The Girl in Red by Christina Henry (2019)

I find apocalyptic stories interesting because of the study into the human condition: in dire circumstances, people's core selves come on display. This led me to read The Girl in Red by Christina Henry, the author of Alice (a dark retelling of Alice in Wonderland). It lived up to everything I expected, but I asked myself several times why I was reading it during the COVID pandemic.

Synopsis:

It's not safe for anyone alone in the woods. There are predators that come out at night: critters and coyotes, snakes and wolves. But the woman in the red jacket has no choice. Not since the Crisis came, decimated the population, and sent those who survived fleeing into quarantine camps that serve as breeding grounds for death, destruction, and disease. She is just a woman trying not to get killed in a world that doesn't look anything like the one she grew up in, the one that was perfectly sane and normal and boring until three months ago.

There are worse threats in the woods than the things that stalk their prey at night. Sometimes, there are men. Men with dark desires, weak wills, and evil intent. Men in uniform with classified information, deadly secrets, and unforgiving orders. And sometimes, just sometimes, there's something worse than all of the horrible people and vicious beasts combined.

Red doesn't like to think of herself as a killer, but she isn't about to let herself get eaten up just because she is a woman alone in the woods....

Thoughts and Review:

This was a really engrossing read, but one that was really discomfiting after looking at the news today, seeing that it only took 17 days for the US's infection rate to go from 4 to 5 million and now there are almost 167K dead. Particularly because the Crisis, the Cough as it was nicknamed, was a particularly lethal, airborne-transmitted virus. 

As the story proceeds, we get chapters labels Before and After. Before happens after the Cough pandemic has spread. From the beginning, our heroine, Red (her nickname because of her hair and her habit of wearing red), has known that this was going to be bad. Even though she's named after King Lear's daughter, her tastes run more horror movies and scientific texts. Both make her certain that they need to get themselves to Grandma's house in the middle of a forest far away. As the Cough progresses across the country, swallowing towns and randomly choosing who lives (very few) and who dies (most), Red urgently wants her family to go, but her parents and her brother, Adam, aren't alarmed. While the rest of her family is blase about the apocalypse, Red starts gathering supplies and training for the journey by wearing a backpack.   

Red has extra reason to be concerned; when she was 8, she was run over by a drunk driver and lost the lower half of her left leg. She knows that they aren't going to be able to make the entire journey by car, so she begins to wear her stocked backpack all the time to build up the endurance on her stump. When her family finally decides to make the trip, driving is no longer an option. Unfortunately, her family hasn't been stocking up with supplies like good hiking boots. They drive into town -- wearing masks, since the virus is spread through the air -- and town is unrecognizable. Looted houses, smoldering furniture on lawns and a huge pile of burning bodies in the town square. It's a pretty revolting scene and Mama ends up removing her mask to vomit. Which means that Mama catches the Cough.

But the pandemic is not the worst of their problems. Before the family can leave their home, a truckload of armed rednecks arrive. It's obvious that they've come to kill the family. While Papa gets loads his shotgun, Mama tells Adam and Red to stay together and run. As the shooting starts, she and Papa stay behind to give Red and Adam a chance at escape. And that was Before.

We're not told what these chapters come Before or After. But After finds Red alone, telling herself not to think about Adam, and slowly traveling to Grandma's house. 

This book is a ride. We're introduced to Red as she sits at a fire, cooking stew. A man swaggers out of the trees and into her campsite. He's friendly, too solicitous and he keeps eyeing Red's ax, which is still bloody from an altercation crossing the road earlier.  She stares this coyote down, refusing to be welcoming and offering to share her food, as she waits for him to make his move. He tries small talk to set her at ease and asks if she's half-and-half. This is how we learn that Red has that indeterminate mixed-race look that comes from a White father and Black mother. Both Red and I agree that it's an obnoxious, stupid question so that when she ends him, neither of us regret it. 

I'm honestly not bloodthirsty, but given that humanity is hanging on by a thread because of the pandemic, and a majority of the world's population is no longer breathing, why would you need to know that, unless you wanted to categorize someone (and not in a positive way)? The book becomes doubly timely, since society's systemic racism is part of what threatens Red's survival. 

Overall,  Red's journey has her avoiding militia and the military, encountering some gruesome afflicted, and still discovering that not all people have lost their humanity. By the time she gets to Grandma's house (and you know that she will, since this is an adaptation of Little Red Ridinghood) I had tears in my eyes, happy that she made it home.  

My rating: 4.5/5. (I think if I had read this pre-COVID, it would have been a 5/5, but I didn't and so it isn't.)  

