Thanks for This Riot: Stories: The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction
Autor Janelle Bassetten Limba Engleză Paperback – sep 2024
Thanks for This Riot explores the limits of kindness, the weight of being needed, and the fear of being misunderstood. A group counselor is taunted by a truth-divining piano bench, a voice actor shouts her abortion at the state capitol, a tired caregiver tangles with a pair of stand-up comics, a small-town newspaper office shelters an otherworldly tattletale, a backwoods acupuncturist leans on her least-exciting offspring, a girl in a strapless bra takes a vengeful go-kart ride, and a woman gets surgery to lower her expectations (she thinks it went “okay”). Grouped by types of riot—external riots, internal riots, and laugh riots—Thanks for This Riot is a poignant and mordantly funny collection with a distinctly feminist viewpoint.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781496240330
ISBN-10: 1496240332
Pagini: 186
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 15 mm
Greutate: 0.24 kg
Editura: Nebraska
Colecția University of Nebraska Press
Seria The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction
Locul publicării:United States
ISBN-10: 1496240332
Pagini: 186
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 15 mm
Greutate: 0.24 kg
Editura: Nebraska
Colecția University of Nebraska Press
Seria The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction
Locul publicării:United States
Notă biografică
Janelle Bassett’s writing appears or is forthcoming in the Rumpus, Indiana Review, Smokelong Quarterly, American Literary Review, the Offing, Washington Square Review, Wigleaf, and Best Microfiction 2023. She lives in Saint Louis and is a fiction editor at Split Lip Magazine.
Extras
More Restrictive Than Supportive
When I wore a strapless bra for the first time, my mom told me I was a
sinner because God made breasts to be lifted from above like ascending
angels. I’d gotten a spaghetti-strap tank top at the mall, using the
money I made selling my porcelain dolls at our yard sale. I was trading
in my dainty girlhood to become a grown lady whose shoulders
needed public attention. It was time—my hips had expanded to the
point that I could no longer fit in my hiding place between the side of
the sofa and the base of the staircase.
But all the bras I owned undermined the debut I craved for my
shoulders. They covered the skin I wanted to show, while letting everyone
know I still wore sports bras, even though I’d been kicked off the
softball team for spitting a loogie into the little yellow coin purse my
coach took with her to the laundromat. I had no choice about that
loogie. Coach laughed along after Wendy B. said I looked like a wobbly
bar stool when I was at bat, instead of letting Wendy know that wasn’t
a very nice way to talk.
There wasn’t enough yard sale money left over to buy myself a
strapless. I got only $25 for my dollies. I should have gotten much
more—there were twelve dolls in my collection, and each one was in
pristine condition. I never took them up trees, struck matches on their
cheeks, or bit off their fingertips the way I wanted to. I respected them
as a collection. I dusted them on Sundays. But the first woman who
came to our yard sale offered $25—even though I had them marked
at $115—and Mom told me it was a sin to haggle, especially with my
elders, who’d been alive long enough to know about the true worth of
certain objects. So I had to watch this person wearing a Tasmanian
Devil T-shirt wrap all my dolls up in the deflated kiddie pool my
mother had the gall to throw in for free, while knowing that she was
walking away with damn near $100 of my mall money.
Grandma Cleo took pity on me and my shoulders and gave me the
strapless bra she had worn to her prom. (Grandma Cleo spoke to an
easier, friendlier God than the one my parents consulted. The congregation
held hands in the pews at her church across town. Grandma’s
God could take a joke, where my parents’ God demanded to know
what, exactly, was so funny.) The bra was stiff and lacy—more
restrictive than supportive—and it smelled like a musty, colorless yearbook.
But the bra didn’t show a bit under my tank top, so I would wear it out.
“Can I go out?” I asked my mom, three days before my strapless
bra debut.
“What? When? With whom?”
I knew there would be a lot of questions. Other than school, I’d
never gone anywhere without my parents. Mom had attended all my
softball practices, sitting in the bleachers under her sun hat, yelling,
“Look alive, ladies! It’s important to stay in ‘ready position’ even when
the ball is heading the opposite direction.” And Mom’s elbow touched
mine all through the Westgood Mall—dressing
rooms and check-outs were no exception. She even double checked the math on my receipts.
