Sarahland

Sarahland is a debut story collection by Sam Cohen that imagines new origins and futures for its cast of unforgettable protagonists, almost all named Sarah. It explores the ways in which traditional stories have failed us and provides new possibilities for life itself. Cohen presents a world that will clearly someday end, but Sarah will continue to build a better home for us all.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 08 March 2022
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company

Queer, dirty, insightful, and oh so funny (Andrea Lawlor), this coyly revolutionary debut story collection imagines new origins and futures for its unforgettable protagonists—almost all of whom are named Sarah.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by the Millions * Oprah Magazine * Lambda Literary * Electric Literature * Refinery29 * Cosmo * The Advocate * ALMA * Paperback Paris * Write or Die Tribe * Reads Rainbow

In Sarahland, Sam Cohen brilliantly and often hilariously explores the ways in which traditional stories have failed us, both demanding and thrillingly providing for its cast of Sarahs new origin stories, new ways to love the planet and those inhabiting it, and new possibilities for life itself. In one story, a Jewish college Sarah passively consents to a form-life in pursuit of an MRS degree and is swept into a culture of normalized sexual violence. Another reveals a version of Sarah finding pleasure—and a new set of problems—by playing dead for a wealthy necrophiliac. A Buffy-loving Sarah uses fan fiction to work through romantic obsession. As the collection progresses, Cohen explodes this search for self, insisting that we have more to resist and repair than our own personal narratives. Readers witness as the ever-evolving Sarah gets recast: as a Bible-era trans woman, an aging lesbian literally growing roots, a being who transcends the earth as we know it. While Cohen presents a world that will clearly someday end, Sarah will continue.

In each Sarah's refusal to adhere to a single narrative, she potentially builds a better home for us all, a place to live that demands no fixity of self, no plague of consumerism, no bodily compromise, a place called Sarahland.

Weight: 194g
Dimension: 208 x 138 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781538735077