Reviewed by John Fredericks
Rainbow Rainbow
by Lydia Conklin
Catapult
May 2022, Hardcover, 256 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1646221011
In “Cheerful Until Next Time,” one of ten incisive, compelling, and tightly wound stories included in Lydia Conklin’s magnificent debut story collection, Rainbow Rainbow (2022), Dilly, a leading member of the story’s queer feminist book club, declares that the group has “reached the terminus of queer feminist literature, at least that which was available in English.” Faced with the reality that their book club may be ending, the group gropes around the margins of queer feminist literature, searching for one more book to keep the party going. But Dilly, the group’s leader and an English PhD student in Atlanta, rejects all tentative submissions as “not feminist” and “decidedly antifeminist.”
The group seems to be nearing the abyss of all queer feminist literature until Asher, one of the group’s newest members, who has transitioned to male, submits his own manuscript: a fifteen page confession of deep and limitless love to Ivan, the only other member of the reading group who currently identifies as male. Asher’s ex-girlfriend wrote the manuscript in her private diary, which Asher then stole and submitted to the group as a ploy to get Ivan into bed. The ploy works, sort of, but does not achieve the type of material ecstasy Asher had hoped for. The story ends with Ivan’s own transition to female and Asher’s wonderment at the part he played, however small, in Ivan’s identity, forever queer, always in flux.
Themes of queer identity, youthful curiosity, and the material reality, at once confining and liberating, of gender assignment populate these ten masterful stories. Through sparse prose, a keen eye for detail, and sharp social critique, the stories in Rainbow Rainbow create a sense of fluidity both in scope and philosophy grounded only by the limitations of the body and the identities we associate with it.
Characters throughout the collection obsess over bodies and how to manipulate them. In the opening story, “Laramie Time,” a lesbian couple attempts to get pregnant through artificial insemination, before the narrator realizes that the plot to impregnate her girlfriend will not save their relationship and she takes matters into her own hands, quite literally.
In “Sunny Talks,” the narrator accompanies their nephew, Sunny, to “a convention of trans YouTubers in Philadelphia.” The narrator envies this younger generation of trans youth for having the vocabulary with which to describe this fleeting feeling they have about their bodies, but the narrator’s jealousy is apparent: “If I were his mother, my feeling would be pure. But as it is, I wish the shift hadn’t happened too late for me to ever be beautiful in my right body but too soon for me to die in the peace of never having known another way.” In this way, the narrator feels discomfort in their own body and slowly attempts a new identity, replete with experimental pronouns, at the convention, a transition twenty years in the making, and one that causes considerable distress and confusion for Sunny..
In “Pink Knives,” a haunting tale of love and isolation during COVID, the narrator, who is transitioning to male, allows a new love interest to access to the parts of their body that they have limited by a binder. “Pink Knives” ruminates both on the physical realities of a transition – it is a surgery, after all – and the psychological torment the decision can play on the mind, at once selfish and inevitable. During an intimate scene, the narrator wonders at her selfishness and how it affects her girlfriend, who is stranded across the country due to “the plague.”
Conklin writes deftly about this materiality. When describing her breasts and her girlfriend’s affinity for them, the narrator explains, “She loves that part of my body, and her love haunts me at every stage of surgery: taking tawdry pictures of myself for the remote consult – my bathtub in the background containing one dusty puddle – the remote consult itself with the hold message about liposuction and eye work, the before-and-after pictures of strangers baldly lit and uncomfortable, shoulders hunched around bruises, the follow-up to the remote consult.
Collecting a letter from my therapist, pushing on my insurance, pushing on my surgeon, scheduling a date, buying compression vests and scar strips and shea butter and silicone and pineapple, all this effort just to steal some of my girlfriend’s joy.” This passage demonstrates Conklin at their best, showing characters in their most committed form, describing how the physical and material conditions of transitioning is hard work and takes an absolutely full moral and emotional inventory. Notice the repetition of the word “remote,” which performs double duty as a subtle reminder of the isolation felt during COVID and the remoteness with which the narrator regards their own body, not quite alien, but just out of reach. For the narrator in “Pink Knives,” their transition is selfish but necessary, as is the physical contact they allow the relative stranger, this new COVID love interest, as they grant them access to their body they no longer allow anyone else to consider as real, natural, and alluring.
A less careful reader might posit that the main characters in Conklin’s stories represent only one side of queer identity, that they are all cast as sad and depressed, trapped in the wrong body, or the limits of a confining sexuality, or an identity poorly defined and that the characters who populate the world around our main characters are relatively comfortable in their own, mostly queer, skin. This isn’t true, as the secondary characters often occupy the marginal and dangerous space of queer identity as well. Ivan, for instance, from “Cheerful Until Next Time,” ultimately transitions into a female identity after an awkward, violent sexual encounter with Asher.
