Send Nudes by Saba Sams, 2022
Where Madeline Miller’s Circe reclaims female agency within mythological retelling, the second narrative in my series of reviews, Saba Sams’ Send Nudes, transposes that same feminist lens into the present day, exploring how contemporary young women navigate identity, sexuality, and societal expectation.
Sams’ Send Nudes, through its engagement with taboo and explicit themes such as abortion, miscarriage, and sexuality, appeals to the older end of the young adult literary spectrum; offering readers a portrayal of varying journeys into womanhood. Sams depicts the narrative through multiple voices, each offering differing perspectives upon femininity- contrasting the traditional viewpoint that ‘feminine voicelessness continues to be a prevalent concept within literature’ (Oldacre).
The multiplicity evident throughout Sams’ collection of short stories, aligns with the concept of material feminism, a framework that examines the interplay between individuals and their material environments, emphasizing how, objects, and experiences shape gendered identities. She proposes that gender is not an inherent identity, but one that is shaped through interactions with one’s surroundings and experiences; ‘constructed by society and embedded within children’s early literary development’ (Mitchel). Send Nudes exemplifies this concept by situating its characters within environments that shape their understanding of themselves, and their relationships.
Mitchell heightens this; analysing how literary gender constructs are often reinforced through restrictive social environments, particularly via the Madonna/whore dichotomy, which categorizes young women into ‘good’ or ‘bad’ roles based on conformity to traditional gender expectations. Send Nudes confronts this restrictiveness, by exploring the lived realities of its young female characters; awarding them voice and agency, their identities shaped by both personal decisions and cultural expectations; overall, a crucial feminist reading of modern adolescence.
In the final review of this series, I turn to Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties– a collection of short prose that advances this feminist discourse, interrogating the idea of ‘body horror’ and the historic silencing of female desire, presenting pleasure itself, not as something to be condemned, but as an autonomous, fluid aspect of womanhood.
-Lottie Horn
Volunteer Writer
Girl Museum
References:
Oldacre, Lauren Kali. A Woman’s Voice and identity: Narrative message as a Solution to Voicelessness in American Literature. 2016. Gardner-Webb University, MA Dissertation. https://digitalcommons.gardner-webb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=english_etd
Mitchell, Nicole jessica. Simply Not Enough: Representations of Young Women in Young Adult Literature, and Marginalization of YA Literature as a whole. 2013. University of Memphis, PhD Dissertation.