Orpheus Girl
(Sprache: Englisch)
In her debut novel, award-winning poet Brynne Rebele-Henry re-imagines the Orpheus myth as a love story between two teenage girls who are sent to conversion therapy after being caught together in an intimate moment.
Abandoned by a single mother...
Abandoned by a single mother...
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In her debut novel, award-winning poet Brynne Rebele-Henry re-imagines the Orpheus myth as a love story between two teenage girls who are sent to conversion therapy after being caught together in an intimate moment.Abandoned by a single mother she never knew, 16-year-old Raya obsessed with ancient myths lives with her grandmother in a small conservative Texas town. For years Raya has fought to hide her feelings for her best friend and true love, Sarah. When the two are outed, they are sent to Friendly Saviors: a re-education camp meant to fix them and make them heterosexual. Upon arrival, Raya vows to assume the role of Orpheus, to return to the world of the living with her love and after she, Sarah, and the other teen residents are subjected to abusive and brutal treatments by the staff, Raya only becomes more determined to escape.
In a haunting voice reminiscent of Sylvia Plath and the contemporary lyricism of David Levithan, Brynne Rebele-Henry weaves a powerful inversion of the Orpheus myth informed by the disturbing real-world truths of conversion therapy. Orpheus Girl is a story of dysfunctional families, trauma, first love, heartbreak, and ultimately, the fierce adolescent resilience that has the power to triumph over darkness and ignorance.
CW: There are scenes in this book that depict self-harm, homophobia, transphobia, and violence against LGBTQ characters.
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Every night Grammy and I watch Mom on the TV. I always thought Mom was a silver screen kind of beauty because of that picture of her in high school: blonde, dimples, all clean-looking. But in this show she s dark-sexy, her hair colored a deep brunette, silky bedsheets held up around her neck with gold ribbons. Mom left Pieria when I was a kid. Grammy would say it was because she needed to go be Aphrodite on the TV. I know that it s because she was tired of it all, of the town and the people. So she disappeared one night. She only told Grammy as she was walking out the door. I was two.In the car on the way to church this morning, I write Sarah s name in the condensation on the passenger s window, then wipe it off before Grammy can see.
The car is a worn-down blue Volvo from the seventies. It s a miracle it s still running. Every time Grammy slides the key in the ignition and it actually starts, she thanks God under her breath. The seat belts are frayed so much that they could snap if you pulled too hard, so we stopped using them. I have to hold onto the car door to keep from falling out of my seat every time Grammy brakes. She drives like a maniac. Runs over mailboxes on a regular basis, hits curbs, mows down shrubs. Once she ran over an abandoned lemonade stand. She never stops to deal with what she s run over, just keeps going, like she s late on her way to somewhere really important.
I get through the service like I always do: running myths through my head. Ever since I found my mom playing Aphrodite on that soap opera, I ve been memorizing them. I know it s stupid, but I ve always thought that one day I ll open the door and she ll be there, and I ll need something to talk about. And since my mom s Aphrodite, I might as well be able to talk about myths. During the service I think about Persephone, how the girl was pulled away from everything she d ever known and taken to a strange world. Or
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Atalanta. In these myths, girls are always being changed or taken by men, their voices, their protests ignored. And the queer girls, like Atalanta, are forced to become something else.
Grammy s always talking about how one day I ll have a normal life, with a husband and two kids (a boy and a girl) and a brick house with a white picket fence and a big yellow dog who ll run around the yard. She says my husband should work so I don t have to, and I ll stay home all day and make cookies the way she taught me and go to PTA meetings and church. Whenever she talks about it, she gets a misty look in her eyes and twists the gold chain of her cross necklace between her fingers, and I know it s not my life she s imagining, that secretly she s wondering what would have happened if her own husband hadn t died in a car accident at twenty-seven and left her with a two-year-old girl, if her girl hadn t gotten pregnant senior year of high school only to run off three years later.
Instead, she still has a job arranging and delivering flowers for weddings and funerals and baptisms, continual reminders of her own wedding and her husband s service, and she makes me go to cotillions and dance with boys, refuses to let me wear pants to school, and makes me go to church three times a week and Bible camp in the summer and try out for cheerleading every August.
Every fall since fourth grade, she s bought me a new pair of shiny green pom-poms. She takes the day off work to come to the tryouts with me. I walk into the gym with a lump in my throat, but I never can kick high enough or land lightly enough, and every year we drive home together in disappointed silence. When we get home, Grammy always says she has a headache worse than
Grammy s always talking about how one day I ll have a normal life, with a husband and two kids (a boy and a girl) and a brick house with a white picket fence and a big yellow dog who ll run around the yard. She says my husband should work so I don t have to, and I ll stay home all day and make cookies the way she taught me and go to PTA meetings and church. Whenever she talks about it, she gets a misty look in her eyes and twists the gold chain of her cross necklace between her fingers, and I know it s not my life she s imagining, that secretly she s wondering what would have happened if her own husband hadn t died in a car accident at twenty-seven and left her with a two-year-old girl, if her girl hadn t gotten pregnant senior year of high school only to run off three years later.
Instead, she still has a job arranging and delivering flowers for weddings and funerals and baptisms, continual reminders of her own wedding and her husband s service, and she makes me go to cotillions and dance with boys, refuses to let me wear pants to school, and makes me go to church three times a week and Bible camp in the summer and try out for cheerleading every August.
