Good Women by Halle Hill
I know some of you all are just cringing with that, but it's part of me. So I want to talk about Holly Hill's good women, and Holly Hill's good women is a collection of short stories, and Holly is a friend of a dear writer friend of mine. So I feel like I know her personally, but I don't. But I do feel like I've come to know her work, know her more through her work in good women
And so what we see here with Holly stories is this quiet rebellion to that idea, to that notion of being a good southern woman. And her, with each story, she bucks the notion a little more. All of the stories are equally so. I'm going to digress a little bit because my mind is wavering all over the place. But there is a quiet. When reading Holly's work, there's this quiet rebuttal of, no, I won't do that
And so when I get, when I'm reading this, I feel like, of course, we always want to be like when we're reading stuff. Is this true? If this is not true, but it feels all very memoir ish. Right? And that's how specific it is. That's how detailed it is, that it feels like she knows these people, she knows these places, and it feels not at all like a caricature. Feels very purposeful. And so I love this
So there's this notion in this story that the I pick up from my reading, my experience, and what I come to with when I come to the page to this story that there's this notion that the mother of the protagonist will somehow pick up the weight of being the caretaker. But she doesn't. She doesn't. And that little slight of not picking up the weight of being the caretaker is a pushback on what it means to be a good family citizen
My name is Khadija Abdul Haq, and this is from the margins, where we talk all we talk women's lit, but specifically black women's lit. I'll see you next time, and I hope you enjoy this episode from the margins. Till next time, have a good week and take care of yourselves. And don't be good women, all right? Take care
Rocío (Ro) Christensen
@rocio · 0:34
I just love hearing you talk about this and analyze the scenes though the way that she crafts a scene I found especially compelling. And I understand the shift to Spotify, but I do really love listening to you on here and being able to reply and have a conversation is quite nice. But yeah, thank you so much for sharing. I always really enjoy listening to what you have to say and yeah, it's just wonderful. So thank you