Breaking Points

In thirteen slick, innovative, and gut-wrenching flashes, the young women and girls in Breaking Points, the debut chapbook from Chelsea Stickle, hit the walls around them-- walls constructed by family, friends, significant others, and insidious cultural perils. " Stranger danger doesn't disappear when you start wearing a push-up bra," notes one of Stickle's pre-teen narrators when confronted by a leering threat that will forever sever her path from that of her best friend. In " How to Make Stock with Thanksgiving Leftovers," a queer young woman takes us through a wry recipe for boiling turkey stock and raging against small-minded relatives and the traumas they inflict.