You Could Be That Kind of Girl: Short Stories
Frida Kahlo resurrects as a social media influencer, a girl feeds all of her food to a bloom of angry ladybugs, a skunk funeral makes a young woman contemplate her life and more in Téa Franco’s You Could Be That Kind of Girl. Through a series of coming-of-age stories, this collection explores family dynamics, race, and sexuality, creating an intersectional portrait of the female experience navigating the patriarchal expectations they face from before they are born to long after they die. The characters that populate Franco’s collection have unique perspectives, often centering pop culture, and their stories show their strengths and their flaws as they attempt, and often fail, to decode the ever-changing rules they’ve been assigned.
Where to purchase
Online
In Store
Kew & Willow Bookstore (also available online) – 81-63 Lefferts Blvd, Kew Gardens, NY
Queer Haven Bookstore – 1332 Main St Suite 120, Columbia, SC
Praise for the collection
“Téa Franco’s you could be that kind of girl is a short story collection where anything can happen. Blending together elements of magical realism with real forces in our world, both liberating and oppressive, she explores girlhood, women’s rights—as well as women’s wrongs—with profound beauty, wit, ingenuity, and insight. Each time a story began and ended, I was surprised and moved by the worlds she placed me in. If not a feminist manifesto, this is a much-needed exposé of what girls and women face, as well as the exact steps we need to free ourselves and those we love.” — Sofía Aguilar, author of STREAMING SERVICE: golden shovels made for TV and STREAMING SERVICE: season two
“Centering a particularly fabulous sense of Boricua girlhood that is so often overshadowed, You Could Be That Kind of Girl is a phenomenal debut. Téa Franco’s writing is rooted firmly in the body and nature, and captures all that is sublime and queer and painful and wonderful about existing in a lineage of powerful, complicated women who have had to navigate a rigid world—she sees all that is possible and this collection is just the start!” — Chris Gonzalez, author of I’m Not Hungry But I Could Eat
“Téa Franco’s debut collection sparkles. Her voice is crisp, bitingly funny, poignant, and full of magic. From pop-culture surrealism to borrowed-form experimentation to heartfelt portraits of human lives, Franco sculpts the short story form intoboth beauty and surprise in every paragraph. Franco’s sharp perceptions about how class and culture collide in America make this collection so important for our moment, and these stories will linger long after our first breathless reads.” — Dustin M. Hoffman, author of One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist, No Good for Digging, and Such a Good Man
“Téa Francos’s You Could Be That Kind of Girl finds its main characters at a difficult crossroads, the point in their lives where they can accept their inheritance or alter the paths of their familial histories. This book is deeply concerned with the power and influence of matrilineality, how much power a mother holds to build up the foundation of her daughter’s life or crush it. And Franco’s world isn’t one that operates by the usual rules; vampire families take advantage of the poor’s need to survive, Frida Kahlo returns from the dead as a cannibal, flowers bloom from a girl’s uterus after she eats soil. But through every story, Franco gives us insight into the difficulty of shedding old patterns, and how choosing a new path often comes terrors of its own.” —Taylor Byas, author of I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times
Téa Franco 