LaToya Jordan is a speculative fiction writer from Brooklyn whose work explores mothering, being mothered, and wanting to mother, often through body horror. Her novella To the Woman in the Pink Hat (Aqueduct Press) won the 2023 Shirley Jackson Award. Her writing has appeared in Anomaly, Literary Mama, Mom Egg Review, Raising Mothers, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, and more, and has been recognized in Best Small Fictions, Wigleaf's Top 50 Very Short Fictions, and Best American Essays. She is a reader for Wigleaf's Top 50, author of the poetry chapbook, Thick-Skinned Sugar, and has an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. Follow her on Instagram @latoyajordanwriter.

To the Woman in the Pink Hat by LaToya Jordan

Jada Morris was the fierce and resilient leader of a social movement against the theft of young women's uteruses before she committed a violent crime. Now, in 2040, the 24-year-old is serving time at The Center for Future Leaders, an alternative to prison for young leaders who committed crimes as a response to gender-based violence. The Center supposedly provides training, education, therapy, and reduced sentences to the convicted in order to return them to their communities as leaders. But as Jada begins her therapy, she realizes all is not as it seems, and memory is thorny at best. Can she trust her android therapist and the terrifying path down which she's taking her? And what will she find at the other end?

Jordan's novella is a gripping and terrifying look at our reproductive future that sends shudders through our reproductive present.

 

REVIEWS

  • "This novella packs a powerful punch for something so succinct. It doesn't flinch from the dark places science will go if left unchecked, but there is also warm compassion and, above all, hope. To the Woman in the Pink Hat is a heavy and often confronting read with lovely sparkles of light scattered throughout, a wonderful addition to the shelf of anyone with an interest in social politics, race theory, or feminism."

    – Joelene Pynnonen, Independent Book Review

  • "LaToya Jordan's To the Woman in the Pink Hat is a horrifying, and horrifyingly plausible, story in which structural reforms are an inadequate patch for white liberals' enduring, all-consuming sense of entitlement over Black people's minds and bodies."

    – Jenny Hamilton, Strange Horizons

  • "The twisty ending is powerful and unsettling, returning to the concept of self-determination versus manipulation, as well as grief and violence versus accountability. Overall, the story is a powerful allegory of well-intentioned but performative emptiness contrasted with the larger concept of the rage of a dream deferred. To the Woman in the Pink Hat is both brilliant and unsettling, leaving us with difficult questions to ponder and even more difficult answers to absorb."

    – Ann Michelle Harris, nerds of a feather, flock together
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

The day Jada arrived at The Center for Future Leaders, one of the agents escorting her pointed up and said, "You're going to the penthouse. You got lucky, kid." Jada leaned her head back to look up at the building. Above the door's white archway, an angel statue with open arms and missing hands greeted her. She counted the floors, 12. The top four floors had clear windows, while the lower floors had brown metal grates over tinted windows. Whoever lived on those floors had darkened puzzle-piece views of the park across the street. She surveyed the rest of her new neighborhood. It was an old-money block, where the money and homes had been passed down from generation to generation. A doorbot stood guard at the building next door. Before the agents could lead her inside, a woman walking a long-haired dog and talking to the air crossed in front of them. The woman didn't look at them, but her dog stopped and growled at Jada.

"Leader Jada? Jada? Jada!" Ayana said, snapping her out of her trance. "I said I wanted to try something new today. Can you close your eyes and take a couple of deep breaths in and out?"

Jada closed her eyes and pictured herself in the apartment across the street, seated cross-legged on the plush carpet in the same flowy outfit, the smell of jasmine and mellow ocean sounds in the background. She breathed in and out.

"Now open your eyes," Ayana said.

When she opened her eyes, Jada couldn't understand what she was seeing. She blinked fast a few times and shook her head to try to get the image out. It was Sarah's face on Ayana's body. Ayana's face had disappeared. Her forehead had smoothened, her skin lightened to pale sand. She had thicker, perfectly arched eyebrows above blue eyes, and her nose was thinner, with a longer, narrower bridge.

"Leader Jada, it's ok," Ayana said, while her full lips shrank and flattened into a heart shape.

Ayana lifted a long, dark chocolate wig from a cardboard box on the coffee table between them and put it on her shiny bald head. She pulled out a knitted bubblegum pink hat and put it on top of the wig. The image clicked into place. From the neck up, she was recreating the first photo Jada had ever seen of Sarah at the Women's March. She'd never told Ayana about the photo, so they must've dug up the information from news clips or court records. Jada looked down at Ayana's staff uniform, focusing on the shiny zipper of her navy-blue jacket to ground herself.

"Is there anything you want to say to Sarah?" Even the sound of her voice had changed.

Jada's body screamed Run! Get out of there fast! But her butt was stuck to the chair. Her legs were sandbags, her arms anchored to the arm rests. She tried to breathe deeply, but the air came in sips. In her head, she barked orders to her body: Pick up your arms. Feet get up. Go punch her right in her robot face. Her body disobeyed. She squeezed her eyes shut, repeating to herself this isn't real, this isn't real, this isn't real. High-pitched beeps sounded in the room.

"Try to relax. My sensors are picking up increases in your heart rate and blood pressure," Ayana said, her voice back to its usual low tone.

Something sharp pricked the skin at her wrist. She opened her eyes to Ayana's silver fingernail piercing her vein. Jada recoiled at the sight, sending her body and the chair backwards. Her file included a note to staff requiring them to tell her what they were planning to do before any medical procedure, and this was the first time Ayana hadn't followed the directive. Ayana righted the chair as Jada slumped lower, spineless now, trying to pour herself away.

"Leader Jada, please sit up and look at me. I've given you a sedative, and I'll return my face to normal. It's clear you're not ready for this."

Jada's body was a tight ball on the floor in front of her armchair. She focused on the cold hard tile under her butt. Sitting at eye level with Ayana was too dangerous.

When she first got here, staff had paired her with Ida, one of The Center's few white-skinned AI therapists. After two weeks of Jada moving her chair to the opposite side of the room and giving Ida only yes or no answers, staff got the hint that she wouldn't work well with a white therapist and switched her to Ayana's rotation. Although she figured out early on that The Center's robots collected data on Leaders, tracked their vitals to see how they responded to certain questions, and doled out programmed psychological treatments, it helped to have a therapist who looked like a family member, who didn't remind her of what had happened to her.