On Writing The Girl

Since I left my corporate job in 2019 to pursue my writing dreams, a term has cropped up again and again that has always irked me when I’ve had to describe some of my short stories: the “unlikeable female character.”

I know it started as a term to describe a female character who went against the grain of the usual feminine writing tropes, or the ones I grew up reading in my Christopher Pike and Dark Fantasy novels. If you were the heroine, you were most likely super quick to make the best decisions, with no hesitation in doing the right thing and taking up the sword for justice. Or you were the anti-heroine, where you were so good-looking that everyone fell over themselves to justify your actions and explain how they really had a good reason. There seemed to be no grayness, no authenticity to other options – like if you mess up or panic and have to work your way back to prove yourself. Or maybe you aren’t sure there is a “right” answer, or you are afraid and take longer to work up to confront those fears.

 I remember reading The Babysitters’ Club books and not getting past the first few chapters because it seemed too unrealistic that many young women could be friends, given that the growing cliques were dividing my classroom. There never seemed to be any options between these two archetypes if the female was the lead of the story, dark fantasy, or even a horror novel. Most of the girl characters often were just supporting roles or love interests. My least favorite continuing trope is that somehow every heroine met the love of their life in their high school era. Especially when all these songs and messages about being an independent woman and seeing the world and earning your own way were now the epitome of being a “grown woman?” As a brown-skinned AAPI girl reader, it made me feel alone, isolated, and weird. 

The diversity of the continent and diaspora making up “Asia” today and the variety from north to south alone should show how broad types of stories and legends could have existed in the pre-colonial era. Stories and storytelling were a significant part of how my relatives and I bonded in my childhood since we were all scattered across the world, from the Philippines to Tahiti, California, and Hawaii, to Europe and Hong Kong. Since the islands we come from were prone to various monsoons or lack of government infrastructure, power outages were widespread. A common way to pass the time in the dark would be to grab a flashlight and tell stories – often, the scarier, the better. And as an AAPI writer today, trying to acknowledge the thread of generational trauma but not being entirely dictated by it is a fragile line. 

I wrote The Girl intending to show young girls you can be a “brown skin girl,” “an American girl,” or a “mean girl,” all at the same time as holding the “nerdy girl” or “cheerleader” titles. I wanted to add a layer to the question I had as a young girl — what does being “likable” have to do with being a hero? Can you do good if you come from something terrible where you’re told repeatedly that nothing “likable” can come from? Be Good? I hope to be a voice representing AAPI women who break the molds that I add to the pot of representation and expose the dangers of the idea that “likeability” or even “popularity” means “goodness.” If anything in history rings true, it’s often those who are overlooked or unpopular that actually do the best. I want future kids who hear this story to have another voice added to what it means to be human – that you can win even in their “unlikeable” stages.

For an introduction to the world of The Girl, check out a short story I’ve written called “Kasanaan.”—

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Victory Witherkeigh is a female Filipino/PI author originally from Los Angeles, CA, currently living in the Las Vegas area. She has print publications in the horror anthologies Supernatural Drabbles of Dread through Macabre Ladies Publishing, Bodies Full of Burning through Sliced Up Press, and In Filth It Shall Be Found through OutCast Press. Her first novel, set to debut in December 2022 with Cinnabar Moth Publishing, has been a finalist for Killer Nashville’s 2020 Claymore Award, a 2020 Cinnamon Press Literature Award Honoree, and long-listed in the 2021 Voyage YA Book Pitch Contest.

Find out more on her website https://teikitu.com/

Facebook: @victorywitherkeigh | Twitter: @witherkeigh | Instagram: @victory_witherkeigh

 

THE GIRL

The parents knew it had been a mistake to have a girl. At birth, the girl’s long, elegant fingers wriggled and grasped forward, motioning to strangle the very air from her mother’s lungs. As she grew older, she grew more like her father, whose ancestors would dream of those soon to die. She walked and talked in her sleep, and her parents warded themselves, telling the girl that she was evil, unlovable, their burden to bear only until her eighteenth birthday released them.

The average person on the streets of Los Angeles would look at the girl and see a young woman with dark chocolate eyes, curly long hair, and tanned skin of her Filipina heritage. Her teachers praised her for her scholarly achievements and extracurricular activities, from academic decathlon to cheer.

The girl knew she was different, especially as she grew to accept that the other children’s parents didn’t despise them. Her parents whispered about their pact as odd and disturbing occurrences continued to happen around her. The girl thought being an evil demon should require the skies to bleed, the ground to tremble, an animal sacrifice to seal the bargain, or at least cause some general mayhem. Did other demons work so hard to find friends, do well on their homework, and protect their spoiled younger brother?

The demon was patient. It could afford to wait, to remind the girl when she was hurt that power was hers to take. She needed only embrace it. It could wait. The girl’s parents were doing much of its work already.

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