"In The Land of Two-Legged Women"
Energetic prose, vivid description, a page-turner plot, this debut novel grabs the reader by the throat and doesn’t let go until the heart-thumping climax. … The Land of Two-Legged Women brings a fully realized dystopian society to life through the considerable imaginative forces of author Huey Helene Alcaro. In Ramprend, at the onset of puberty, girls must submit to the horribly disfiguring Beautification Ritual to satisfy the pleasure of their future husbands. Led by the fiery and beautiful Solanj’l, the women of Ramprend revolt to reclaim their bodies and their lives. From the first Gatherings of the women, ostensibly to discuss ways they can further pleasure their husbands, to the final face-off in which the men threaten to storm the Great Hall in which the women have barricaded themselves, the battle of social change bellows a triumph of the human spirit. Both in love and war the stakes are high and not everyone can win. Creating a new society means accepting what must be relinquished as well as what is gained.
Tough, shocking and necessary, an allegory reminiscent of fellow SF feminists Joanna Russ, Monique Wittig, and Ursula LeGuin, Alcaro keeps us turning pages. AND thinking.
I cannot imagine a Women’s Studies classroom without this dystopian novel. Like Margaret Atwood and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Alcaro exposes the misogyny and concomitant rage beneath the veneer of tradition. This slim allegory dares us to look away from the full-frontal horror of what history has wrought for women. I could not stop reading, cannot stop thinking about the gauntlet this bold gem of a text has thrown down. Brave, compelling, and long overdue.
—Donna Decker, author of Dancing in Red Shoes Will Kill You.