And when our family went to the fabric store to buy supplies for the
preemie quilts Mom donated to the children’s hospital, I wasn’t allowed
to peruse the yarn or the beads in further aisles. “You’re just the kind
of girl a kidnapper would love to take away forever.” I didn’t ask what
qualities I had that made me that kind of girl, or why my parents petted
my hair so lovingly after they said it, like being highly kidnappable
was a trait they admired about me and made them especially proud
to call their own.
I had never before asked my parents to go out because I knew their
answer would be, “We would let you go to the movies, but the thing is
that we really want to see your face again, so the answer is no.” There
was no good retort to that logic, other than knocking the merits of my
own face—pointing out the asymmetry, the weak chin, the avalanche
cheekbones. But ever since I got too big to wedge myself into my hiding
spot—a spot that never failed to help me feel right and simple, like
a complacent stack of meat and bones—I’d gotten a new sharp edge
about me, and I wanted to cut my parents with it. Along with sunshine
on my shoulders, I craved discord.
But my mother quickly warmed to the idea of an outing. Apparently,
she’d been preparing for the moment when I would assert my right
to separate and had only been waiting for me to ask. She laid out
two options for activities I was allowed to do, unsupervised, with my
school friends. She said wholesome teens could go bowling (but not
form leagues) or they could ride paddle boats (but only in calm, still
water—boating over waves was too provocative).
Both options had the potential to thrill me. I’d done nothing, I wasn’t
hard to thrill. My wildest private daydream was to walk down the aisle
of fake flowers at Joann Fabrics, alone, imagining that the plastic flowers
were catcalling me while demeaning me passive-aggressively,
like those golden afternoon blooms from Alice in Wonderland. I would
have loved the chance to bowl or paddle without my mother there
to point out who, exactly, would kidnap me if given the opportunity.
(Once, in a miniatures museum, she accused the man transfixed by
the teeny three-story log cabin inhabited by clothed possums of being
“the ’napper among us.” I recognized this man as my bus driver—a
person who could easily take me and my backpack home with him
on any given day.) Yet I balked at my mother’s pre-approved
activity options, calling them “lazy” and “sinful,” words that made very little
sense when applied to our conversation but were nevertheless the most
condemning adjectives in her vocabulary.
“Plus we already decided on go-karts,” I told her, which was the first
time I said the word “we” to my mother instead of about my mother.
I now have a context outside of your reach, old miss.
Mom looked like she wanted to pull my hair or shove my face into a
holy text, but she only nodded while maintaining a level of eye contact
that made my burgeoning sharp edges gleam.
“I don’t know how I feel about go-karting, Lydia. Do you happen to
know the shape of the track? Is it one big oval? I’d feel more comfortable
knowing you’d be making sharp turns every so often, so the vibrations
and curves won’t lull you into forgetting your morals.”
I saw a wobble in her eyes; my challenges were causing my mother
to lose a small percentage of her certainty. “Do your own research,” I
told her as I headed toward the mirror in my room. I was eager to see
if my haughty tone had brought out any new symmetry in my face.
“Pull up an aerial map and take a look.”
When I wore a strapless bra for the first time, my mom told me I was a
sinner because God made breasts to be lifted from above like ascending
angels. I’d gotten a spaghetti-strap tank top at the mall, using the
money I made selling my porcelain dolls at our yard sale. I was trading
in my dainty girlhood to become a grown lady whose shoulders
needed public attention. It was time—my hips had expanded to the
point that I could no longer fit in my hiding place between the side of
the sofa and the base of the staircase.
But all the bras I owned undermined the debut I craved for my
shoulders. They covered the skin I wanted to show, while letting everyone
know I still wore sports bras, even though I’d been kicked off the
softball team for spitting a loogie into the little yellow coin purse my
coach took with her to the laundromat. I had no choice about that
loogie. Coach laughed along after Wendy B. said I looked like a wobbly
bar stool when I was at bat, instead of letting Wendy know that wasn’t
a very nice way to talk.
