Reviewed by Abby Lavery
“Monsterhood is a girl’s body you don’t belong in,” says Noon, the protagonist of Trang Tranh Tran’s They Bloom at Night, a YA queer horror novel centering around themes of community, climate disasters, and what it means to be—or not to be—a girl. A mysterious red algae bloom has overtaken the small town of Mercy, Louisiana, following a devastating hurricane that left the environment flooded, the wildlife mutated, and a creature lurking below the water. When Noon and her mother are charged with hunting down the deadly creature, the stakes are raised, and the question becomes how one defines a monster.
First and foremost, Tran critiques government management of climate disasters, especially in regard to poverty-stricken communities like Mercy, Louisiana. In Noon’s experience, the only assistance her hometown receives from the government following the hurricane is for a gator tour emporium that acts as a tourist attraction, “as long as the politicians don’t have to think about [them].” Noon reflects that “we are the ones who chose to stay, after all. We deserve what we get,” highlighting themes of socioeconomic status dictating how much care is given to specific communities. This is seen again when the scientists visiting Mercy choose to wear hazmat suits, prompting Noon to wonder, “The suit is protecting them…What’s protecting us…?” She also rather bitterly muses that, “Now that the news has stopped running reports from or about Mercy, they’re probably extolling the efforts of billionaires to build commercial rocket ships again. Never mind that there is green here to protect.” Yet despite all of this critique, Tran also emphasizes hope as a reaction to disaster; “…some 700 people have held onto hope that our loved ones will find us…hope that we can save someone else.” When the government fails to protect its people, the responsibility falls to communities to help each other survive.
But in They Bloom at Night, relationships within members of the community are only the beginning as Tran highlights the tensions between Noon and the traditions her family holds dear, specifically calling attention to her conflicted relationship with her mother. In the first few pages, the conflict between Noon and tradition is represented through her discomfort with her mother’s lack of assimilation. She comes from a family of immigrants, and her mother primarily speaks Vietnamese despite Noon’s best efforts to stop her. Noon has clearly already assimilated into American society; her real name is Nhung, but she goes by Noon because she does not want to be seen as something “other.” Outside the assimilation, Noon also blames her mother for supposedly failing to properly teach her what it means to be a woman. “My body is mine and mine alone,” Noon reflects, “but it came from her [her mother]. It took calcium from her bones, fed from her blood. Doesn’t that mean she had a responsibility to teach me how it worked?” A part of Noon cannot help but resent her mother, but does she truly hate her, or rather the ideas she preaches?
Tran delves into this tension by critiquing heteronormativity and gender roles, mostly using Noon and her childhood friend, Wilder, as an example. Noon considers Wilder to be one of her best friends, but she also mentions that they grew apart “when adults started calling them dates and other kids teased [them] about kissing through our plastic spoons.” Noon reflects that she developed a crush on Wilder as a kid, but she cannot be sure that her feelings were her own and not rooted in the subliminal messaging of everyone around her, trying to force them together. Tran uses the awkwardness of Noon and Wilder’s lost friendship to criticize how heteronormativity creates unrealistic expectations, which they then take a step further when they discuss gender roles and Noon’s feelings of alienation within her own family. She mentions a dream where “…I was a boy…[my] parents loved me,” and, in general, a feeling that her parents would have loved her more if she were a boy…if she weren’t her. “Dad loved me most until he got his son,” Noon says, “Mom is ashamed of what my girl body has done, as if I had asked for it.” Tran uses Noon’s feelings of being “othered” in this context to both represent the harm of gender norms and hint at Noon’s queerness.
More specifically than gender roles, though, Tran also explores themes of violence toward women and the problematic rhetoric of purity culture. There are hints of other female characters facing abuse at the hands of men, most evident through the experiences of Covey (Noon’s reluctant new ally) and her mother. Covey mentions that her mother is one of the disappeared people, and Wilder suggests that maybe she was not taken by whatever creature lurks beneath the water, but that Covey’s father might have had something to do with it. The book also investigates themes of sexual assault and the stigma associated with survivorship, all of which is buried within Noon’s character arc and her transformation. It also further complicates Noon’s relationship with her mother (“Does she not want people to know I put myself in a position to be violated, or does she not want people to know the monster I will become because of it”), and calls into question the purity culture that seems to view such experiences as “ruining.” Like the creature in the water, these themes lurk beneath the surface of the story.
At its heart, though, They Bloom at Night is a story about what it means to be queer, represented through Noon’s nuanced understanding of her gender and her parallel journey of becoming something not quite human. Her physical transformation acts as the focal horror element in the novel; her neck “blooms” with gills, her skin takes on an “oily sheen,” and she doesn’t “eat well unless it’s raw.” She calls herself a “fish bone in spoiled flesh,” but she also frequently acknowledges that she’s “…encased in a skin that isn’t mine, clothes that aren’t me.” The elements of body horror are used to discuss Noon’s gender dysphoria and her question of what it means to be a girl, which she repeatedly asks throughout the novel. Tran makes it clear that Noon’s queer identity is not caused by her trauma or any internalized misogyny; she simply “…hates anyone who scorns us for not being cookie-cutter versions of Boy or Girl.” Nor is the body horror aspect of the story supposed to be representative of Noon being queer—though her identity is mirrored through it—but rather as an act of rage against the violence projected toward women, as Noon’s transformation begins before she realizes she is queer. So when Noon says that “monsterhood is a girl’s body you don’t belong in,” she is commenting both on her queer experiences and how violence towards women and the stigma in survivorship need to be properly addressed. In that sense, “monsterhood is a girl’s body” can stand on its own without the second half of the quote; being a girl in a society that focuses so heavily on labels, boxes, and perceptions of purity breeds its own kinds of monsters.
They Bloom at Night by Trang Tranh Tran is a hauntingly impactful YA queer horror novel centering on a protagonist who may or may not be a girl and may or may not be human. Tran utilizes body and environmental horror elements to explore the different forms of the monstrous, many of which are not as speculative as readers may want to believe. “Monsterhood is a girl’s body,” but what does it mean to take ownership of that dehumanization and become a symbol of fear and vengeance?
Abby is a third-year English, creative writing, and history student at Lebanon Valley College. She can usually be found reading, writing, or yearning for a fantastical adventure. You can follow her creative journey on Instagram at @abbyaceofbooks.