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Girlfriends
In seven light-filled prisms of short stories, Emily Zhou chronicles modern queer life with uncompromising and hilarious lucidity. Attending to the intimacy of Gen Z women’s lives, these stories move from the provinces to the metropolis, from chaotic student accommodation to insecure jobs, from parties to dates to the nights after, from haplessness to some kind of power.
Funny and devastating, like a trans Mary McCarthy, Zhou depicts with shocking precision the choices and shifts through which we work on each other and ourselves. Tender, merciless, and gracious, Girlfriends is a breath of fresh air.
Funny and devastating, like a trans Mary McCarthy, Zhou depicts with shocking precision the choices and shifts through which we work on each other and ourselves. Tender, merciless, and gracious, Girlfriends is a breath of fresh air.
168 pages, Paperback
First published October 17, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 156 reviews
October 6, 2023
read in one sitting. gave me one of the most gracious thing literature is able to impart, a rush of wonder and appreciation for my own life.
October 17, 2024
there were moments during this collection where the distilled slice-of-life atmosphere washed over me in a very lovely way—and i respect a collection that resists the contemporary short fiction inclination towards overwriting/narrative causality/cheap plot twists—but i think my general thoughts on these short stories boil down to two points.....
1. the prose was overwhelmingly average.
and,
2. the attempt at replicating real life speaking habits (the ums, uhs, likes, and so forth) and the choice to lean so heavily on small talk began to feel, over several short stories, replicative and redundant rather than atmospheric. these writing choices failed characters with a ton of emotional potential, who fell flat as a result of their borderline unreadable conversations—and i say unreadable because my eyes wanted to drift shut during. there were so many conversations in this a la CHARACTER A: How are you? You seem [emotion]. CHARACTER B: [short, potentially monosyllabic non-answer that is accepted at face value]. the dialogue in this was simply not interesting!!!!!! i don't know why so many of these conversations were included when they provided nothing to the narratives.
i feel very lukewarm about this collection, though i think the attendance to place was definitely one of its stronger features, and if you're someone who wants to read about the mundane, the daily, the routine, and the little dysfunctions that inhibit or jar those mundanities, this might be for you.
1. the prose was overwhelmingly average.
and,
2. the attempt at replicating real life speaking habits (the ums, uhs, likes, and so forth) and the choice to lean so heavily on small talk began to feel, over several short stories, replicative and redundant rather than atmospheric. these writing choices failed characters with a ton of emotional potential, who fell flat as a result of their borderline unreadable conversations—and i say unreadable because my eyes wanted to drift shut during. there were so many conversations in this a la CHARACTER A: How are you? You seem [emotion]. CHARACTER B: [short, potentially monosyllabic non-answer that is accepted at face value]. the dialogue in this was simply not interesting!!!!!! i don't know why so many of these conversations were included when they provided nothing to the narratives.
i feel very lukewarm about this collection, though i think the attendance to place was definitely one of its stronger features, and if you're someone who wants to read about the mundane, the daily, the routine, and the little dysfunctions that inhibit or jar those mundanities, this might be for you.
February 11, 2024
4.5 rounded up — Zhou paints a sensitive, funny portrait of trans lives simultaneously familiar and unknown. Reading this brief collection was like peeking through a peephole at my neighbors, my possible past lives, my friends and lovers in alternative realities. Her work fills such an immense need for trans slice-of-life stories, and this collection is self-assured and lived-in. I can’t wait to read more from both Zhou and Little Puss Press!
January 4, 2024
What a glittering collection of short stories. The characters so full of life and dimension, and each story is written beautifully and with such clear perspectives. I know these stories will sit with me for a while and I will long for them, and return to them. <3
August 12, 2023
Hard to believe how short some of these were. They all felt really lived in
November 4, 2024
A T4T book that is "gen-z," whatever that means. So what are the trans girls in their mid-twenties up to in the current year? They're kissing everybody. And they're in situationships.
The book, "Girlfriends" lives up to the cover. It's a peak into the lives of several young trans women, all with their own things going on, which all together make up a mosaic of something beautiful. Each story is short, but very much lived in, with each story potentially capable of becoming it's own full formed novel.
Perhaps the most authentic book any book has come to being immediately relatable to "my" experience as any book has ever gotten, as a just another mid-20s trans girl who dabbles in partying a little.
I once saw Casey Plett (the publisher at Little Puss Press) when she came to Boston at the Model. Someone asked her something along the lines of, "have you noticed any differences within the trans community within the last decade or so?" Casey, didn't give a straightforward answer, replying something along the lines of "no, but maybe yes."
