The Theme Park of Women’s Bodies by Maggie Cooper

Description

Moving between power plants and pirate ships, remote caves and suburban strip malls, Maggie Cooper’s The Theme Park of Women’s Bodies takes readers on a tour of worlds built by, for, or around women. By turns darkly satirical and almost utopian, Cooper’s fierce, fabulist stories explore the power and promise of these spaces as sanctuaries and strongholds, places of connection and creation. Yet at the same time, they point to the ways that a narrowly defined femininity feeds exploitation and violence, inviting readers to consider the breadth of “woman” as a category with a wide-ranging history, present, and future. Grappling with the role of gender and the body in creating and maintaining communities, these stories dream of worlds where we can all escape our narrow orbits.

“Intricate, unsettling parables of womanhood. These stories function like tiny jewel-bright dioramas, creating whole worlds and lives in miniature—down to the hum of the electricity, the dampness of the caves, the smell of the blood. The Theme Park of Women’s Bodies is beautiful, razor-sharp, haunting, and true.” —CLARE BEAMS, author of The Garden

“Fun, feisty, and feminist, Maggie Cooper’s The Theme Park of Women’s Bodies takes readers on a ride through the twisty topographies of womanhood. From high seas adventures with lady pirates to the heart-strung struggles of lesbian spelunkers, these stories balance imaginative delights with head-spinning insight. The worlds in this chapbook are realms you won’t want to leave.” —ALLEGRA HYDE, author of The Last Catastrophe

Maggie Cooper is a graduate of Yale College, the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, and the MFA program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Ninth Letter, Inch, and elsewhere. She lives with her spouse in the Boston area and also works as a literary agent.