In the revelatory and impassioned State Champ by Hilary Plum (Strawberry Fields), a receptionist at a reproductive health clinic goes on a hunger strike to protest her boss's imprisonment after defying their midwestern state's strict abortion law.
Angela Peterson, writing on exam-table paper in the closed clinic where she once worked, chronicles her hunger strike by the day. She explains that she's protesting--wasting to such a size that "the roaches could carry [her]," letting her mouth rot "like an old rape kit"--because her boss should not be in prison for helping people. Angela discusses myriad topics, such as how the father of gynecology experimented on enslaved Black women, and how the U.S. has "this great system where if you're raped you won't go to jail, but then neither will he." She also reveals aspects of her own life (her mom's death, an eating disorder, DUIs, arrests, getting banned from competitive running, dropping out of college), establishing a rapport with readers.
Angela's fury about the abortion law and for infringed freedom flies from the pages, and the ferocious pacing of her stream-of-consciousness narrative mirrors the runner dormant within her. Yet Plum's searing prose also smartly pauses, much like how time lags for Angela as she starves herself ("Yesterday I was trying to remember every half-stack of Pringles I've ever eaten. Didn't I, one time, balance a joint, still smoking, on the mythical curve of a Pringle?"). Life dwindles from Angela's politicized body but not from her purpose in this sharp, incisive, and galvanizing portrait of a woman exerting her choice. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer