A Bright and Pleading Dagger by Nicole Rivas
Rose Metal Press, 2018
Nicole Rivas seems to have one goal in mind for her grotesque and controversial chapbook: to make women more respected by presenting situations that a vast majority of them unfortunately will be confronted with due to the lack of gender equality in our current society. However, instead of taking a traditional approach to this topic, Rivas adds a twist in each of her stories that transforms the situation from relatively mundane to startlingly bizarre. Through this unconventional method of storytelling, this up-and-coming author is able to explore sensitive, controversial subjects with the shock factor placed on the weird elements of each story rather than the feminist ideals. Individually, each piece in A Bright and Pleading Dagger is daringly beautiful; together, these stories create a forthright, burdening narrative on the abominable treatment of women that commands society to address its abhorrent shortcomings.
The aforementioned shock factor presents itself in many ways through the chapbook: a regurgitated Polly Pocket, a woman speed dating a corpse, and a girl who nearly drowns in the shower. These events are shadowed by themes of marginalization, oppression, and abuse.
One of the most prominent examples of this tactic is in “Like a Pill,” which begins, “I had such a bad cold that I coughed up a Polly Pocket I hadn’t seen since I was nine.” Though a teenage girl throwing up a toy that had been in her body since she was a child is both implausible and grossly off-putting to the reader, the Polly Pocket is revealed to be a physical and metaphorical representation of the gender specific role the narrator’s controlling boyfriend has forced her in to. In the end, the narrator is prescribed by a female mentor in her life to ingest the Polly Pocket once more.
Once the Polly Pocket is revealed to be both a real object and a metaphor, the meaning of the story becomes clear. This teenager, like many girls, has grown up with the understanding that women are required to fulfill a certain role in a romantic relationship. This role is unbending, unbreakable, and demands full submission to the demands of her dominant boyfriend. Society views her questioning of this gender norm as an illness, when in fact that questioning is the very thing that could heal her. Ultimately, however, the narrator is forced to comply with her female elder, and she continues to play the part of a good girlfriend despite her boyfriend’s manipulative behavior.
This unsavory conclusion is just one example of Rivas’s compelling prose. Her writing style resembles that of the esteemed Kurt Vonnegut while being entirely and uniquely feminine. Rivas certainly achieves her goal of being both controversial and unconventional while sharing the harsh reality of our world’s ever-present gender restrictions. By unveiling these dark truths, she challenges society to act upon its declarations of feminism and demands that women be free from oppression.
–
Chloé Phelps is a double English major at Lee University. This is her first chapbook review.