by The Radical Element- 12 Stories of Daredevils, Debutantes
“Okay, He-Man, can you hit the cowbell like this?” Mai asked, crouching down to Amir’s eye level in the college practice room. She hit the bell with a drumstick in a quick one-two beat, and Amir copied the rhythm, excited to be able to bang something to his heart’s delight. “Bitchin’! Watch me for when I want you to do that, okay?”
Gen, our bassist, had arranged for us to perform at an all-ages club in South Boston that night. I was nervous to sing in front of people, but Mai said we had to let the city know how good we were. I was planning to tell my uncle that there was a double feature of Ghostbusters and Gremlins, but first we had to practice our set. And as usual, I’d brought Amir with me.
“You better watch out, Janine. He-Man is going to replace you on percussion in no time,” Gen threatened.
“Yeah, yeah, drummers aren’t real musicians. Ha-ha already, Gen. He is missing something, though.” Janine took off her red bandanna and tossed it to Mai, who tied it around Amir’s head.
“Now, that’s better! You’re the coolest guy in the band. Don’t grow up to be a misogynist and you’ll be all right, kiddo,” Janine said, twirling a drumstick in her right hand. I didn’t know what a misogynist was, but I would remember to ask her after rehearsal.
Mai pointed her finger at Gen to start our cover of ESG’s “My Love for You” with a kicking bass line.
“Now, He-Man!” Mai commanded.
Amir banged the bell in time, head-banging along. Next to me, Mai began to sing and I joined her, both of us dancing to the sick beat. Cecilia, who played the keyboard, had been helping me learn the lyrics.
When the song ended, I was out of breath.
“Awesome!” Mai said as we high-fived.
Amir kept hitting the bell, roaring intermittently at each of the girls.
“How much sugar has he had today?” Cecilia asked in genuine concern from behind the keyboard.
“Okay, let’s take it from the top,” Mai said. Gen started the bass line again.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I looked up to see Fariba rush into the music room. She had asked me the question in Farsi. I froze, horrified. The band was the only thing that kept me going. She was going to ruin everything.
“Uh, can we help you?” Cecilia asked, not knowing who Fariba was.
My aunt must have followed Amir and me instead of going to work. How else would she know we were here?
“You can help me by telling me what my son is doing here,” Fariba said in English, glaring at me.
“We’re taking names and kicking ass!” Amir responded. He had heard Janine say it a number of times during our rehearsals.
Aunt Fariba’s clawlike bangs couldn’t hide how red her face was. “Amir! Soheila! Let’s go! Now!”
Amir complied and walked to his mother. She ripped the bandanna off of his head and dropped it to the floor.
I hated that she felt it was okay to embarrass me.
I hated that she looked at my friends in the same way Mrs. Abney looked at us.
I hated that she didn’t give me any of the affection my mother did but still expected me to treat her with the same respect I would give my mother.
“I’m not going,” I said, gripping the microphone stand.
It became eerily quiet in a room that was always full of sound.
“What did you say?” Fariba asked in Farsi, slowly marching toward me. “Who do you think you are? You are a refugee. We have given you a life here, and you disrespect me by hanging out with these loose girls? You disrespect your uncle, who sweats and struggles to house you and feed you?”
She grabbed me by my hair. I screamed out in pain. Amir began to cry, and the rest of the girls yelled for Fariba to stop.
My aunt let go of me, her face crumbling. She looked like she didn’t know where she was or how she got there. Her hands trembled and she looked at me in remorse. “I . . . I’m sorry,” she said, turning around to pick up Amir. Her cheeks were red as she left.
The room became quiet again.
“Are you okay?” Mai asked me.
I wiped away my tears and took a deep breath.
“Let’s take it from the top,” I said.
“It’s a chick band? No way. I bet they can’t play for shit,” a young man with a Kajagoogoo haircut said a little too loudly backstage. Gen had failed to mention the show tonight was a contest. The winner of the battle of the bands would take home the grand prize of five hundred dollars. None of the other bands had women in them.
“A little warning would have been nice, Gen!” Cecilia said, peering out at the crowd of two hundred and fifty people.
“What? I didn’t want you to feel pressured! Besides, we’re going to go out there and show them we can play. Right, Apollonia?” Gen asked me. My hair was teased out and curly just like Apollonia’s, and I was wearing heavy purple eye shadow. I wasn’t going out there in lingerie though. I wasn’t insane! I was wearing a black tank top and jeans with holes in them. Mai told me the holes had been deliberate, which I didn’t understand. Why would someone put holes in a pair of perfectly good pants?
“Please put your hands together for the . . . You’re joking with this band name, right?” the host onstage asked us.
“Just read the damn card,” Janine yelled.
“Okay. The Ovarian Cysters, ladies and germs!” the host said to lukewarm applause. As soon as we took the stage, we were catcalled and whistled at.
“You ready?” Mai said, putting her guitar strap on her shoulder.
I was ready to kick ass and take names. I had a lot of shit I needed to let out.