Every fall since fourth grade, she s bought me a new pair of shiny green pom-poms. She takes the day off work to come to the tryouts with me. I walk into the gym with a lump in my throat, but I never can kick high enough or land lightly enough, and every year we drive home together in disappointed silence. When we get home, Grammy always says she has a headache worse than
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Autoren-Porträt von Brynne Rebele-Henry
Brynne Rebele-Henry was born in 1999. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Rookie, and Blackbird, among other places. Her writing has won numerous awards, including the Louise Louis/Emily F. Bourne Award from the Poetry Society of America. She has two books of poetry: Fleshgraphs and Autobiography of a Wound, which won the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Orpheus Girl is her first novel.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Brynne Rebele-Henry
- Altersempfehlung: Ab 14 Jahre
- 2021, 176 Seiten, Maße: 13,9 x 20,9 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Soho Teen
- ISBN-10: 1641291737
- ISBN-13: 9781641291736
- Erscheinungsdatum: 09.08.2021
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
A Reedsy 40 Best LGBT Book of the Century 2021 Winner of the Young Adult Virginia Author Award
Finalist for the Golden Crown Literary Award
A Fall 2019 Kids' ABA Indie Next Pick
A Bitch Media Best LGBTQ Young Adult Book of 2019
A She Reads Best Young Adult Book of 2019
Lone Star Literary Life s Best of Texas 2019
Praise for Orpheus Girl
Raya and Sarah's story is a credit to Rebele-Henry's own teen voice, mature beyond her years. The emotionally dramatic narrative . . . rings incredibly true.
NPR
A haunting, brutally true stroke of genius.
Meredith Russo, Stonewall Award winning author of If I Was Your Girl
This raw and lyrical book doesn t flinch away from the devastating brutality of conversion therapy, bravely bearing witness to the mental and physical pain the girls experience as a direct result of homophobia. Despite the heavy subject matter, it s able to maintain a degree of lightness and hope.
Reedsy
An unflinching look at exclusion, hate and resilience.
Ms. Magazine
The love between these two girls is the beating heart of this novel, and this romance combined with the intense masquerade they must constantly perform, 'just pretending' their feelings away, is where Rebele-Henry succeeds at portraying the aching duality of being queer in an environment that will not allow it . . . Orpheus Girl is a modern epic that helps us think about the older epics, and what they have still to offer us.
Chicago Review of Books
A testament to true love and resiliency . . . it s a joy to read the elegiac rhythm she has so deftly created with ever-turning, dynamic language.
Counterclock Journal
What makes thrillers so thrilling . . . is the layering of reality with myth, and few craft this combination as successfully as Orpheus Girl.
Bitch Media
Rebele-Henry has a true gift for
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mythological prose and imagery . . . All readers will benefit from this short, poetic story because while it is an engaging work of fiction, it is also a harsh reminder that no one should be thrown away or forced to change because they are different.
Lone Star Literary Life
A haunting story about exploring what it means to define your true self as those around you try actively to destroy it . . . the novel is powerful and will speak to anyone who has tried desperately to fit in, only to realize that's not what will make them feel complete.
Booklist
A bold, graphic tale about the costs of exclusion.
Kirkus Reviews
Deeply emotional, this devastating story is lyrical and haunting.
School Library Journal
This book is dreamy and wavering, like a heat mirage, like the shadows of trees on a sidewalk; it s lovely and lazy, but grows in urgency as it progresses, just like Raya and Sarah s attempts to escape.
Megan Szmyd, Old Firehouse Books (Fort Collins, CO)
Praise for Brynne Rebele-Henry
Finalist for the 2019 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Winner of the AWP 2017 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry
"With unflinching vision, Brynne Rebele-Henry pulls us into the trenches of young womanhood.
Julia Elliott, author of The Wilds
I couldn t get this one out of my mind. Brynne Rebele-Henry has such a singular, obsessive urgency to her voice."
Kim Addonizio, author of the National Book Award Finalist Tell Me
Rebele-Henry is unafraid to confront the darkness that lives in any crevice."
Tarfia Faizullah, author of Seam
"Wise, startling . . . a poet to watch."
Library Journal
Lone Star Literary Life
A haunting story about exploring what it means to define your true self as those around you try actively to destroy it . . . the novel is powerful and will speak to anyone who has tried desperately to fit in, only to realize that's not what will make them feel complete.
Booklist
A bold, graphic tale about the costs of exclusion.
Kirkus Reviews
Deeply emotional, this devastating story is lyrical and haunting.
School Library Journal
This book is dreamy and wavering, like a heat mirage, like the shadows of trees on a sidewalk; it s lovely and lazy, but grows in urgency as it progresses, just like Raya and Sarah s attempts to escape.
Megan Szmyd, Old Firehouse Books (Fort Collins, CO)
Praise for Brynne Rebele-Henry
Finalist for the 2019 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Winner of the AWP 2017 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry
"With unflinching vision, Brynne Rebele-Henry pulls us into the trenches of young womanhood.
Julia Elliott, author of The Wilds
I couldn t get this one out of my mind. Brynne Rebele-Henry has such a singular, obsessive urgency to her voice."
Kim Addonizio, author of the National Book Award Finalist Tell Me
Rebele-Henry is unafraid to confront the darkness that lives in any crevice."
Tarfia Faizullah, author of Seam
"Wise, startling . . . a poet to watch."
Library Journal
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