Mary Shelley Makes a Monster: Conversation Pieces Vol. 70 by Octavia Cade

Aqueduct Press, 2019

eISBN: 978-1-61976-174-2

Available: Paperback

Instead of reading dry academic pieces on women writers who have made significant contributions to literature and thought, enjoy Octavia Cade’s uniquely creative approach to literary criticism in Mary Shelley Makes a Monster: Conversation Pieces Vol. 70. A group of provocative short poems is devoted to each of Cade’s selected authors including Mary Shelley, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, Janet Frame, Sylvia Plath, Grace Mera Molisa, Octavia Butler, Angela Carter, and Murasaki Shikibu.

In the poems, each woman represents a part of Mary Shelley’s literary legacy and is viewed as a possible “mother” for her monster. Effects on the monster become a means of describing the effects each writer has had on literature. Cade captures the essence of each woman by using references to the authors’ work, their own life and environment, the ideas that inspired the content of their writing, and their role in overcoming the obstacles facing a woman who writes.

The feminist perspective in this book is clear and shines a light on the complexities of the writing life. In the first poem of the section devoted to Grace Mera Molisa, Cade writes of the monster: “It has begun to understand that it has been made / more of parts that women were never meant to emulate. / Anti-custom, with too much of speech patterned over it.” This is the type of observation found throughout the poems. Readers who know the authors will find excellent insights on their writing, and those who don’t will be so intrigued that they will want to read the work of these trailblazers.  Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Editor’s note: Mary Shelley Makes a Monster was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection.