Child Abuse in 2023
By Julieta I.
It all happened on a quiet Sunday afternoon when I received a message from a dear friend recommending a short story to me. “The main character is mentally ill,” she said, “she has sexual intercourse with a shadow!” . The friend in question, who happens to love reading controversial stuff, had chosen this story to review for our Written Expression class. Her vague description fed my curiosity and I couldn’t help reading it. The girl-bangs-shadow plot belonged to Making Love in 2003, a short story that can be found in a book called No One Belongs Here More Than You, written by the well-known writer and artist Miranda July.
The tediously-written narrative follows a wannabe author who desperately seeks the publication of her novel due to her frustrated life. Her work is based on her experiences during her teenage years, where she recounts an intimate relationship with a ‘glowy, smudge- shaped shadow’. As she grows up, her boredom with the relationship increases and the heartbroken shadow tells her that he would come back to her in human form as a man named Steve. The main character unsuccessfully tries to move on with her life and becomes a special-needs teacher. Several years later, she meets Steve Krause, her fourteen-year-old student whom she is supposed to help overcome his learning disorder. She is immediately enraptured by him, and her desire to get her shadow back leads her to commit very questionable, immoral acts that make this literary work not suitable for young adults.
At the beginning, the main character explicitly tells us how she met the shadow: “When I was fifteen, a dark shape came into my room at night. [...] I knew right away it was a sexual predator because it was vibing me and I felt self-conscious in my nightgown”. Even though the troubled girl alleges she enjoyed the sexual encounters, the narration covertly acknowledges sexual assault, and it is very possible that the whole ‘shadow’ metaphor was her defense mechanism to block her rapist’s image. These are definitely triggering scenes for young adults –or anyone, for that matter– who have lived similar situations. To make matters worse, the explicit scenes may lead impressionable minds to normalise this serious matter.
The narrative goes back and forth from the main character’s current adult life to her teenage years, but she seems to think and act recklessly no matter her age. She is demented and delusional since she drags the boy to her sick fantasies by taking advantage of his age and inexperience. “He was not swift of mind, why should he be. He was a blur. He was a teenager needing me, as I had been a teenager needing him.” As it is clearly read in this passage, the character romanticises the scandalous situation when, in fact, the story portrays an asymmetric relationship and uneven power dynamics. Even worse, she repeats the abuse she suffered during her teenage years, but now it is her who plays the role of the groomer. These romanticised messages are especially dangerous for young adults considering the fact that they actively look for their first sexual and romantic relationships, and looking for them in older people puts them in a risky, Steve-like position.
I have to admit that the plot seemed very promising when my friend recommended it, but it was definitely not one of my favourites. July may have called this story “Making Love in 2003” back in 2003, but twenty years later we recognise that her work had nothing to do with love, and everything to do with child abuse.
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It is well known that, in many cases, the abused become victimizers, abusers. It is to be expected if a person spends his/her whole life having to accept as “normal” such sick and aberrant behavior. How important it is to have the support of family and friends.
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Hi July! I agree with you, this story is not suitable for young adults. I had to read the same book to do the essay and all the stories are tedious!
I like your essay! Your attention grabber seems a real anecdote, the vocabulary you have used is really nice, and I think that your thesis statement is strong and real!
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