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  • Published: 12 April 2022
  • ISBN: 9780143136620
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $27.99

Shit Cassandra Saw

Stories



Cassandra may have seen the future, but it doesn't mean she's resigned to telling the Trojans everything she knows. In this ebullient collection, virgins escape from being sacrificed, witches refuse to be burned, whores aren't ashamed, and every woman gets a chance to be a radioactive cockroach warrior who snaps back at catcallers. Gwen E. Kirby experiments with found structures--a Yelp review, a WikiHow article--which her fierce, irreverent narrators push against, showing how creativity within an enclosed space undermines and deconstructs the constraints themselves. When these women tell the stories of their triumphs as well as their pain, they emerge as funny, angry, loud, horny, lonely, strong protagonists who refuse be secondary characters a moment longer. From "The Best and Only Whore of Cym Hyfryd, 1886" to the "Midwestern Girl [who] is Tired of Appearing in Your Short Stories," Kirby is playing and laughing with the women who have come before her and they are telling her, we have always been this wayYou just had to know where to look.we have always been this way. You just had toknow where to look.

“Kirby has mastered the art of short fiction…A stunning collection from a writer whose talent and creativity seem boundless.”
—NPR

“Kirby takes joy in subverting the reader’s expectations at every turn. Her characters might be naïve, even reckless, but they aren’t about to be victims: They’re strong, and brave, and nearly always capable of rescuing themselves.”
New York Times Book Review

Margaret Atwood meets Buffy in these funny, warm, and furious stories of women at their breaking points, from Hellenic times to today.

Cassandra may have seen the future, but it doesn't mean she's resigned to telling the Trojans everything she knows. In this ebullient collection, virgins escape from being sacrificed, witches refuse to be burned, whores aren't ashamed, and every woman gets a chance to be a radioactive cockroach warrior who snaps back at catcallers. Gwen E. Kirby experiments with found structures--a Yelp review, a WikiHow article--which her fierce, irreverent narrators push against, showing how creativity within an enclosed space undermines and deconstructs the constraints themselves. When these women tell the stories of their triumphs as well as their pain, they emerge as funny, angry, loud, horny, lonely, strong protagonists who refuse to be secondary characters a moment longer. From "The Best and Only Whore of Cym Hyfryd, 1886" to the "Midwestern Girl Is Tired of Appearing in Your Short Stories," Kirby is playing and laughing with the women who have come before her and they are telling her, we have always been this way. You just had to know where to look.

  • Published: 12 April 2022
  • ISBN: 9780143136620
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $27.99

Praise for Shit Cassandra Saw

"'Shit Cassandra Saw' is a powerful and witty, bleak and hopeful, feminist retelling of the familiar myth. Through Cassandra, this ancient and misunderstood heroine, Kirby reveals what has changed for women (washing machines, birth control) and what has not (misogyny, rape). In some tellings of Cassandra's story, she is given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, but when she refuses his sexual advances, he curses her to never be believed by spitting in her mouth. Kirby's retelling circles back around to this ancient act of silencing, but while men won't hear Cassandra's prophecies, this Cassandra knows her fellow women will, and even while she waits for her dark fate, she is excited to share the hopeful news of the future with them."
--The Rumpus