Sarah Gailey sure knows how to play to their audience. In their 2020 novella, Upright Women Wanted, Librarians aren’t sweater-wearing, child-shusshing, rule followers; they are gun-toting hard riders and outlaws, fighting back against government overreach and defying censorship at every turn.
(All the upright women want to make purchases through affiliate links like this one, to support pages that are fighting the good fight.)
The story takes place in a “future” United States that is not as far away as we might hope. The government has devolved, fascism is the ideology of the day, and all reading material must be sanctioned by the State, distributed by Librarians who travel the country by wagon.
Esther stows away in the back of one such wagon, unbeknownst to the Librarians who are travelling through her town. She’s fleeing in the hopes of escaping her arranged marriage and the auspices of her tyrannical father. We quickly learn that her lover, Beatrix, was recently executed for possession of Unapproved Materials, and Esther has joined some unfortunate dots. Having been fed a steady diet of propaganda, she believes that her queerness is the direct cause of poor Beatrix’s fate, and the same will come for her if she doesn’t find a way to avoid temptation and disinfect her soul.
Little does Esther realise that the Librarians are not, in fact, as pious and upstanding as they appear. In fact, Bet and Leda – who find her stowed away and agree to let her join them – are queer themselves, and part of an anti-censorship resistance operating under the government’s noses. Carting approved reading material across the country is merely a convenient cover for their rebellious activities that – at the moment – include transporting three women to a sanctuary of sorts in the insurrectionist state of Utah, and hiding the true gender identity of their apprentice Cye. An apprentice that soon catches Esther’s eye…
Upright Women Wanted is a short book, running just 176 pages, so Gailey doesn’t have time to waste words. The world is built out quickly with gentle exposition. The reader is given the bare minimum needed to understand Esther’s story. It’s good writing – and only a bummer in the sense that I desperately wanted to know more about this world and the Librarians fighting the good fight in it.
The allegory isn’t subtle, but I think that’s kind of the point. Upright Women Wanted is a rallying cry for communities living in persecution in Trump’s America. Using the iconography of the Western genre, Gailey galvanises readers with a Handmaid’s Tale-esque story of secret rebellion and guerilla warfare. Personally, I think it would make for a truly excellent TV mini-series, but as far as I can tell there’s no news of any in development. I’ll be setting a Google Alert for it, though, and I encourage all of you to pick up Upright Women Wanted in the meantime if you need a shot in the arm.
Read Upright Women Wanted on audiobook via Libro.fm here.
My favourite Amazon reviews of Upright Women Wanted:
- “basically a future Western dystopia with gay resistance librarians” – sarah
- “If you are a lesbian you might enjoy this little book but it is poorly written with a weak story.” – JAKindle
- “I might read a sequel if there was more substance to it. I am intrigued. I just want more action and spycraft and sticking it to the regime than kissy faces.” – DabOfDarkness
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