If anything, she mentioned that while publishing Girlfriends she noticed that there were a lot of cis women characters who were very comfortable and somewhat informed about trans issues. Particularly, she mentioned the scene where when a trans-girl tells a cis roommate that she was going to start hormones, and the cis girl goes, "well yeah duh do it." This striked her as something that wouldn't be plausible if she read it years ago. But now, in our current year, though the trans girls are fundamentally the same as 10 years ago, they're sometimes the cool kids at the party.
This book, like most other T4T books I've reviewed, is something that warms my soul, just a little bit.
The book, "Girlfriends" lives up to the cover. It's a peak into the lives of several young trans women, all with their own things going on, which all together make up a mosaic of something beautiful. Each story is short, but very much lived in, with each story potentially capable of becoming it's own full formed novel.
Perhaps the most authentic book any book has come to being immediately relatable to "my" experience as any book has ever gotten, as a just another mid-20s trans girl who dabbles in partying a little.
I once saw Casey Plett (the publisher at Little Puss Press) when she came to Boston at the Model. Someone asked her something along the lines of, "have you noticed any differences within the trans community within the last decade or so?" Casey, didn't give a straightforward answer, replying something along the lines of "no, but maybe yes."
If anything, she mentioned that while publishing Girlfriends she noticed that there were a lot of cis women characters who were very comfortable and somewhat informed about trans issues. Particularly, she mentioned the scene where when a trans-girl tells a cis roommate that she was going to start hormones, and the cis girl goes, "well yeah duh do it." This striked her as something that wouldn't be plausible if she read it years ago. But now, in our current year, though the trans girls are fundamentally the same as 10 years ago, they're sometimes the cool kids at the party.
This book, like most other T4T books I've reviewed, is something that warms my soul, just a little bit.
July 1, 2024
felt like i was having a conversation with a friend
April 7, 2024
just queer and trans life vibes
March 9, 2024
Gorgeous, gorgeous stories. Incisive and gentle, driven by subtle character interactions and understated conflicts in a way that I adore. No moralizing, no easy answers. Life as it is. These stories meander along, yet feel so direct in their intentions. They capture exactly what they need to: Difficult relationships, anxiety about one's direction in life, the social politics of parties full of neurotic queer people, the aching feeling of decay when growing up and living in the midwest. And prose that's so very approachable and humble, even when it absolutely devastates you!
November 25, 2024
perfectly captured the experience of being in your 20s and living with a bunch of people and trying to figure your shit out
March 17, 2024
I finally picked up this short story collection after it being highly recommended by my favourite bookshop - Category Is Books - and I am so glad that I did. For years I have said that I am not a lover of short stories, but after reading Sarahland, Her Body and Other Parties, and now Girlfriends, I think that I have found my niche. I just don't love short stories that have a million layers that are demanding to be picked apart and analysed in English classes; I much prefer something that is a little slice of life, be that fantastical or simply the mundane.
This is a collection of said slice of life stories, all of which follow trans women. Every single story was so well fleshed out, and despite wanting more when each of them ended, they all felt like they ended at the perfect spot, leaving me fully satiated.
Definitely a new favourite of mine, and I really hope that Emily Zhou releases something new soon because I am already craving more of her writing!
This is a collection of said slice of life stories, all of which follow trans women. Every single story was so well fleshed out, and despite wanting more when each of them ended, they all felt like they ended at the perfect spot, leaving me fully satiated.
Definitely a new favourite of mine, and I really hope that Emily Zhou releases something new soon because I am already craving more of her writing!
October 11, 2023
5 stars in supplication to the algorithm, paying it forward for the #queercommunity, and in remembrance of the grade inflation i was handing out back at umich. realistically, i'd say high 3 to low 4.
I had a pretty good time with this! I don't often read novels that are this close to my experience while also being so "up close" emotionally so it got me thinking about a few different things that i will wait to go into.
overall i thought the prose was well constructed and efficiently deployed, and the emotional landscapes of the characters felt very familiar, either to my own experience or in resemblance to other trans people ive known. since my wife recently read casey plett's "a safe girl to love" it was fresh in my head and i was comparing the two as i was reading. I think plett tends to build out of descriptions of sequential experiences so that the emotional landscape of the characters feels like part of the atmosphere of reading the story. here i often felt like zhou places relatively more emphasis on the dissonances between different and starkly drawn emotional landscapes (even for the non-perspective characters). i thought this was generally well executed, and the prose supported this well, but there were times where i felt like i could feel the it get a little shaky.
part of the shakiness i think comes from it being a very "writerly" book. its a short story collection largely about aspiring writers who care about measuring up as writers, generally runoff from some esteemed institution or other, etc etc. this confines the universe to fitting a very narrow set of experiences available to the author to a set of dramatic structures that historically developed under very different circumstances. this chafing felt especially strong in the stories set in new york as well as "performance". one example of this is the way the social media is basically dramatically inert set-dressing, maybe understandable since there arent really good examples to learn from in the classics. more generally, at times i got the impression that the dramatic moves available to zhou didnt quite match the detailed portraits being drawn.
The marketing copy and some of the reviews bill this as uniquely "gen-z", which as far as i can tell mostly just means depicting being trans while in college and also knowing a number of other trans people. being a grad student there around when i assume the author would have been was definitely a stark contrast to my experience at a different large state school in undergrad. otherwise, though, i felt like a lot of the anxieties and triumphs rang true. while i havent experienced the same degree of casual cruelty occasionally on display here ive definitely known plenty of people who are worse. the cautious distance to queer cis women that is explored here (that also is explored in "a safe girl to love") familiar. ironically, the lack of social flare-ups loosely mediated by alignments with internet micro-celebrities is more familiar to me that it might be to a lot of its zoomer readership.
overall, again, i had a pretty good time. i'd like to see zhou's style mature some, and i think that her perspective is pretty blinkered, but she ends up doing a lot with a little. i appreciated the phonomenology of trans perspectives, and i think she would do great with a longer novel with a larger cast once the kinks are worked out.
final note, i did think the way the rich-kid protagonist of "do-over" was romanticizing ypsi (also gentrifying pretty heavily) was pretty funny
I had a pretty good time with this! I don't often read novels that are this close to my experience while also being so "up close" emotionally so it got me thinking about a few different things that i will wait to go into.
overall i thought the prose was well constructed and efficiently deployed, and the emotional landscapes of the characters felt very familiar, either to my own experience or in resemblance to other trans people ive known. since my wife recently read casey plett's "a safe girl to love" it was fresh in my head and i was comparing the two as i was reading. I think plett tends to build out of descriptions of sequential experiences so that the emotional landscape of the characters feels like part of the atmosphere of reading the story. here i often felt like zhou places relatively more emphasis on the dissonances between different and starkly drawn emotional landscapes (even for the non-perspective characters). i thought this was generally well executed, and the prose supported this well, but there were times where i felt like i could feel the it get a little shaky.
part of the shakiness i think comes from it being a very "writerly" book. its a short story collection largely about aspiring writers who care about measuring up as writers, generally runoff from some esteemed institution or other, etc etc. this confines the universe to fitting a very narrow set of experiences available to the author to a set of dramatic structures that historically developed under very different circumstances. this chafing felt especially strong in the stories set in new york as well as "performance". one example of this is the way the social media is basically dramatically inert set-dressing, maybe understandable since there arent really good examples to learn from in the classics. more generally, at times i got the impression that the dramatic moves available to zhou didnt quite match the detailed portraits being drawn.
The marketing copy and some of the reviews bill this as uniquely "gen-z", which as far as i can tell mostly just means depicting being trans while in college and also knowing a number of other trans people. being a grad student there around when i assume the author would have been was definitely a stark contrast to my experience at a different large state school in undergrad. otherwise, though, i felt like a lot of the anxieties and triumphs rang true. while i havent experienced the same degree of casual cruelty occasionally on display here ive definitely known plenty of people who are worse. the cautious distance to queer cis women that is explored here (that also is explored in "a safe girl to love") familiar. ironically, the lack of social flare-ups loosely mediated by alignments with internet micro-celebrities is more familiar to me that it might be to a lot of its zoomer readership.
overall, again, i had a pretty good time. i'd like to see zhou's style mature some, and i think that her perspective is pretty blinkered, but she ends up doing a lot with a little. i appreciated the phonomenology of trans perspectives, and i think she would do great with a longer novel with a larger cast once the kinks are worked out.
final note, i did think the way the rich-kid protagonist of "do-over" was romanticizing ypsi (also gentrifying pretty heavily) was pretty funny
February 11, 2024
this one took me a lil bit to get through. all the stories kinda felt either the same or very similar where nothing really happened aside from people talking and big emotions but that's okay!!! I couldn't tell if the names overlapped or if the same characters were in different short stories, if it's the latter, I rly like that
crazy that it takes place in ann arbor/ypsi especially bc I didn't realize at all at first
*
"Cute," Aubrey said approvingly as the room turned a deep, computer red.
and after this had been exhausted, Jenna went back to talking about Paris, which she clearly had left only in body.
"Hi Lara,” Jenna whispered. "Are you also losing your goddamn mind?"
"Yeah," Lara said.
she seemed lost in a fantasy of her own life. She picked the playlists. We didn't really talk.
I wasn't meeting many people in those days, and whenever I ended up in a stranger's apartment, I noticed everything.
"So, you're the fourth tenant of the lesbian love triangle apartment," Veronica said to me.
"That's me."
It occurred to me that they all knew something I didn't, which is that you only have one body and it's useless to hide it when you're among friends.
"What changed?" she said. "Like, I'm curious what led to that decision."
"I have limited time on Earth," I said.
I raised my glass. It was almost irritating how comfortable I felt around him. It was like resuming the good parts of our relationship, as if nothing had happened, we had just traded genders and turned down the volume on the neuroticism.
That's the thing about transitioning in your twenties, I guess; you start changing a lot right when everyone you used to know starts learning the fine art of staying put. I thought about saying this to him but thought better of it.
"The voice?" I said pointedly. I felt suddenly protective of him. They hadn't given me back my weed pen yet for what I decided was too long.
I should have just gone out to the backyard again and asked those dorks what the fuck was up, but I was sure I would hear it from someone else. It was probably inevitable, actually.
crazy that it takes place in ann arbor/ypsi especially bc I didn't realize at all at first
*
"Cute," Aubrey said approvingly as the room turned a deep, computer red.
and after this had been exhausted, Jenna went back to talking about Paris, which she clearly had left only in body.
"Hi Lara,” Jenna whispered. "Are you also losing your goddamn mind?"
"Yeah," Lara said.
she seemed lost in a fantasy of her own life. She picked the playlists. We didn't really talk.
I wasn't meeting many people in those days, and whenever I ended up in a stranger's apartment, I noticed everything.
"So, you're the fourth tenant of the lesbian love triangle apartment," Veronica said to me.
"That's me."
It occurred to me that they all knew something I didn't, which is that you only have one body and it's useless to hide it when you're among friends.
"What changed?" she said. "Like, I'm curious what led to that decision."
"I have limited time on Earth," I said.
I raised my glass. It was almost irritating how comfortable I felt around him. It was like resuming the good parts of our relationship, as if nothing had happened, we had just traded genders and turned down the volume on the neuroticism.
That's the thing about transitioning in your twenties, I guess; you start changing a lot right when everyone you used to know starts learning the fine art of staying put. I thought about saying this to him but thought better of it.
"The voice?" I said pointedly. I felt suddenly protective of him. They hadn't given me back my weed pen yet for what I decided was too long.
I should have just gone out to the backyard again and asked those dorks what the fuck was up, but I was sure I would hear it from someone else. It was probably inevitable, actually.
October 6, 2023
Listen, I have never been particularly drawn to short story collections, but these seven stories simmered with energy. the characters were all so rich and complicated and caught in fraught moments of having to make sense of their lives. I wanted each of them to be novels! I can’t recommend this collection enough.
April 29, 2024
4.5/5 rounded up. 7 short stories all centering young trans women. felt like you were immediately immersed in the complexities, joy, and confusion of being a young trans person in nyc/michigan.
November 24, 2024
ok wow wow wow i loved this. so much. every single story, filled with interesting, complex queer / trans characters… i really haven’t read anything quite like it. so much self-analysis (#me). little glimpses into so many imaginary lives. i feel sad to leave!
lines i want to remember:
“that was a woman, perpetually appearing from behind something, too busy being a part of the world to consider it from the outside. she was the soft pink inside of the world… i wanted to be outside the world, like a poet, and i wanted to be inside the world, like a woman.”
“i wonder sometimes if you felt as lost amid all this as i did, and whether you had the same kind of tentative curiosity about me that i did about you. and i guess i wonder if you were really like me, or if we both just ended up in the same place.”
“i often think of you when i walk home. sometimes it feels like i'm always walking home, like that's the only part i ever retain and the rest of it is the daydream.”
lines i want to remember:
“that was a woman, perpetually appearing from behind something, too busy being a part of the world to consider it from the outside. she was the soft pink inside of the world… i wanted to be outside the world, like a poet, and i wanted to be inside the world, like a woman.”
“i wonder sometimes if you felt as lost amid all this as i did, and whether you had the same kind of tentative curiosity about me that i did about you. and i guess i wonder if you were really like me, or if we both just ended up in the same place.”
“i often think of you when i walk home. sometimes it feels like i'm always walking home, like that's the only part i ever retain and the rest of it is the daydream.”
