It’s clear that this author is a master of the flash form, always finding the right turn, surprise or precipice to leave the reader. I flew through the first part of this book, some stories more memorable than others, but each possessing a slight quirkiness and character voices that notice the unusual or curious even in the mundane. It was Part 2 that I savored, connected short pieces that revolve around a young person who lost their mother and stumbles their way through redefining family, their social world and a new crush. The final story, while exploring literal fighting in a jiujitsu class, manages a tenderness and light that holds the fragility of young queer love.

I felt like the collection was lacking something. I didn't find any of the individual stories to be real knockouts. I was disappointed. Maybe these were very early, unpolished works? I just expected more.

This collection of short stories made me uncomfortable the whole time I was reading it, which I don't think is a bad thing - I just don't know how to discuss it.

This was an inventive short story collection with non-traditional formats for some of the stories (crosswords, etc.). The stories could be VERY short, so this might be a good choice for readers who want to try out a short story collection but aren't quite sure yet. The second half of the book has interconnected short stories, while the first half has more independent stories, though almost all of them feature young Black women and girls.

This is an interesting, if uneven, collection that's clearly divided into two. The first half is kind of a grab bag of often quite short stories about, well, girls. The second half follows a young woman who is struggling with the death of her father; its impact on other family members is also explored. Blackburn has used a variety of what could be termed gimmicks, some of which work and some of which fall flat. It's a different take on body and LGBTQA issues, Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I'd recommend, as with all collections that the reader take this one at a time, I'm looking forward to more from Blackburn.

I’ve probably talked about this here on Medium.com before, but it is difficult to publish a book of short stories unless you’re an author who has published a novel first. If the publisher is looking for a stop-gap release between novels, then you might be able to publish a short-story collection. The thinking is that short stories don’t sell as well as novels, so for an author to come along and deliver not one but two short story collections in succession is a rare thing, indeed. Venita Blackburn, then, is that rarity of a writer. She has already published a debut story collection called Black Jesus and Other Superheroes. Now she has unveiled her second collection, How to Wrestle a Girl, with a major publisher.

Blackburn is a writer of talent because she can successfully sell story collections to publishers without anything in the way of a novel for output. However, I must caution that Blackburn’s writing is not to everyone’s taste (including mine), though she has very important things to say about race, gender, body shaming, and sexuality. Still, most of the stories in How to Wrestle a Girl veer closely to being weird for being weird’s sake, and many of them (to me) didn’t make much sense at all.

For instance, there is a story in this collection called “Bear Bear Harvest™,” which is about a young girl who goes to have her fat sucked off her body so that it could be used as processed food. However, that’s about as far as the story goes. The rest of it, all 11 pages of it, was mere padding — leading up to the “punch line” of having the girl’s body fat harvested. That’s it, that’s all. Many of the other stories offered here have the same issue. There’s a longish story about a special effects designer for B-movies that has an interesting premise, but it kind of ambles along until it ends. It is listless and it goes nowhere, and I’m not sure what the point of the piece was.

However, I did say that Blackburn was an important writer — especially as a Black writer and one who writes about body issues and shame. She has characters who are intersex or are queer or are fat. It’s important to write about the marginalized as Blackburn does here. Still, I found that she often forgot to tell a story, choosing instead to be experimental or find new ways to write about these characters for the sake of logic. Your mileage on that may vary, but I just thought that most of the stories in How to Wrestle a Girl just run out of gas early. In fact, one of the pieces collected here is nothing but a crossword puzzle! (Shades of Jennifer Egan’s narrative-bending technique of using a PowerPoint presentation as a narrative device in A Visit from the Goon Squad, perhaps?)

However, this book is interesting in that the book is split into two parts. The first part is a jumble of short stories — some of which are particularly short and last only two or three pages. The second part is composed of slightly longer stories and has the same main characters in all of them, and there is a linear progression to how the stories play out. In this sense, Blackburn is angling more towards novel writing without having to commit to writing a novel. Many of these stories — save for the crossword puzzle and even some quizzes about the characters — are less experimental and are thus more compulsively readable. Except, the problem is that these pieces play out like vignettes and don’t cohere into a bigger narrative. Thus, it’s hard to enjoy this section of the book, though in bits and pieces there are some vivid images and pertinent things said about the status of women’s bodies and how they can possess and surpass the strength of men.

Overall, I’d like to be able to say that Venita Blackburn is a writer to watch out for and is a voice to be reckoned with. However, it pains me to say that I wasn’t sure what the fireworks of this book were really about. In small doses, Blackburn draws out characters who wouldn’t normally be written about in much literature: queer, Black, and sometimes obese women who are grappling to make sense of the world and its treatment of them. I also thought that Blackburn was daring in trying out new narratives without resorting to sci-fi tropes to tell her tales. However, at the end of the day, something is lacking from these pieces: a story. You don’t have to necessarily tell a story conventionally, but you do have to give the reader some nugget to care about the characters you’ve created and the world you’re populating them in. Most of the time, these stories just drifted. There was no purpose to them, no rhyme or reason for their existence. That’s an unfortunate side-effect of biology experiments going wrong in literary form. Given that so many of these stories are short, there needed to be more of a point to the micro-fiction. At the very least, I guess I can be generous and say that if you don’t like where a particular piece is going, you don’t have long until you’re off to the next one. Except the problem is the next one is usually more of the same.

All in all, I feel sorry about How to Wrestle a Girl. I can see its literary importance, but it just didn’t activate itself for me in meaningful ways. I honestly wanted to like this book more than I did because I can certainly see the value and appeal of Blackburn as a writer. However, the vast majority of these stories just left me cold and left me wondering how they got published in an environment where short story collections just don’t sell the same volumes as novels supposedly do. I suppose they’re novel enough (ha!) to justify their publication. But I did feel like they should have offered something more. In conclusion, all I can say about How to Wrestle a Girl’s tales is that they have a slippery grapple hold. The most charitable thing I can say is that they’re mostly short. If you’re willing to try something experimental that doesn’t always achieve a great deal of narrative success, read this book. Otherwise, time is probably better spent reading something that goes from Point A to Z more linearly. Perhaps something more like a novel, alas.

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. The first half of this book of stories is so playful in both language and content. Stories about selling your body fat, having lunch with a best friend who died years ago and doing old style movie monster effects. The second half is more grounded in reality, but still as stylishly written, as we follow a high school girl and her beloved sister T, as they try to deal with their wildly unstable mother who has only gotten worse since their father had passed away.

DNF @ 25%

I usually enjoy short story collections but I just couldn't get into this one. I didn't care for the writing style. A lot of clipped, awkward sentences and way too many characters. A lot of the stories connect to other stories which is something I don't prefer. I like each story to represent different characters and plotlines. Very muddled and confusing. Less is more.

Thank you, Netgalley and FSG for the digital ARC.

It’s clear that Blackburn is a master of the flash form, always finding the right turn, surprise or precipice to leave the reader. I flew through the first part of this book, some stories more memorable than others, but each possessing a slight quirkiness and character voices that notice the unusual or curious even in the mundane. It was Part 2 that I savored, connected short pieces that revolve around a young person who lost their mother and stumbles their way through redefining family, their social world and a new crush. The final story, while exploring literal fighting in a jiujitsu class, manages a tenderness and light that holds the fragility of young queer love.

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2020 and 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

I’ve been a long time fan of Venita Blackburn. Her sentences.
“She speaks to me like I’m a hundred. I wish she would at least pretend she was my mother and I her daughter and we could have a calm and maternal energy between us, but she insists upon these perverse sisterly best-friend, girl-let-me-tell-you, wine-doused chats about all things too adult.” (10)

A good collection overall. It's a little uneven in quality, but that's very common for a short story collection. Reading this will invoke a number of emotions, which means the author is an effective writer. Recommended for literary fiction fans.

I really appreciate the ARC for review!!

Blackburn's second collection contains 30 short stories, most of them focusing on a young girl who recently lost her father and the struggles she, her sister and her now widowed mother go through. The girl feels more and more attracted to her friend Esperanza, details experiences with friends at school and her softball team, and we learn about a shady priest and his relationship to the family.

The book shines when the author ventures into playful territory, telling stories with the help of charts, while her attempts to work with crossword puzzles and quizzes remain more appealing in theory than in practice. Unfortunately, the more classically told stories reflect the main protagonist's reluctance to engage with other people a little too well, as they tend to keep the reader at arm's lentgh, thus preventing a degree of immersion that would render the often serious topics more engaging and affecting.

Still, a worthwhile collection that might not quite live up to its ambition, but at least it has plenty of it, and it radiates the will to innovate the form and maintain its relevancy.

I received an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review

I don’t know exactly what these stories are but let me tell you whatever this is is amazing. Definitely buy a copy for your favorite girlfriends for their birthday and let them wonder.

Brilliant, spiky, original and moving in its depictions of death, grief and coming of age sexuality journey. I have heard this author read in person and know just how talented she is. I cannot wait for her next book as well.