Mondo Barbie: An Anthology of Fiction and Poetry - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312088485 ISBN 13: 9780312088484

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 1993

Synopsis

Barbie is an American icon. But Barbie becomes a problem when the adult fantasy collides with the child's fantasy? All that misplaced Barbie angst of our youth, all the childhood conditioning, and the adult results are revealed at last in Mondo Barbie.

About this title

About the Author:

Richard Peabody is the co-editor of the literary journal Gargoyle, based in Washington, DC.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Poems, stories, and fantasies featuring the queen of American dolls that, all together, pack more of a punch than one might expect--a funny, irreverent, and sometimes shocking look at Barbie's function as national icon. She was stripped, decapitated, and buried alive. She was thrown against the wall in temper-tantrum sessions, mashed and twisted during bouts of masturbation, fearfully studied for long, angst-filled moments of teenaged sexual confusion. In this wide- ranging group of meditations on America's favorite plastic blond, the difference between real people and the super-artificial ideal stands out in stark, funny relief, and Barbie's serenely smiling silence plays effectively against the authors' hurried, confessional prose. In ``A Real Doll,'' A.M. Homes tells of a young boy who ``dated'' his sister's Barbie, stealing her from her place beside dorky Ken on his sister's dresser, muttering erotic phrases in her ear, then abruptly dumping her when she grew unattractively lusty. An excerpt from Kathryn Harrison's novel Thicker Than Water describes a young girl's tour of a Mattel toy factory, where enormous black women jam and twist thousands of Barbie heads onto plastic necks before tossing them onto a conveyor belt. ``Twelve- Step Barbie,'' by Richard Grayson, evokes a middle-aged, post- success Barbie trying to make it through a spirit-deadening day. In Denise Duhamel's poem ``Kinky,'' Barbie and Ken play at switching sex roles and clothes. And in Julia Alvarez's ``Floor Show,'' one of the more memorable stories here, the young daughter of political refugees slyly expresses her rage and resentment through a lovely, newly purchased doll. Remarkable for its emphasis on sexual experimentation, homosexuality, dysfunctional family situations, and other so-called ``deviant'' environments, the collection cleverly plays up, via selection as well as substance, Barbie's bizarre, surreally ``perfect'' presence in a wildly nonconforming world. More intriguing than it might have been--an unusually entertaining collection. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0312088485
• ISBN 13: 9780312088484
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 185
• Editor: Ebersole Lucinda, Peabody Richard