"Riding promised a way to escape our circumstances and our bodies, our genders, our parents, our upbringings. On horseback, we weren't horses, but we weren't girls either," writes Halimah Marcus, executive director of Electric Literature, in the introduction to Horse Girls. This is a collection of 14 intimate and probing essays by writers exploring their past selves and their present selves in relation to the "horse girl" stereotype they might have once embodied, and the writers they became.
The anthology expands upon the exclusionary image of who can be a horse girl, looking beyond the icon of "heterosexuality, independence, whiteness, femininity," to the margins and borders of the equine world. Courtney Maum explores the physicality of polo in "Playing Safe." Nur Nasreen Ibrahim considers the coloniality of horseback riding in the hill stations of Pakistan in "The Shrinking Mountain." And Sarah Enelow-Snyder writes about searching for perfection on horseback as a young Black girl who did not have the opportunities to see others like her in the showring or embracing a life on horseback in "A Racer without a Pedigree."
If riding horses means borrowing freedom, as the adage goes, this anthology most powerfully and poignantly grapples with what someone might be trying to free themselves from when they seek out these animals. These writers' stories will resonate with those who were themselves, or have ever loved, a horse girl. Each piece reflects the pain, love, gentleness and complexities of life that are wrapped up in that bond. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer