The nine short pieces in this chapbook form a landscape fraught with dangerous pitfalls and survived thanks to female camaraderie. One of the collection’s strongest pieces,“The Island,” is set in antiquity, yet its themes are modern and encompassing. Christiana Elena wanders the countryside berry picking, only to return to her village where she finds the women raped and drowned in a lake by Roman soldiers. The bodies of these women, “in an alchemy of flesh turned to soil,” form an island where Christiana and other surviving girls from the region can make new homes. In lyrical prose, Cooper invites readers to join the project:

Let the purslane sprout in the soft down of your cheek as the water plays against your hairline. Let the cows graze on the nape of your neck. Let your eye become a wishing well, your teeth become a stairway. Let your tongue become the path that will lead the next woman home.

Like “The Island,” several stories feature an omniscient, controlled and distant voice reminiscent of fairy tales or myths; others feel more contemporary and realistic. The collection opens with the latter, a monologue from a near-future tour guide at the titular theme park. She works two jobs to afford an apartment she shares with “three other impoverished feminists.” The park entrance is known as the Boob, and cleverly-named attractions include Roe Revived, the Tower of Flaming Corsets, the River of Menses, and a water park called the Second Wave. The tour guide complains about working conditions at the theme park and, following a loud crash from the direction of the Roller Coaster of Women in Politics, reassures tour members that the only violence at the park is the “violent erasure of the experiences of Black and Brown women, trans folks, and other people from marginalized backgrounds.” Cooper has a lot of fun with this piece. At one point, the guide asks “any cis men, individuals with a net worth over $500K, and anyone who follows J.K. Rowling on social media” to go first through the Miracle of Life where they’ll be “journeying down the fallopian tube in no time.”

“Operation Hecuba” imagines the year 2052, when the world’s scientific community investigates solutions to address the inadequate power grid, specifically “the potential for human emotions to generate energy.” In a brilliant move, Cooper writes that righteous fury is most effective; the “electrical charge of a woman wronged” is an excellent power source. The omniscient narrator lights up the page: “This, like so much else, would be woman’s work.” The female workers live in dormitories and strap themselves into harnesses and headsets to work in cubicles they call Hellboxes where they watch “images, conversations, videos” that make the generators hum. No one knows the long-term effects of such work—an ominous sign. Eventually, the Hecubites begin to organize and to understand the extent of their power. 

“Operation Hecuba” is reminiscent of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata. What they have in common (beyond a focus on gender and power) is a profound sense of inevitability. The premise for Cooper’s story is so rich that despite its success, one hopes Cooper might explore her idea even further. It’s breathtaking to imagine this situation peopled by individuated characters, each with her particular history and rage-fueled trajectory. 

In “The Lesbian’s Guide to Cave Exploration.” Lois, Kaoli, Sasha and an unnamed first-person narrator make up “a group of women in cargo pants and loose canvas shirts” who hold onto each other as they head toward some caves. As she does throughout this collection, Cooper, who has a great eye and ear, describes the women’s activities—here, spelunking—with grace and clarity:

There is a silence, and I listen to the hush of the cave, under which I can almost hear our four hearts beating: today, today, today, today. Then Kaoli shakes her head, her hair like a horse’s tail. I notice the first threads of silver in the thick black.  

Despite the attraction the narrator feels for Lois—“I can see a hint of something in her eye, and I want to chase it”—she’s a reluctant lesbian. Lois moves to San Francisco without her. With Lois gone, the narrator makes solo expeditions into the caves hoping to catch up with her, imagining that Lois is “just up ahead, around the next curve.”

Five flash-length stories round out the collection. Settings include an all-female utopian pirate ship, the baths or “soaking chamber” at Baden-Baden, a home for expectant mothers, and the “City of Ladies” where “some still choose to wear brassieres” even though they are “considered purely optional, even a little retro.” 

The final story is a lyrical piece, “The Convent,” where women who believe themselves to be “the bruised apples of the world, not loved enough by the families who had left them by the convent gates” spend their days making jams in a world that’s “gone sour, too sour to be remedied by a spoonful of jelly.” The Theme Park of Women’s Bodies does an admirable job of balancing the bitter with the sweet. 

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Maggie Cooper is a graduate of Yale College, the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, and the MFA program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Ninth Letter, Inch, and elsewhere. She lives with her spouse in the Boston area and works as a literary agent.

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Sarah Holloway is a former tax accountant who’s now enjoying the writing life. She lives in Savannah, GA, with her husband, dogs and lots of books. Her work has appeared in  SmokeLong Quarterly’s blog, Roi Fainéant, Emerge Literary Journal, Cowboy Jamboree, Third Street Review and elsewhere.