Weird Girl

Poems that confront faith, sexuality, mother-daughter relationships, and the patriarchy to celebrate weird girls everywhere.

Amy Thatcher's Weird Girl recasts female saints as quirky, transgressive characters, examines the sometimes-bizarre landscape of American girlhood, reckons with classism and self-definition on the fringes of acceptability. With gusto and humor, Thatcher confronts the taboo--the intrusive, macabre, violent, obsessive, and lonely. Rooted in a working-class Philadelphia Catholic upbringing and embracing the unconventional and the unrefined, this collection captures the experiences of a first-generation college student, the grief of losing a difficult mother, the grandeur and swoon of religious ecstasy, and a girl's struggle against systems of male power. Weird Girl is a collection for the dreamers, the oddballs, and the resilient ones who have learned to thrive in their own offbeat light: where vulnerability is strength, and the most authentic stories are often the most peculiar.

Praise for Weird Girl

“Amy Thatcher has concocted a weird girl religion in which genesis is a verb, the speaker’s halo is unhooked like a brassiere, and the savior is ‘limp as a dandelion / in a girl’s dirty hand.’ These poems are raw and intricately made, hilarious, heartbreaking, and utterly real. And—irony of ironies—their exhilarative blasphemy jolts me toward holiness.” —Diane Seuss

“Amy Thatcher isn’t afraid of poems that get down into the sexy nitty-gritty of spirituality, poems that call out the twisted abuses of religion, poems in which saints roam Philadelphia streets. Amy Thatcher is the best kind of weird girl. She sees our weird world and doesn’t pretend it’s otherwise.” —Denise Duhamel

“These poems feature the kind of girls who grow up hurling their ‘bodies like ashtrays // toward men who would break / them’ while saints and sinners (Bridget, both Marys, Rick James, the poet’s complicated mother) preside over the brash sophistications of Catholic working-class Philadelphia. Weird Girl is a tough-minded, wise, witty, open-hearted debut.” —Daisy Fried