What Makes a Woman Upright?

By Prisha Nanda

1st Year, BA Economics Honours

Edited & designed by: Ayushi Rani

There are the stories they approve of—the ones that keep you quiet, keep you pliant and make you fit neatly into the world as it is. Then there are the stories you have to fight for, the ones they don’t want you to read, the ones where you get to be free—the ones that whisper, “You are not alone.” Sarah Gailey’s Upright Women Wanted is about the second kind of story.

Set in a dusty, Western future that feels close to the past (and a dystopia that feels uncomfortably close to the present), this book follows Esther. Esther, who has spent her whole life trying to be good. A good daughter, a good future wife, a good woman. Until she learns the hard way that being good doesn’t save you. So Esther does what all queer kids have thought about at some point—she runs. She stows away with the Librarians, expecting to find a group of upstanding, law-abiding women. Instead, she finds a ragtag group of gun-slinging outlaws and smugglers. But most importantly, a group of women who refuse to be anything but free.

This book defies the usual stories we’ve been fed about who gets to be the hero. We talk about rebellion, revolution, rewriting the rules—but who actually gets to rewrite them? In this world, it’s the queer women, the ones left out of history, the ones who had to run just to survive.

At its core, Upright Women Wanted is about a question that lingers in the mind of every queer person: where do I belong? But the answer isn’t written in a rulebook or carved into stone, it’s scrawled in the margins (of books not much different from this one), it’s hidden in stolen glances, tucked away in saddlebags and whispered among the so-called outlaws—you belong exactly as you are.

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