Mai started to play the beginning of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Happy House.” The audience began to bob their heads, though some of the whistles persisted. Then I grabbed the mic and wailed.
I jumped up and down in between verses. My hair whipped side to side, and the more I poured all my rage, all my hurt, all my heartsick, into the void, the more the audience responded. The roar of the audience quieted the footage of the tanks, silenced my aunt’s words, and briefly killed my worry about my parents and friends back home.
During that set, I was free to be whoever I wanted to be. Not Apollonia, not Amir’s babysitter, not a self-conscious girl.
I was bitchin’ and so was my band.
When I was asked to write a piece for this anthology, I knew I would write a story set in the 1980s, which is to me one of the most fascinating decades of the twentieth century. While many may think of the ’80s as a time of ostentatious superficiality or self-interest, I think of it as the decade that helped shape today, for better or for worse.
It was a decade that brought us the cell phone, the personal computer, video game consoles, MTV, credit card debt, primetime soaps that made audiences aspire to exorbitant wealth, Wall Street greed, the AIDS virus, global conflicts that are still being felt today, and global resolutions like the end of the Cold War.
There are some conflicts, however, that did not garner as much attention in the Western world as the Cold War. The Iran-Iraq War lasted from 1980 to 1988. Many lives were lost on both sides, and I often wonder if there was no oil in that area, how many lives would have been spared? How many families would be intact?
My grandparents lived with us for a year of that conflict in 1987, and while I don’t remember much, as I was only three, I do remember the music of the ’80s, particularly R&B and soul music. My parents had come to the States in the ’70s, but a great deal of their American musical knowledge was based on pop radio, and while I didn’t grow up listening to any of their old LPs, we listened to Rufus and Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody” and Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal.” My mother tells me that when she was eight months pregnant with me, she went to see Purple Rain with my father. Apparently, I kicked hard throughout the movie. Not surprising, then, that Prince’s music became a huge part of my life as well as the lives of so many others. I bet I kicked when Apollonia came on the screen, when Prince sang “Let’s Go Crazy,” and when Morris
Day danced to “Jungle Love.”
Soheila’s story is a brief one, but it is a love letter to a time of sorrow and joy. A time of being in a new country and figuring out whether you can make that place home. The music helps her find her place as I think the music of the ’80s helped us find ours without our really knowing it.
DAHLIA ADLER is an associate editor of mathematics by day, a blogger for B&N Teens by night, and a writer of kissing books at every spare moment in between. She’s the author of Behind the Scenes, Under the Lights, Just Visiting, and the Radleigh University series, and a contributor to the historical young adult anthology All Out. She lives and works in New York City.
ERIN BOWMAN is the author of two Western novels for teens, Vengeance Road and Retribution Rails. When not writing about girls defying gender norms in the late nineteenth century, she jumps to science fiction, where she continues to feature female characters railing against the constraints of their societies. The Taken trilogy is available now, and Contagion is the start of a new duology. She lives in New Hampshire with her family.
DHONIELLE CLAYTON is the coauthor of the Tiny Pretty Things series and the author of The Belles. Dhonielle is chief operating officer of the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books and cofounder of the literary incubator CAKE Literary. She lives in New York City, where she is always on the hunt for the best slice of pizza.
SARA FARIZAN is the author of the Lambda Award-winning If You Could Be Mine and the non-award-winning but super-fun Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel. She lives in Massachusetts, misses Prince and George Michael, and thanks you for reading her work.
MACKENZI LEE holds a BA in history and an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Simmons College. She is the author of three young adult historical novels: This Monstrous Thing, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, and Semper Augustus, as well as Bygone Badass Broads, a collection of short essays about incredible women from history. She loves Star Wars, sweater weather, and Diet Coke. On a perfect day, she can be found enjoying all three. She lives in Boston, where she works as a bookseller.
STACEY LEE is the author of Under a Painted Sky, Outrun the Moon, and The Secret of a Heart Note. She is a fourth-generation Chinese American whose people came to California during the heydays of the cowboys. She believes she still has a bit of cowboy dust in her soul. A native of southern California, she graduated from UCLA, then got her law degree at UC Davis King Hall. After practicing law in the Silicon Valley for several years, she finally took up the pen because she wanted the perk of being able to nap during the day and it was easier than moving to Spain. She plays classical piano, raises children, and writes YA fiction.
ANNA-MARIE McLEMORE is the author of The Weight of Feathers, a finalist for the 2016 William C. Morris Debut Award, and of When the Moon Was Ours, a 2017 Stonewall Honor Book that was long-listed for the National Book Award. Her latest novels are Wild Beauty and Blanca & Roja. “Glamour” was written from her passion for magical realism and her daydreams about a queer Latina girl like her trying to find a place in the shimmer of Golden Age Hollywood.
MEG MEDINA writes fiction for children of all ages. Her work examines how cultures intersect as seen through the eyes of young people. She is the winner of an Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award for her picture book Tía Isa Wants a Car and of a Pura Belpré Author Award for her young adult novel Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass. Her newest novel, Burn Baby Burn, was named the 2016 Young Adult Book of the Year by the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA). It was also long-listed for the National Book Award and named a Kirkus Prize Finalist. In 2014, she was named one of the CNN 10: Visionary Women in America for her work to support girls, Latino youth, and diversity in children’s literature.