There wasn’t enough yard sale money left over to buy myself a
strapless. I got only $25 for my dollies. I should have gotten much
more—there were twelve dolls in my collection, and each one was in
pristine condition. I never took them up trees, struck matches on their
cheeks, or bit off their fingertips the way I wanted to. I respected them
as a collection. I dusted them on Sundays. But the first woman who
came to our yard sale offered $25—even though I had them marked
at $115—and Mom told me it was a sin to haggle, especially with my
elders, who’d been alive long enough to know about the true worth of
certain objects. So I had to watch this person wearing a Tasmanian
Devil T-shirt wrap all my dolls up in the deflated kiddie pool my
mother had the gall to throw in for free, while knowing that she was
walking away with damn near $100 of my mall money.
Grandma Cleo took pity on me and my shoulders and gave me the
strapless bra she had worn to her prom. (Grandma Cleo spoke to an
easier, friendlier God than the one my parents consulted. The congregation
held hands in the pews at her church across town. Grandma’s
God could take a joke, where my parents’ God demanded to know
what, exactly, was so funny.) The bra was stiff and lacy—more
restrictive than supportive—and it smelled like a musty, colorless yearbook.
But the bra didn’t show a bit under my tank top, so I would wear it out.
“Can I go out?” I asked my mom, three days before my strapless
bra debut.
“What? When? With whom?”
I knew there would be a lot of questions. Other than school, I’d
never gone anywhere without my parents. Mom had attended all my
softball practices, sitting in the bleachers under her sun hat, yelling,
“Look alive, ladies! It’s important to stay in ‘ready position’ even when
the ball is heading the opposite direction.” And Mom’s elbow touched
mine all through the Westgood Mall—dressing
rooms and check-outs were no exception. She even double checked the math on my receipts.
And when our family went to the fabric store to buy supplies for the
preemie quilts Mom donated to the children’s hospital, I wasn’t allowed
to peruse the yarn or the beads in further aisles. “You’re just the kind
of girl a kidnapper would love to take away forever.” I didn’t ask what
qualities I had that made me that kind of girl, or why my parents petted
my hair so lovingly after they said it, like being highly kidnappable
was a trait they admired about me and made them especially proud
to call their own.
I had never before asked my parents to go out because I knew their
answer would be, “We would let you go to the movies, but the thing is
that we really want to see your face again, so the answer is no.” There
was no good retort to that logic, other than knocking the merits of my
own face—pointing out the asymmetry, the weak chin, the avalanche
cheekbones. But ever since I got too big to wedge myself into my hiding
spot—a spot that never failed to help me feel right and simple, like
a complacent stack of meat and bones—I’d gotten a new sharp edge
about me, and I wanted to cut my parents with it. Along with sunshine
on my shoulders, I craved discord.
But my mother quickly warmed to the idea of an outing. Apparently,
she’d been preparing for the moment when I would assert my right
to separate and had only been waiting for me to ask. She laid out
two options for activities I was allowed to do, unsupervised, with my
school friends. She said wholesome teens could go bowling (but not
form leagues) or they could ride paddle boats (but only in calm, still
water—boating over waves was too provocative).
Both options had the potential to thrill me. I’d done nothing, I wasn’t
hard to thrill. My wildest private daydream was to walk down the aisle
of fake flowers at Joann Fabrics, alone, imagining that the plastic flowers
were catcalling me while demeaning me passive-aggressively,
like those golden afternoon blooms from Alice in Wonderland. I would
have loved the chance to bowl or paddle without my mother there
to point out who, exactly, would kidnap me if given the opportunity.
(Once, in a miniatures museum, she accused the man transfixed by
the teeny three-story log cabin inhabited by clothed possums of being
“the ’napper among us.” I recognized this man as my bus driver—a
person who could easily take me and my backpack home with him
on any given day.) Yet I balked at my mother’s pre-approved
activity options, calling them “lazy” and “sinful,” words that made very little
sense when applied to our conversation but were nevertheless the most
condemning adjectives in her vocabulary.
