The Furies is a book that refuses to let you look away. Tracing the experiences of three women who turned to violence for liberation, this book is about the poison that is patriarchy & misogyny, about the femicide & sexual violence that often result from these poisons, & about the harms perpetrated against women who attempt to flip these scripts.

Flock introduces us to Brittany Smith, Angoori Dahariya, & Cicek Mustafa Zibo. Brittany is an American woman who, after surviving a sexual assault, shot & killed the perpetrator while he was attempting to strangle her brother. In recovery for substance abuse & trying to regain custody of her children, the state quickly took the opportunity to cast Brittany as the imperfect victim she was, insisting that the assault never happened & denying her the protection of self-defense laws. Angoori is the leader of a cane-wielding group of Indian women who avenge domestic violence survivors. Angoori took up this mission after being evicted from her home due to being lower-caste. Inspired by Phoolan Devi, India’s famous Bandit Queen, Angoori gathers women from neighboring communities who share her values & are willing to protect those who need it. Cicek is a Kurdish woman living in Syria who joined the Women’s Protection Unit, an all-female militia dedicated to protecting Rojava, the autonomous Kurdish region. She & her fellow women-in-arms are attempting to model Rojava on feminist principles, but spend most of their time searching for food or pushing militants away from the borders of their newfound home.

Violent women are unilaterally cast as deviant with no space made for the nuance of what led them to violence. Flock’s character studies insist on this nuance, explicating the longings, motivations, fears, & flaws of these women. Through Flock’s analysis, we see how ordinary these violent women are & how easily we could become them. I loved how, while not casting them as deviant, Flock also resists depicting these women as heroes. In the face of annihilation, violence is completely ordinary. The question then is not “How do we stop women from being violent?” but “How do we stop the world from trying to annihilate women?”