Moving between power plants and pirate ships, remote caves and suburban strip malls, Maggie Cooper’s The Theme Park of Women’s Bodies takes readers on a tour of worlds built by, for, or around women. By turns darkly satirical and almost utopian, Cooper’s fierce, fabulist stories explore the power and promise of these spaces as sanctuaries and strongholds, places of connection and creation. Yet at the same time, they point to the ways that a narrowly defined femininity feeds exploitation and violence, inviting readers to consider the breadth of “woman” as a category with a wide-ranging history, present, and future. Grappling with the role of gender and the body in creating and maintaining communities, these stories dream of worlds where we can all escape our narrow orbits.
