On this episode of Literary Disco, Julia, Rider, and Tod tackle the incredibly popular, enduring, and surprisingly diverse world of the horse girl. We have read a classic of the genre, Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry, and have read a new collection of essays edited by Halimah Marcus entitled Horse Girls: Recovering, Aspiring, and Devoted Riders Redefine the Iconic Bond, in which female writers delve into horses and the horse girl phenomenon.
From the episode:
Rider: Well, the phrase that I think is it in the introduction, but it actually comes up … in a couple of the essays, is the idea of borrowed freedom. And then someone else in another essay calls it borrowed beauty. I love that idea. When you own a horse, a lot of the essays sort get at this : why do I love this so much? Why is there such a thing? And it ends up always being about the connection with this animal. A really personal loving connection that is both super powerful and empowering, but also inherently sad because they either are going to have to say goodbye to this thing that they love so much, either via death or selling the horse because they can’t afford to keep it anymore and so it can have a better life somewhere. Or just the knowledge that you’re never going to be able to completely control this thing. It is an animal. It has its own existence. That’s baked into the relationship.
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