The virgin, the whore, the mother, the maid—these symbolic containers have long relegated women to harmfully confining roles that reinforce a patriarchal system desperately in need of disruption. Peach Pit: Sixteen Stories of Unsavory Women, an anthology edited by Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley, challenges this system by allowing the female characters to be  not tropes, not limiting stereotypes, not categorical extremes, but people—that is, human. 

“As human beings,” the editors note, “we are not a sum of our parts.” In the stories that follow, women are portrayed in the gray spaces, contradictions, and fissures between thought, action, belief, and experience, as we all are. A trope is a confinement. A person, though, is harder to describe in a word, or with a string of adjectives, because to be human is to be an ambiguity, a discrepancy, an incoherence at odds with language and, indeed, with all that seeks coherence. What this anthology does is counter the impulse toward such neat resolution. The women in these stories is inflict pain, but they feel pain too, and their stories help begin to untangle the knot that’s been tightened around some of our necks as others attempt to wrestle free from their own strictures.

The collection begins with Deesha Philyaw’s “Fuckboy Museum,” a satirical horror story about Lilli, a middle-aged Black woman who, after being wronged one too many times while using online dating apps, finally takes things into her own hands. Experimental in form, the story incorporates visual arrangements of text reminiscent of museum placards. However, unlike the signage found on a museum wall or located next to a painting, the story’s placards archive and spotlight various text threads and conversations Lilli has with the men she meets online:

Robert (b. 1971)

[redacted], 2017

Match.com private message transcript 

Robert: Hey

Lilli: Hey

Robert [image of an erect, unimpressive penis]

Another sign invites readers into Lilli’s “repository of reckoning.” The form is powerful, as the placards leave the featured male characters vulnerable to inspection and judgment from readers in the same way that women encounter public scrutiny and impossible expectations in the real world.

Other standout stories include Chana Porter’s “Aquafina” which, like “Fuckboy Museum,” leans into formal experimentation as it unfolds through somewhat epistolary narrative poems penned by Aquafina’s friend. While some of these poems address Aquafina directly, others address the memories of Aquafina that continue to haunt. “A Scholarship Opportunity” by Megan Giddings is another stellar consideration of how public consciousness impacts women. This story, which follows Tiffani as she competes for the title of “Worst Teen Girl in America,” emphasizes the absurd critiques and overwhelming pressures directed toward young women in patriarchal societies. The story’s humor reckons with how the female body is all too often commodified within these societies. A recurring theme is the way in which value judgments burden young women. In response to the question, “What would being made the worst girl be to you?” Tiffani says: 

I don’t want to be a good mother or a good wife. I want to be remembered for me, the things I do, the way I approached the world. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to be either of those things, mostly, but I want people to actually know my name. And this would at least be a start in that direction.

Tiffani’s answer incites “a mixture of boos and applause” from the crowd—and the pageant scenes in general speak to how young women are automatically assumed to be vain, self-centered, and annoying. The “worst” teen girl in America, from the crowd’s perspective, is the one who rejects roles like “mother” and “wife.” But Tiffani’s answer is one that her competitors easily could have given, and Giddings’ choice to name all the other girls “Tiffani” emphasizes the conformity even in these gestures toward rebellion. The false competition the pageant creates between the girls is something women readers may unfortunately recognize from their own experiences. Giddings’ fictional pageant ultimately exists as a microcosm of the spaces women occupy in the real world.

Collectively, the female characters in each of these sixteen stories are unyielding, like the stone seed of a peach at which the title nods. These characters refuse to be turned into something consumable. Instead, it’s the women who have all the bite, as they reject the use and objectification of their bodies. Ironically refreshing, Peach Pit is a delightfully wicked bundle of stories populated with women who are the pits, the best kind of terrible, and anything but some man’s sweet peach.  

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Molly Llewellyn is a twenty-something queer, disabled book blogger from the UK. She’s a big fan of “weird women” lit and anything that is the color green. She lives in the UK.

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Kristel Buckley is an editor, publicist and former publisher from the Big Smoke. She is more than happy to talk your ear off about the unfaithful representation of women in history, and her passion is a more equitable, inclusive future for all stories from all voices. She lives in the UK.

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Court Ludwick is a writer, artist, and educator currently pursuing her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing. She is the author of These Strange Bodies (ELJ Editions, 2024) and the founding editor-in-chief of Broken Antler Magazine. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Poetry South, West Trade Review, Oxford Magazine, Full House Literary, Archetype, and elsewhere. More of Court’s writing and art can be found on Instagram and Twitter @courtludwick, and on www.courtlud.com.