Power to Yield is a collection of speculative tales exploring gender identity, neurodivergence, and religion …
Like a warm hug of fiction
5 stars
Read this a few months back and think about regularly - this collection contains some of the most memorable and wonderful short stories I've ever read.
My favourite story was "Folded into tendril and leaf"! This story was one of my favourite reads of 2023, and as far as I'm concerned makes worth getting a copy of the book worth it. It's a gentle love story where one character is intersex, in a magical fantasy setting where war is going on in the background. This one has a character turn into a plant, which is a theme across multiple stories. The themes that span multiple stories (like intersex people relating to plant life) help the whole collection cohere together.
The stories "The 1st interspecies solidarity fair and parade", and "Power to yield" also stood out for me - both engaging stories about being interconnected that value the variety of human …
Read this a few months back and think about regularly - this collection contains some of the most memorable and wonderful short stories I've ever read.
My favourite story was "Folded into tendril and leaf"! This story was one of my favourite reads of 2023, and as far as I'm concerned makes worth getting a copy of the book worth it. It's a gentle love story where one character is intersex, in a magical fantasy setting where war is going on in the background. This one has a character turn into a plant, which is a theme across multiple stories. The themes that span multiple stories (like intersex people relating to plant life) help the whole collection cohere together.
The stories "The 1st interspecies solidarity fair and parade", and "Power to yield" also stood out for me - both engaging stories about being interconnected that value the variety of human experience and expression.
There isn't a lot of literature by openly intersex authors that advances intersex representation. It's even rarer to find this kind of representation that ALSO is genuinely good writing. This short story collection pulls it off.
My one complaint is the order of stories. The first couple of stories are IMO the weakest of the collection. They're not bad, but it's a shame that the strongest stories are tucked away in the middle of the book.
I recommend starting with Tendril & Leaf or the Solidarity Fair stories rather than the default order.