The refrigerator monologues

This really worked for me, particularly the stand-in for Harley Quinn. We know the tropes that make women expendable in comics, in fiction, and perhaps in life. These stories give these women their voices, compassion, the respect of seeing them as more than an appendage, or an incentive to Be a Better Man.

Also, Grimdark is the best substitute for the name Batman!

I liked the ending the best, no spoilers, where these forgotten and tossed aside women in the most inclusive way invited in another women into their circle.

I thought I would like this more than I did.

This review is pretty much how I feel about it too: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1845590581

Fridging' is the practice of killing off or hurting a minor character to motivate or torture the main character. The term comes from the world of comics, describing an issue of Green Lantern in which the hero's partner is killed and stuffed in a refrigerator for the protagonist to find.

Let that sink in a minute. 

This is a storytelling trope aimed at motivating the main character through emotional torture. That violence is usually visited on a female character to motivate a male character. 

Case in point:

The death of Gwen Stacey in Spiderman - Is thrown off of a bridge only to have her neck snap at the last minute by spiderman. 
The death of Linda Park in Flash - Although the originally planned demise of Linda Park in The Flash was avoided, the sonic boom that was created by the battle between Zoom and Flash caused the pregnant Linda to abort her children. 
Barbara Gordon from Batman The Killing Joke - “While she fought crime for years as Batgirl, it was the fact that she was Commissioner Gordon's daughter that caused Barbara to receive a visit by the maniac known as the Joker. In an attempt to drive the Commissioner insane, the Joker showed up at Barbara's house and shot her in the stomach, then proceeded to remove her clothes and take pictures of her. He showed these pictures to her father to try and break him, but the Commissioner remained sane and was freed by the Batman. Barbara, however, was paralyzed — the bullet lodged in her spine, and she never walked again, becoming the wheelchair-bound information broker known as Oracle. Also, they gave her a crappy TV show, so, you know, double whammy.”(link)
Sue Dibny was the wife of Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man. - “The two were always a happy couple of the superhero set, with Sue often acting as den mother to the Justice League, and the pair did detective work on the side, like some sort of stretchy Nick and Nora Charles. Then came the Identity Crisis mini-series. Right off the bat, Sue gets horribly burned to death in her home. The culprit is unknown, but based on the evidence, the League suspects it to be Dr. Light. Now Doc Light is usually a D-list villain, and he actually had his name stolen by a superhero once, but we find out through a flashback that one day, when Sue was hanging out on the Justice League satellite (by herself, in space), Dr. Light somehow managed to get aboard. Yes, a supervillain had somehow gained access to the League's high-tech HQ (in space), and that was when he decided to rape Sue to within an inch of her life.”(link)

Now that you see this trope for what it is, it is hard to unsee it in popular literature. It is everywhere from tv to Comics. Which brings us to the brilliant Refrigerator Monologues written by Catherynne M. Valente. The Refrigerator Monologues is a combination of The Vaginia Monologues by Eve Ensler and Gail Simone's Women in Refrigerators. It is six stories told from the point of view of six dead women. Either the superheroes themselves or wives/girlfriends/motivations of living superheroes. The stories are brilliant and based loosely around existing stories in the comics universe. For example, the first story is about a character, Paige Embry, loosely based on Gwen Stacey. Paige is hurled off of a bridge only to have her neck snapped in when saved a la Gwen Stacey from Spiderman. The stories that Valente wrote are much rawer, much more adult, and much more real. And frankly much more interesting. 

I think the best story of the bunch, and that is saying something because every story in this collection is damn good, is the one about Pauline Ketch. This story is loosely based on Harley Quinn. Violence is not sexy, and violence within a relationship is definitely not sexy, it is tragic and sickening. This story is hard to describe, it should be read. It is written from an almost obsessive combination of love/sex/violence where the reader doesn't know where one emotion ends the next begins and isn't that what the Harley/Joker relationship is? 

This book is brilliant. Valente created an entirely real universe and canon of superheroes to prove a point. It is not preachy, it is persuasive and well written. 

This anthology is imaginative and dark. It centers characters whose suffering is more important to the plot than they themselves are. The Refrigerator Monologues is similar to [b:Sadie 34810320 Sadie Courtney Summers https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1534431396s/34810320.jpg 56026767] in that both explore how early we reach for women's pain as a storytelling hook, while shrugging off the impact of these portrayals.I liked how the stories flowed into one another. The overlap between characters let Valente worldbuild in the background, in a way that enriched when it easily could have distracted.Valente's phrasing can be abrasive, and while sometimes jarring, I think overall the tone works well in contrast with typical depictions of women in superhero stories: as soft damsels who exist to provide emotional support until they become collateral damage.Some of the characters were hard to tell apart. I understand the anthology is about women subject to similar plights, but I still think the perspectives could have been more distinct. Maybe Valente was commenting on how so many girlfriends of superheroes are young blonde white women? But even then, she could have looked at non-romantic relationships, like an older maternal figure, or something unrequited. I will say, I don't know a ton about this genre, so maybe I missed certain references.It starts out strong and ends strong, but it's somewhat lacking the variety that anthologies are uniquely able to provide (a good example such variety would be [b:How Long ‘til Black Future Month? 40855636 How Long ‘til Black Future Month? N.K. Jemisin https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1535169689s/40855636.jpg 63632161]). So if you like more cohesive collections, and you like Valente's writing, you'll love this. I don't think I loved it, but I'm glad I read it. I'm used to reading this sort of analysis via nonfiction journal articles, so this was meta and fun in comparison.

I can't see anyone loving every story - they're very different. I loved half, disliked one, and the others fell somewhere in between. Left me wanting more.

A book club read that I wasn't all that interested in, but ended up immensely enjoying. It's filled with anger, frustration, humor, and empathy and I devoured it.

I just now read the last sentence and I have actual goosebumps from how good and perfect and heartbreaking and funny and satisfying this was. Like a cool drink of water in the desert for the cool-girl-who-likes-comics that I was and the feminist nerd that I am.