live in the bubble world of this book, where friendship is at the center of all life.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would like to have a femme phone.

[molotovfoxtail · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW

[Shai Goodman · Rating 5 out of 5]

fun

[Frida Luyckx · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,75!!

[noa t.b. · Rating 3 out of 5]

fun!

[Suzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun, fast-paced queer novella set in near-future LA.

“Imagine if your phone shared your values, instead of prodding you with its capitalist boner all the time.”
That’s how the FemmePhone is proposed to Veronica.

In reality, it’s futuristic but maybe not all that radical: you get interviewed by this mysterious piece of technology, which then watches and listens to your every move and tries to convince you to live by your morals (surveillance state but make it femme??). When Veronica goes to steal her new love interest’s car, her phone says, “Please take a moment to stop and think. Consider that you’re breaking Josephine’s trust. Instead, do the right thing and call Phoebe a Vantasy ride.” (guilt about morals + a quick promo of their “feminist” version of a rideshare service??)

So...it’s not actually outside of capitalism. Rather, it’s more of a tongue-in-cheek technological metaphor for the nagging voice in the back of your head that wants you to do the right thing. This concept serves as an fascinating driving force for Veronica, Phoebe, and Remy’s self-exploration, as they tackle undercover operations against Proud Boys, heal their relationship wounds through the world of centaur kink, and figure out how to move beyond a mediocre job at a tech start-up.

After reading and enjoying Puligandla’s 2020 novel Zigzags last month, I was happy to see recurring themes of queer friendship and budding romance, alongside smoother dialogue and more bizarre scenarios. This is a weird little book about love, reinvention, and learning how to recalibrate your needs to eventually arrive at what you truly want in life. Seeing these messy characters grow over the course of 100 pages was satisfying and healing.

[Ashley Brown Durand · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this little snack of a book