November 2, 2024
intimate and perceptive collection of short stories that center trans women. there was an ease and comfort of reading these stories that i really liked. they displayed the wonderful messiness yet chaos of being a young trans person in their early to late twenties. i grew to really like this book. didn't really like the first couple of stories but LOVED the stories starting halfway through the book. it was definitely because the first couple of stories i really struggled to relate to the queer experiences of the characters. i think it was because i read these characters as white and really felt that defining their queerness in a way that i feel really disconnected and out of community with. i think i just also loved a lot more the complexities of the relationships in the later stories than in the beginning.
September 12, 2024
DNF
read the kindle sample and don’t wish to keep going. the writing was pretty meh. maybe if i read more my opinion would change. overall i think the concept is good and love the idea of short stories about trans characters but what i read didn’t capture me
read the kindle sample and don’t wish to keep going. the writing was pretty meh. maybe if i read more my opinion would change. overall i think the concept is good and love the idea of short stories about trans characters but what i read didn’t capture me
Read
May 3, 2024I loved all the stuff about roommates. An underexplored relationship in fiction!!
June 19, 2024
I used to think I didn’t like short stories. This changed my mind!
September 5, 2024
Very real, but casual, but in depth
Cool
Cool
October 30, 2024
what a fucking delight to be reading this book and several of stories take place in the city i am currently living in! wtf!
June 27, 2024
"I wanted to be outside the world, like a poet, and I wanted to be inside the world, like a woman."
November 2, 2023
i'm not good at doing reviews I feel like you guys should just understand all my thoughts & feelings intuitively. but anyway I liked this a lot
November 24, 2024
RAHHHHHHH I love queer people writing about queer people!!
This book is made up of seven short stories and despite their length, they all feel incredibly lived in and I felt a deep caring for the characters in each. They are all pretty similar, as Zhou describes them, “Introspective stories about aimless trans women, aged 19-25, who are all having some sort of inarticulate, poorly managed crisis. Quiet with a few loud moments.” That basically sums it up! And she executes this formula perfectly.
I wouldn’t even say that there were major quality dips between stories like is common in many collections. There were inevitably some I preferred but everything here had a baseline of excellence. I’m really excited to read whatever Zhou writes next.
This book is made up of seven short stories and despite their length, they all feel incredibly lived in and I felt a deep caring for the characters in each. They are all pretty similar, as Zhou describes them, “Introspective stories about aimless trans women, aged 19-25, who are all having some sort of inarticulate, poorly managed crisis. Quiet with a few loud moments.” That basically sums it up! And she executes this formula perfectly.
I wouldn’t even say that there were major quality dips between stories like is common in many collections. There were inevitably some I preferred but everything here had a baseline of excellence. I’m really excited to read whatever Zhou writes next.
Read
January 15, 2024great for a train ride — fast-paced, interesting (if at times repetitive) and at times properly properly excellent.
i think this writer will be very very good in a few years, but right now some of this felt underbaked. emily zhou is maybe right now a bit tied to the very specific experiences she knows, and i would be interested in her trying to break out of it a bit… all of the main characters are uni students (or have just left) studying english and feeling lost in the world….
but that being said there are moments where the writing SINGS and it’s absolutely luminous.
i think this writer will be very very good in a few years, but right now some of this felt underbaked. emily zhou is maybe right now a bit tied to the very specific experiences she knows, and i would be interested in her trying to break out of it a bit… all of the main characters are uni students (or have just left) studying english and feeling lost in the world….
but that being said there are moments where the writing SINGS and it’s absolutely luminous.
Read
June 24, 2024I liked how even though this is a collection with different characters in each story, they all seemed to exist in a shared emotional arc. So many great, specific details of their worlds and the people they interact with. And some insights on stuckness, liminal space, transition, impulsiveness, dysphoria, etc. that I appreciated! Very slice of life.
January 21, 2025
interesting series of short stories. while these stories were fictional and brief, they felt very immersive and lived in. Mundane yet enthralling, like hearing your friend tell you some tea about their work friend or neighbour. I appreciate how she captured the messiness of identity and love and relationships in your early 20s.
May 13, 2024
I loved this collection. The stories have this vibrant urgency to them which totally sucked me in. I think it was a result of how well developed the characters were, I cared so much for them and what would happen in these rich interpersonal dramas.
July 11, 2024
my love for short stories keeps growing…
if i’d had the time this would’ve been finished in one sitting, the pacing is perfect and all the characters are so well written and lived in. more simple queer stories like these please :)
if i’d had the time this would’ve been finished in one sitting, the pacing is perfect and all the characters are so well written and lived in. more simple queer stories like these please :)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 156 reviews