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| I hope you like charred turkey. |
I am slowly making way through all the short-stories featured on the Levar Burton Reads Podcast, and as a fan of comic books and superheroes, this particular title caught my attention.
I'm also a sucker for a cool title.
The story follows a female superhero who would much rather be out beating up baddies and fighting crime than enduring an awkward Thanksgiving dinner with her passive-aggressive mom and overbearing sister. Despite her celebrity status as a superhero, she’s still considered the family screw-up, especially compared to her “perfect” sister who can do no wrong in their mother’s eyes. But when that golden child decides to host Thanksgiving, things take an unexpected turn in the kitchen...particularly with the main course. She might just need to suck it up and ask her superhero sister for help in order to save Thanksgiving from being a total disaster.
The story does exactly what you might expect from a contemporary piece of genre fiction: playing with familiar tropes and subverting expectations, but it’s not trying to flaunt its cleverness or reinvent the wheel. Galaxy girl is part of a team called The League of American Super-Humans (think X-Men or Avengers) with fire-based abilities, courtesy of a science experiment gone wrong. She wrestles with the whole gift or curse dilemma, further highlighting the cliches but the superhero angle isn’t really the main focus. At its core, it’s about the protagonist longing for acceptance, and maybe even a little love from her estranged family.
Overall, it’s a fun, quirky read that leans more into family drama than superhero spectacle. In this case, Thanksgiving dinner is the bigger battle than facing off against your arch nemesis.
You can read this story HERE.
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