Time for another short story review! This week, it's St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves. I'd reccomend reading along, and just reading the work in general as it's pretty entertaining. However, keep in mind the backstory to all this; Karen Russel has based this story deeply in the genocide and re-education of Native Americans. When looking at a tragic subject such as this, is it more helpful to place this idea in a more light-hearted or serious tone? Who does this reach out to, and who is this helping (or hurting)? Critical questions to keep in mind as I review this rather interesting piece.
Overall, an incredibly amusing read. It was funny and deeply understandable, with twists and arcs that welded the story into my brain. The slow transition from the “we” of the pack to the “I” of Claudette--the story was built and paced to almost-perfection. No pun, joke or reference was lost to me, the upbeat tone had me bouncing along jovially.
However, you have to be careful when writing stories of this nature. When basing the story off of the real life genocide of a large group of people who still face prosecution to this day, maybe a comedic tone isn’t the best fit. The line between alusion and racism is a fine one, and this piece toes this line frequently. Comparing a specific group of people to dangerous animals is always a risky maneuver in storytelling. We should be especially scrutinizing when this appears to be written by a white woman-perhaps a white woman who claims she’s 3.7% Cherokee.
Another question is how anthropomorphic are these girls? There’s a scale that goes from full blown wolf to actually human, where are these girls in the story? It says that they look awkward while running on all fours, and have to press their ears back with (I’m assuming) their hands. BUT they’re able to catch birds and small game, something that no human on two proper legs should be able to do. Do these girls have wolf-like legs, claws and other accessories?
Also, what time period are we in? The story mentions “Hello my name is” name tags and straight up nuns with tranquilizer guns, but to have the idea of rehabilitating wolf people to work it would have to be set before this was considered unacceptable. It’s honestly confusing, and references to modern things for simply the sake of comedy take me out of the story completely. This story is like a pond in the forest: it looks fine and maybe even beautiful on the surface, but the deeper you go the dirtier and more worm-ridden it becomes.
