When Women Were Dragons: A Review

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
Published by Penguin Random House on May 16, 2023

A fiery feminist fantasy tale set in 1950s America where thousands of women have spontaneously transformed into dragons, exploding notions of a woman’s place in the world and expanding minds about accepting others for who they really are.

Alexandra Green, who goes exclusively by “Alex,” grows up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the 1950s and 60s. She is the daughter of a respectable man who has very specific notions about what is and isn’t proper for a family and for women, and through her formative years, Alex offends most of them.

She shows the same talent for mathematics that her mother gave up when she married and started a family, and her father does his best to dismiss and discourage it, but Alex persists in her exploration of it.

When her aunt disappears in the Mass Dragoning of 1955 with thousands of other women, she leaves behind her young daughter, Beatrice, whom Alex’s family adopts (at her mother’s insistence).

This causes a schism in their family, since Alex’s father wants nothing to do with Beatrice and refuses to consider her anything but a burden.

Due to this, when Alex’s mother dies several years later, her father casts Alex and Beatrice out of his home to live in a small apartment he provides them until ALex turns eighteen and should be able to support herself by marrying a suitably respectable man, just as her mother did.

Alex has no time to argue this, since her father’s pregnant girlfriend moves in almost immediately and refuses to acknowledge either Alex or Beatrice.

But Alex doesn’t give up. She pursues her love of math and starts to take advanced classes at the library with a woman there who has connections with many people in higher education. Advanced courses usually reserved for men.

So, while Alex is finishing middle school, then high school, plus additional math courses at the library, she is also caring for Beatrice, a wild, imaginative child who doesn’t remember her mother and barely remembers Alex’s parents.

And who has a predilection for talking about, drawing, and impersonating dragons, which are a taboo subject akin to women’s health. Except worse.

This story imagines what it would be like if women were innately magic and could transform into dragons. It also explores what situations might cause women to choose (or not choose) to do this, how society might react to the knowledge that women can transform at will into powerfully magical and dangerous creatures, on the macro and micro levels: government, culture, institutions, and families.

It’s both a hilarious exploration of the female condition (by its absurd and ironic comparisons) and a serious statement on the limitations and expectations society places upon women.

This book is 5 stars.

It took me a long time to read, but it was worth every word. With exceptional prose, imaginative alternate histories and magic that build the culture and the characters, and cultural observations and statements the entire way, this book deserves its place as Best Book of 2023 in Goodreads, Buzzfeed, BookRiot, Kirkus, and Library Journal.

Have you read this book? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Thanks for reading!