It's No Fun Anymore

“It’s No Fun Anymore” is a collection of eight stories that explore the politics of victimization, the sites of trauma on women’s bodies, and their attempts to divine meaning from suffering. In “The Experiment,” the murder of a young girl prompts a stay-at-home mother to undertake a desperate bid for agency, drawing unlikely inspiration from a 1950s self-help book. An MLM saleswoman in “Border Crossings” is held captive at the Canadian border, and in her marriage. And “Thumb Stump” introduces a new mother who worries her baby will inherit both her perceived deformity and generational trauma. These stories examine the double binds of motherhood, the sham of “having it all,” the daily struggles. The centralizing thread is the question: How can trauma be transformed?