In “A Fearless Moral Inventory,” Carla, a sex addict on the precipice of a relapse, describes how her ex-boyfriend, Dave, was raped after a night of blackout drinking. Nobody really believes Dave and, though he is no longer in Carla’s life, the apparent violence and physicality of the rape encounter ends their relationship and sets Carla on a path to sexual abandonment.
The final story in the collection, “Boy Jump,” does wonders with its peripheral characters, especially the dashing and charismatic concentration camp tour guide, Jakub. In “Boy Jump,” our narrator, “Ms. Daisy Hoffman,” is living in Poland for the summer and has made the decision to transition to male. He awaits his girlfriend to deliver the news, but, before she arrives, he’s overcome with a sense of sexual attraction to Jakub, who accompanies him on a tour of Plaszow, a concentration camp. It is in Plaszow, among the horrors of the Nazi deathcamp, that the two characters share a botched moment of compulsive intimacy. Through this experience, Daisy learns of the boundaries Jakub has had to set with other men in his past. The shame Daisy feels when accidentally crossing these boundaries is palpable, and an apt metaphor for the discomfort he feels navigating this new world, where the ways in which we describe ourselves are slippery and entangled within the limits of our vocabulary, our (mis)conceptions about gender, the clothes we wear, and the unwritten rules that guide our sexual lives.
All of Conklin’s characters exist on the periphery of society. They are constantly in search of a shared experience of understanding, longing to be heard and seen through the physical constraints of their body. It is natural, then, that all of Conklin’s characters, even those that may seem secondary, and marginal by nature of the story, experience the same feelings of shame, violence, love, and joy at physical contact and sexual encounters that our main characters do. This childlike wonder dominates the pervading sense of curiosity in these stories and Conklin’s voice is never clearer than when writing from the point of view of a child.
The most stirring stories in Rainbow Rainbow concern the inner lives of children, a queer coming-of-age that cracks and sizzles with curiosity and desire for physical and emotional connection. These three stories, “The Black Winter of New England,” “Pioneer,” and “Ooh, the Suburbs,” which are most reminiscent of Carson McCullers, represent the best of Conklin’s abilities: their incredible gift for minimal prose combined with the rich psychological inner lives of identity and sexuality not yet fully realized. This youthful attitude towards sexuality, at times approaching the type of fantasy that dominates the teenager’s mind, allows Conklin to exist in a transitional space and write towards a sense of optimism that pervades every story, but is no more palpable than in these three.
The most engrossing of these three stories, possibly the best in this monumental collection, “Ooh, the Suburbs,” follows two lesbian teenagers, Heidi and Kim, as they venture into the city in order to meet Kim’s secret online crush, LisaParsonsTwo. Kim, who at first glance appears to be more comfortable in her sexuality, regales the pensive Heidi with stories of lesbian conquests at her old school, in her old town by the beach, the aptly named Scituate. On their trip into the city to meet LisaParsonsTwo, Kim, playing the confident foil to Heidi’s more careful characteristics, answers Heidi’s question of if she plans to seduce LisaParsonsTwo: “ ‘Doy,’ said Kim. ‘I’ll seduce her so hard.’” But, what the reader knows, or at least suspects, that the two teenage girls don’t is that Lisa Parsons, who is much older than Kim and Heidi, needs no seduction. She’s struggling with her own compulsions and she acts on these compulsions, somewhat grotesquely, with Heidi in the coffee shop surrounded by other lesbians and Kim, none of whom notice. The reader is repulsed by Lisa Parson’s actions (and so, for her part, is Lisa Parsons), but for Heidi it is exciting to have a woman finally touch her, to know her in ways she has only fantasized about. The experience with Lisa Parsons also marks Heidi’s transition from youth to adulthood. Heidi’s realization at the end of the story that it’s actually Kim and Lisa Parsons – not Heidi – who are unsure of their sexuality, only serves to emphasize the discomfort and unsure footing with which Conklin places all her characters.
In all the stories in Rainbow Rainbow, there is hope and optimism. Conklin takes their time with their characters, exploring how failed relationships and physical violence mark queer bodies. But all of Conklin’s characters end up with a better sense of themselves and a clearer vision for their future. These realizations propel them into action and a steadfast commitment to continue searching for the best expressions of themselves. It is a youthful experience, to always be transitioning, but it is within that youthful optimism that Conklin creates a poetic vision of queer identity that cuts across human experience.
If the queer feminist reading group in “Cheerful Until Next Time” has reached the end of all queer feminist literature written in English, then maybe they should turn to Conklin’s own masterpiece next. Through its deft depictions of the materiality of queer bodies and the youthful exuberance of transitory identity, Rainbow Rainbow captures those rare moments of physical and emotional depth that transcend the page and reach right into the readers’ own inner lives.
About the reviewer: John M. Fredericks is the ninth and 10th grade ELA and AP English Literature teacher at West Tallahatchie High School in Webb, Mississippi and is a 2023-2024 Teach Plus Senior Writing Fellow. His work has been featured in Newsweek, The Hechinger Report, and the Clarion-Ledger, among others.