Breaking Points

In thirteen slick, innovative, and gut-wrenching flashes, the young women and girls in BREAKING POINTS, the debut chapbook from Chelsea Stickle, hit the walls around them-walls constructed by family, friends, significant others, and insidious cultural perils. "Stranger danger doesn't disappear when you start wearing a push-up bra," notes one of Stickle's pre-teen narrators when confronted by a leering threat that will forever sever her path from that of her best friend. In "How to Make Stock with Thanksgiving Leftovers," a queer young woman takes us through a wry recipe for boiling turkey stock and raging against small-minded relatives and the traumas they inflict.

Written in the style of a classic glossy magazine personality quiz, "How Mature Are You?: A Quiz" provides whip-smart A, B, C responses to situations such as: "When that bitch in your book club calls you a space cadet" then furnishes the reader with irreverent, pull-no-punches results. This is a collection as darkly humorous as it is heartbreaking and disquieting. Within Stickle's thirteen walled worlds, some will break, some adapt, and others soar. Pushed to the breaking point, none escape unscathed.