It’s that overpowering, unshakable feeling that disrupts any possible elation. Even when you’re in the brightest, most sensory-stimulating, and enriching place, homesickness sets in. Oh, summer camp. How we hate to love you. But we all do.
Does that twinge ever really go away? Is it summer camp to blame? Perhaps there’s something more to it than just a separation of place. In Abigail Oswald’s “Camp for Sad Girls,” we catch a glimpse into the contrasts and paradoxes of human experience and sentimental fallout.
Oswald has done two things very well in this piece. First, the concise yet concrete sensory details build the scene without any room for ambiguity or reader hesitation. The narrator gives us the, “[c]harred marshmallows perched on the ends of pointed sticks over a smoking fire,” and the, “…khaki shorts and soft blue T-shirts,” and of course, “[c]annonballs into water so cold it shocks the body at first touch.” The narrative effectively invites the reader to summer camp to stay with these girls. We’re helplessly trapped. This camp’s counselor has signed us up without our consent, and yet we went willingly. Sound familiar?
Oswald then proceeds to the second component: the twist. You see, our narrator-counselor is superior to these girls in rank only. Through a subtle scene change, we discover a deeper connection to an inexplicable longing—a vulnerability that we never outgrow.
Source: Oswald, Abigail. “Camp for Sad Girls.” Alien Magazine, is. 7, September 2022, https://www.alienliterarymagazine.com/abigail-oswald.
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Pauline Shen 