Deeper Thoughts

This book does a great job of examining both race, disability and gender politics/stereotypes without being treacly or preachy. We experience them as they appear in Red's life and react to them as she does. Red is a petite female (around 5 feet), an amputee with a prosthetic leg, and Black. (She's bisexual, too, but her sexuality is touched on so little in the book that it's basically a non-issue. Which is as it should be, given that this is someone fighting to survive the apocalypse.) These realities lead to challenges that a two-legged White man wouldn't face:

• Her size's vulnerability. Most of the people she comes across are much larger than she is, which means that they will be stronger with longer arms and legs. 
• Her gender's vulnerability. Even if it were a man of comparable size, he would still be stronger because of physiology. On top of that, as seen in the book, some men use the lapse of law to mean they can give into their baser instincts in relation to physical and sexual assault.
• Her body's vulnerability. One of the most common differences we are reminded of, this physical challenge means that she isn't as nimble as someone with 2 legs, nor can she run as easily. On top of that, wearing a prosthetic is much more taxing on the body than simply walking on 2 feet because of how pressure of gravity/weight is applied.
• Her race's vulnerability. She's a Black woman in small-town, rural America, where most of the people she encounters use their White privilege in ways that endanger her.

Henry's way of writing, the third-person narration, reveal just how wrong general stereotypes would be. While there are stories written about Black professionals, those professionals aren't typically college professors whose specialty is Shakespeare (Red's mother):

• The reality in US academia is that Whites make up about 76% of all university faculty. Blacks make up only about 6 percent, but that percentage decreases as rank and tenure increases: 
• The Chronicle of Higher Education: Being a Black Academic in America: No One Escapes
• The Washington Post: It’s 2015. Where are all the black college faculty?
• Inside Higher Ed: The Life of a Black Academic: Tired and Terrorized
• Beyond general trends, being a Black academic who specializes in the Bard is not common. Shakespeare is a really old White guy given to flowery language that other White people can find challenging, even as they share the same cultural heritage. An example of how this stereotype plays out in the regular world is in Folger Shakespeare Library's podcast, Episode 20, which looks at the intersection between African American life and Shakespeare, from stage productions to personal/academic encounters with the texts.

Red is one year younger than her brother, but in their journey she typically takes the lead and helps them survive, instead of the other way around. She's the one who knows about science and medicine and excelled in college. He's the one who partied, earned mediocre grades and spent time on video games and his smart phone. 

• Comments throughout the book show how Adam can expect sometimes to be the boss because he is the man, even though Red is the one more familiar with the science of things and has dedicated a significant amount of her time preparing for what they are now living through. 
• There are also times where Red is surprised at how perceptive Adam is, because she's used to being the deep thinker. 

Red refuses to play the role of weak and helpless damsel in distress, one that becomes a victim of horrible circumstances and prey to unscrupulous men.

• Red will occasionally bring up this 'weak and helpless female' stereotype while challenging some male's claim to authority.
• She refuses to be pushed around while men make decisions 'for her own good.'
• She doesn't wallow in her circumstances, even when things are discouraging, hard, and challenging (it's possible to play the role with yourself).

Red carries an ax and successfully uses it to defend herself, even overcoming groups of people with guns. 

• As the story points out, being on a prosthetic leg affects her balance, so swinging the ax effectively takes skill. Also, unlike the weak and cowering female, she doesn't expect to be saved nor does she cower from defending herself.

Red's able to walk several hundred miles while camping in the wilderness.

• Out of her family, she was the only one able-ly challenged and yet she's the only one who's prepared (physically, mentally, supplies, plan) to make the journey to Grandma's house. 
• Camping is typically a hobby for White people. But both Red and Adam have camped often, with their parents and just the two of them.  More about how atypical it is: 
• The Guardian: Why don't black people camp? 
• The New York Times: Why Are Our Parks So White?
• The New Republic: White People Love Hiking. Minorities Don't. Here's Why. 
• Anecdotally, my friends and I (Black, Asian, Latino and White) have discussed camping and whether it’s something we enjoy. It was a shared sentiment among my Black friends that the idea of sleeping on the ground in a tent in the middle of a forest isn’t their idea of fun, even if it does include canoeing down a river, running water and a bathroom. While some of them enjoy the hobby, it’s more of a recently-acquired past-time. 

There's one other thing that I haven't touched on yet: how much Red feels like 'Other.' It's not just because she's not White, but also because she likes different things and thinks in a different way. As I got to know Red, I wondered whether she's on the spectrum, based on how her mind plans, calculates and the way she can feel a compulsion about things. Beyond her inner thoughts, there's a dynamic between Red and her brother that I've seen play out in siblings when one is on the spectrum and the other is 'normal.' It shows up in her impatience and his resentment of her know-it-all-ness. I won't say that it's a definite, since she could just be really smart, but it felt like more than just her mind working more quickly or her being more perceptive than the average person. If she is on the spectrum, it's another way that I applaud Henry's writing, because she doesn't make Red a spectacle, nor does she really call attention to it. Instead Red is just someone who uses what God gives her to deal with the hand she's been dealt.