by Demree McGhee
Feminist Press
5/6/2025, paperback
SKU: 9781558613386
A debut collection of surreal, skin-piercing stories about the boundless longing of queer Black women.
A runaway seeks shelter from violence with a pack of wild coyotes. A young woman falls into a hypocritical crew of white Christian YouTube influencers. A mother witnesses her daughter's prophecy about the end of the world come true. In Sympathy for Wild Girls, young Black women yearn for intimacy and hunt for belonging in a subtly warped version of our world, where social mores loom like shadows and bigotry shape-shifts.
Skirting the chasms that lurk in our common notions of "girlhood"--and their heightened peril for queer women of color--Demree McGhee's characters track the prints of their desire and pain to the edges of reality, finding refuge in unlikely places. Fighting self-loathing and societal abuse, they explore the bounds of their feral strength and ugliest truths, howling at the moon to be known.
Reviews:
"I loved this book! Demree McGhee writes with dazzling intelligence, tipping gracefully between the surreal and the real in a way that's constantly upping its own ante. These stories build to a powerful crescendo, and they left me in a state of awe." -- Jenny Fran Davis, author of Dykette
"McGhee writes in between the real and surreal, mixing dreamlike elements with stark realism, striking a balance that infuses each story with inventive and effective storytelling. A promising debut." -- Booklist
About the Author:
Demree McGhee earned her BA from the University of California San Diego. Her work has been published in Lunch Ticket, Wax Nine Journal, Prose Online, and more. Sympathy for Wild Girls is her debut short story collection. She is currently an MFA student at San Diego State University. She lives in San Diego, CA.