Big Girl
by Meg Elison
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted October 30, 2026
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This book revealed two things I wasn't previously aware of. A couple of the stories here, plus scenarios in other books I've read, while not exactly autobiographical, did use some aspects of Meg's own life for her fictional characters. She was an army brat, having to move often, living in poverty since her parents were either not good at managing their finances, or the housing allowance provided for military personnel was not sufficient, perhaps both. Also, I have been mispronouncing her surname. It is EEE-lison, not the way Harlan's with the extra L is pronounced.
Those and other things come up in the interview conducted by the now late Terry Bisson, which is titled "Sprawling into the Unknown." Meg was a high school dropout, and while not mentioned she must have passed the GED since she did attend college. She had nothing but high praise for her professors and the curriculum at Mount San Jacinto (Community) College, where she says she learned to write, then she enrolled at UC Berkeley, which taught her to read more critically. She was a journalist in college and after, and she said she wrote an early novel that will never see the light of day. Her first published fiction was The Book of the Unnamed Midwife in 2014, which won the Philip K. Dick Award. I have one more of her books to read, Find Layla, which is young adult. It was published a few months after this collection. I will read it soon, hopefully sometime in November, since she says it is "the most deeply personal thing I've ever written."
In addition to the interview, and a bibliography at the end, this book contains five stories and one essay, the latter being re-titled for this edition. "Gone with Gone with the Wind" was originally published in Electric Literature in 2018 under the title "How I Bought into Gone with the Wind's Mythology of Whiteness." She first read the novel when she was 9, and I suspect the number of times she says she has re-read it (100) is an exaggeration, but if true it would mean she had read it at least 3 or 4 times every year since then. I have never read GwtW, and have only seen the movie twice, and both times I was well aware of the racism and revisionist history. Meg's fascination with the book was mostly about identifying with Scarlett, but in different ways in each re-read. The essay comes fourth in the order, the first story being "El Hugé," about a large pumpkin that won a contest at a harvest festival. Some school kids steal it, then blow it up with large fireworks. I will comment on the other stories out of order.
Two were original to this book, which was published in June 2020, but "Such People In It" is set in the near future. It doesn't mention the name of the President, but it is obvious, only in this case it is set during his third term in office. The events in the story are too easily believed if we allow that to come to pass. The title of the other original doesn't mean what you might think. "The Pill" is not about birth control, but rather control of something else, and that also applies to "Guts," first published in 2019 under a different title. Both deal with different extreme measures people use to reduce their weight. That is not something Meg has done, but possibly based on friends or family. In the interview Bisson asked, "Did you ever want to be small," to which Meg replied, "If I had it my way, I'd be much, much bigger. My true form is fifty feet tall and made of gold, shrieking like Godzilla and eating entire oyster beds." With that in mind, it would be easy to think the title story came from a dream.
"Big Girl" originally appeared in the November-December 2017 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. "The girl woke up with a sore neck and three seagulls perched on her eyelashes." The birds fly away when she opens her eyes. She is naked, much larger than she thinks she should be. She is lying in the water near Red Rock Island in San Francisco Bay. The first media reports assume she is a giant, inflatable doll, but they have to change that when she continues to grow and move about in the Bay, as well as out to the Farallon Islands. She is later identified as 15-year-old Bianca Martínez of Oakland, but people continue to use the nickname Baybe. At her largest she is about 500 feet tall, and estimated to weigh several hundred tons. She eventually shrinks back to a size where she could fit back into her parents' house, but continues to shrink beyond her original size. It is unclear if she is so small no one can see her, or else she may have disappeared altogether. "Big Girl" made the honor list for the 2019 Tiptree Award, which was renamed the Otherwise the following year. Elison comments on that award, and a few others, in the interview.
The collection came in third place for a Locus Award, and "The Pill" won the Locus for Best Novelette. It was also a finalist for Hugo, Nebula, and Sturgeon awards. I recommend this book for its broad overview of Elison's career, and her thoughts on many subjects. One thing that can be said about her is she is forthright, unflinching in her opinions, and I respect her opinions even if I might disagree with a few.
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