Felicity, American Girl: Bonus

These Books Made Me
3 min readSep 30, 2021
Photo by Andriyko Podilnyk on Unsplash

This week, we thought we should also talk about the Horse Girl Canon. You know what we’re talking about. Tyler St. Bernard summarizes the concept wonderfully in her Polygon article, exploring modern horse stories and the absence of characters of color. St. Bernard writes, “The phrase “Horse Girl” invokes a lot of different imagery. Typically, she’s an upper-class white girl who eats, breathes, and lives horses. She can’t have a conversation about anything but the last time she was at the stables, and you know she’s going to make you watch Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron at every sleepover. While the horse world has had many different faces, and many of them aren’t white, most media would lead you to believe differently.”

The problem is two-fold and feeds upon itself. First, there’s a legitimate lack of diversity in the horse world, which still remains predominantly white; as of last year, black riders made up less than 1 percent of the United States Equestrian Federation. Those riders who do make it into the sport often face an incredibly hostile environment, as Abriana Johnson and Caitlin Gooch (creators of Young Black Equestrians, The Podcast) talk about in a Horse Network’s article. “Both know people who have left the horse industry entirely because of these experiences,” Liz Brown writes of the interview. “Others just don’t bother showing and are content to enjoy their horses at home.”

Second, there’s the oversaturation of the stereotypical “horse girl”. We wouldn’t be librarians if we didn’t give you a book recommendation. Lately, we’ve been talking about Horse Girls: Recovering, Aspiring, and Devoted Riders Redefine the Iconic Bond. Edited by Halimah Marcus, this recently released collection of essays shatters the typical image of what a horse girl is thought to be. This review of Horse Girls by Margaret Wappler in the La Times reads like it could itself be another entry into the book. Like so many other self-identified horse girls, Wappler can — and does — name even now a horse (Cinnamon) she met growing up. She notes some of the common themes the essayists bring up in their submission: stereotypes, sacrifices, the common experiences of women and people assigned female at birth, and rediscovering the experience of riding as an adult.

The anthology features such writing luminaries as Jane Smiley, Maggie Shipstead, and Carmen Maria Machado. In her essay “Horse Girl: An Inquiry”, Machado ruminates on the conflict she felt growing up trying to reconcile her identity as a non-straight, non-white person with her wish to dive into horsemanship. You can read another essay excerpt from Horse Girl, “Hungry and Carefree” from author Alex Marzano-Lesnevich on the Lithub website. “Hungry and Carefree” is about Marzano-Lesnevich’s experience growing up in the high gendered world of horses. From amplifying true diversity (Cowgirls of Color, Strides for Equality Equestrians) to creating BIPOC-specific spaces (Black Equestrian Network, Equestrians of Color), riders of color are challenging the narrative.

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These Books Made Me

These Books Made Me is a podcast about the literary heroines who shaped our childhoods. @PGCMLS