Girls Who Bite Back:
Witches, Mutants, Slayers and Freaks
A Sumach Press Anthology
Edited by Emily Pohl-Weary
Girls Who Bite Back "is like a disco ball, breaking down the popular image of the female superhero into glittering shards and reflecting it back through a fractured lens. Pohl-Weary has used her powers for good." --Now Magazine
"Most of the contributors are young women who are bridging the gap between a '70s feminist politics and the '90s Gen X lack of one. It's the myth of the superhero they are turning to. The image of a young, powerful woman who can carry both a sword and a lipstick -- and apologizes for neither." --Globe and Mail
"Way more Bikini Kill than Ani Difranco, and in all the right ways." --New City Chicago
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Taking on the bombshell spies, slayers, witches and assassins who are fighting their way into movies and television shows everywhere, Girls Who Bite Back examines what these new role models for young women are really about.
Emily Pohl-Weary puts her unique stamp on the field of speculative fiction and pop culture in this one-of-a-kind anthology of short fiction, cultural analysis, comics and original artwork.
Girls Who Bite Back cuts through the layers of the new “female power,” questioning its corporate origins and investigating issues of race and sexual orientation. And the book goes a crucial step further by asking: If you don’t like what’s out there now, what do you want to see?
In response, writers like Hiromi Goto (The Kappa Child), Nalo Hopkinson (The Salt Roads), Larissa Lai (Salt Fish Girl), Nikki Stafford (How Xena Changed Our Lives), Mariko Tamaki (True Lies: The Book of Bad Advice) and more chronicle the best and the worst supergirls, envision new role models and create a do-it-yourself guide to being a superhero.
Talented artists, including Shary Boyle, Eliza Griffiths, Sonja Ahlers, Sheila Butler, Marc Ngui and Matthew Blackett, imagine stronger, more intelligent superheroines and explore the ugly side of girls who fight back. (And check out the actual recipe for action ...)
Pohl-Weary has put together an assembly of fresh voices that bring rich insight, as well as wry irreverence, to this compelling and controversial issue. From Little Orphan Annie to Kill Bill, Girls Who Bite Back shows how far we’ve come, how far we have to go, and gives us a sneak peak at a future where all girls bite back.
Visit the fabulous Girls website for more information and to order copies of the book.
_____Contact the Publisher
Sumach Press (publisher of Girls Who Bite Back)
E-mail. Tel: 416-531-6250, Fax: 416-531-3892.
Website: www.sumachpress.com.