“Plus we already decided on go-karts,” I told her, which was the first
time I said the word “we” to my mother instead of about my mother.
I now have a context outside of your reach, old miss.
Mom looked like she wanted to pull my hair or shove my face into a
holy text, but she only nodded while maintaining a level of eye contact
that made my burgeoning sharp edges gleam.
“I don’t know how I feel about go-karting, Lydia. Do you happen to
know the shape of the track? Is it one big oval? I’d feel more comfortable
knowing you’d be making sharp turns every so often, so the vibrations
and curves won’t lull you into forgetting your morals.”
I saw a wobble in her eyes; my challenges were causing my mother
to lose a small percentage of her certainty. “Do your own research,” I
told her as I headed toward the mirror in my room. I was eager to see
if my haughty tone had brought out any new symmetry in my face.
“Pull up an aerial map and take a look.”
Cuprins
External Riots: Threats and Violence
More Restrictive Than Supportive
The Crowded Private Cottage
All I Need Are These Four Walls and Some Positive Feedback
No Space Is Too Small When Your Head Is Detachable
Babies Don’t Keep
Internal Riots: Secrets and Lies
Prove It
These New Francescas
Perceptor Weekly
Bulk Trash Is for Lovers
Safe Distances
Laugh Riots: Growing and Trying
Enviable Levels
Full Stop
The Right Light
Wilderness Mound
Thanks for This Riot
Acknowledgments
Source Acknowledgments
More Restrictive Than Supportive
The Crowded Private Cottage
All I Need Are These Four Walls and Some Positive Feedback
No Space Is Too Small When Your Head Is Detachable
Babies Don’t Keep
Internal Riots: Secrets and Lies
Prove It
These New Francescas
Perceptor Weekly
Bulk Trash Is for Lovers
Safe Distances
Laugh Riots: Growing and Trying
Enviable Levels
Full Stop
The Right Light
Wilderness Mound
Thanks for This Riot
Acknowledgments
Source Acknowledgments
Recenzii
"An acerbic examination of family and femininity."—Kirkus Reviews
"Thanks for This Riot shows us what happens when we reach for understanding instead of judgment. This is a collection I will be thinking about for a long time."—Julia Romero, October Hill Magazine
"Thanks for This Riot is a captivating book from beginning to end. It is clear that Bassett is a talented writer, for each story contains unique characters and emotionally resonant themes. I highly recommend you check out this book, especially if you enjoy the art of short fiction."—Dominique Weldon, Erato Magazine
"Bassett never writes a judgmental line—if you are looking for irony or eye rolls, they are not here. Her stories play in shadows without being dark or blindly optimistic. Accept that people and their flaws make a flawed world. There's nothing to be gained by standing in the spotlight; make whimsey in the shade—it's way more fun."—Jeannine Burgdorf, Masters Review
“Janelle Bassett’s voice is one I can’t get enough of. The stories in Thanks for This Riot are fresh and unique and wickedly off-kilter but also burn with a wry, age-old, ironic wisdom. This collection is bitingly funny but sincerely so, with little lies and harmless untruths taking on an edge and inflicting irresistible damage.”—Timothy Schaffert, author of The Perfume Thief and The Titanic Survivors Book Club
“Janelle Bassett is a phenomenal writer. These stories are smart, irreverent, hilarious, and so wonderfully intimate. It is rare to find a writer who can balance humor with such earnest human emotion, and Bassett does it on every page. This collection is gold.”—Alison Espach, author of Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance and The Wedding People
“Janelle Bassett’s writing is hilarious, intense, and alive. Every story in this collection is off-kilter in the best possible way. The characters are all trying to make sense of themselves in a world that doesn’t fit quite right. Reading this felt like being tickled forcefully, laughing even as it got uncomfortable.”—Katya Apekina, author of Mother Doll and The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish
Descriere
Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, Thanks for This Riot explores the limits of kindness, the weight of being needed, and the fear of being misunderstood.