Everything’s Changing by Chelsea Stickle
Thirty West, 2023
Chelsea Stickle’s newest chapbook of flash fiction, Everything’s Changing, is a unique and delightful collection of magical realism, full of cautionary tales and concerns about the society we inhabit. Focusing primarily on the experiences of women and girls, along with some animals and ghosts, each of Stickle’s eighteen short stories come together to create a collective narrative about the complicated nature of life and forging your own path amongst the unrealistic expectations of a society whose rigid social rules seek to oppress and restrict.
In her story “I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream,” Stickle describes how “There is a town at the edge of things where women hold in their screams.” The women who live there are abused and don’t fight back for fear of punishment. “They die young: high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, cancer…They know what’s expected of them. Perfect bodies, perfect souls.” The women do what they can to survive in their oppressive community, yet feeling powerless, they are “always reaching for a place that doesn’t exist.“
In another story, “I Told You I Would Take Your Hand,” a girl cuts off the finger of a boy who touched her body without her permission with a knife that grew from her hand. In this world, “Their objectified bodies became objectively terrifying.” The women defend themselves with the very thing being used against them.
Despite placing her characters in vibrant and sometimes otherworldly scenarios, the concerns that Stickle addresses are real and prevalent in today’s world. She embraces the eccentric to address social concerns, especially feminist ones, and gives her characters a unique strength that allows them to navigate and transform their realities while simultaneously offering insight into our own. Stickle’s chapbook is truly an original tour-de-force, made all the more impressive for its brevity.
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Catherine Hayes is creative writer and book reviewer from Massachusetts and a recent graduate of the English master’s program at Bridgewater State University. Her work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming in MER Journal, Atticus Review, Parhelion Literary Magazine, and Blood & Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine. She can be contacted on Twitter at @Catheri91642131.