MARIEKE NIJKAMP is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of This Is Where It Ends and Before I Let Go. “Better for All the World” introduces her first #ownvoices autistic character.
MEGAN SHEPHERD is the New York Times best-selling author of The Madman’s Daughter series, the Cage series, The Secret Horses of Briar Hill, and Grim Lovelies. She lives on a historic farm in North Carolina and has been coerced into many Civil War history tours of Charleston and Savannah by her husband. She personally prefers haunted tours, pirate tours, or, even better, haunted pirate tours.
JESSICA SPOTSWOOD is the author of the historical fantasy trilogy the Cahill Witch Chronicles and the contemporary novel Wild Swans. She is the editor of A Tyranny of Petticoats: 15 Stories of Belles, Bank Robbers & Other Badass Girls and Toil & Trouble. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she works as a children’s library associate for the D.C. Public Library.
SARVENAZ TASH is the author of The Geek’s Guide to Unrequited Love, an Amazon Best Book of the Year and Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book, and the Woodstock Festival romance Three Day Summer. She received her BFA in film and television from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, which meant she got to spend most of college running around making movies (it was a lot of fun). She has dabbled in all sorts of writing, including screen writing, Emmy Award – winning copy writing, and professional tweeting for the likes of Bravo and MTV. Sarvenaz lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Books are collaborations, and anthologies are even more so. Many people put their hard work and love into this project. I am tremendously thankful to the following:
Hilary Van Dusen, editor extraordinaire, and endlessly supportive. I have learned so much from working with you. Miriam Newman, associate editor, an incisive line-editing goddess, whose notes on my own story were immensely helpful. Copyeditors Hannah Mahoney and Erin DeWitt, for making sure the manuscript is consistent and anachronism-free. Nathan Pyritz, for the lovely interior design; Matt Roeser, for the beautiful cover design; and James Weinberg, for the stunning cover art. Jamie Tan, publicist extraordinaire, for helping to connect Tyranny and The Radical Element with readers and booksellers and social media influencers. Anne Irza-Leggat, for a wonderful Q&A guide, an amazing time promoting Tyranny at NCTE, and all the ways you help educators, librarians, and readers find this book. Candlewick has been the absolute perfect home for these anthologies, and I am so grateful to the entire team there.
Jim McCarthy, for championing this project and helping me find the perfect contributors. The North Texas Teen Book Fest, Texas Book Fest, McNally Jackson and NYC Teen Author Fest, Curious Iguana Books, and especially my local independent bookstore, One More Page, for your support in highlighting women’s historical fiction. Tiffany, Lauren, Lindsay, Robin, Miranda, Jenn, Jill, and Liz for always cheering me on and listening when I feel overwhelmed. One of the reasons I’m passionate about writing complex, fascinating, clever girls throughout history is that I’m surrounded by complex, fascinating, clever women I adore. My brilliant husband, Steve, for always reassuring me that I can in fact do all the things — just not all at once. And my family — especially my dad, who loves history as much as I do; my uncle Mike, who has painstakingly compiled amazing family histories; my Memaw, who first took me to tour historical sites and was an avid researcher of our family genealogy; and my Papaw, who loved to tell stories of World War II. They all woke in me a great curiosity for the stories history tells — and even more curiosity for the stories it can erase.
Dahlia, Mackenzi, Erin, Megan, Anna-Marie, Marieke, Dhonielle, Sarvenaz, Stacey, Meg, and Sara — thank you for sharing your beautiful voices and for trusting me with your stories. I am so glad to have worked with each of you, and so proud of what we’ve created.
And most of all, our readers. Thank you for reading. To those of you who feel like outsiders in your communities right now, we see you. We value you. Your voices are so important. We can’t wait to hear and read your stories.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the authors’ imaginations or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Compilation and introduction copyright © 2018 by Jessica Spotswood
“Daughter of the Book” copyright © 2018 by Dahli
a Adler
“You’re a Stranger Here” copyright © 2018 by Mackenzi Lee
“The Magician” copyright © 2018 by Erin Bowman
“Lady Firebrand” copyright © 2018 by Megan Shepherd
“Step Right Up” copyright © 2018 by Jessica Spotswood
“Glamour” copyright © 2018 by Anna-Marie McLemore
“Better for All the World” copyright © 2018 by Marieke Nijkamp
“When the Moonlight Isn’t Enough” copyright © 2018 by Dhonielle Clayton
“The Belle of the Ball” copyright © 2018 by Sarvenaz Tash
“Land of the Sweet, Home of the Brave” copyright © 2018 by Stacey Lee
“The Birth of Susi Go-Go” copyright © 2018 by Meg Medina
“Take Me with U” copyright © 2018 by Sara Farizan
Cover illustration copyright © 2018 by James Weinberg
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2018
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending
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