Setting

The setting of the short story “Weightless and Hysterical” by Amanda Miska is the state of Virginia in the US. This is indicated as the narrator is talking about cars with customized license plates (vanity plates)

I’d read in the Post that Virginia had the highest percentage of vanity license plates in the country. I shared this fact with Jordan—I felt proud to know something he didn’t since he was always talking about things I didn’t understand. 

“Probably because most Virginians have more money than brains,” Jordan said.

Many of the southern states in America tend to be very Christian and hold anti-abortion views. This is also what we see in this text. The girls attend the Grace Prep Christian High School, which requires them to actively protest against abortion. 

More specifically, some of the events take place outside the pregnancy clinic where the narrator and her friends display anti-abortion signs. When the girls notice a couple coming in for a procedure, they start to verbally assault them, calling them “Baby Killers!”. The narrator reveals that volunteering to protest at the clinic is a graduation requirement for their Christian high school. In school, the girls are taught that abortions are problems that only women should be concerned with. 

Besides the generel setting in a southern state, there is a contrast in setting between the shed at the cemetary, where the narrator meets up with Jordan, and Mariel’s house. The narrator’s relationship with Jordan would not be approved of by her Christian parents or teachers. That is why the two of them meet up in a dusty shed at the Noah’s Ark Pet Cemetery. Here, they usually engage in oral sex or masturbate, “so much that the smell of old dirt immediately turned me on”.

The humble shed is a stark contrast to Mariel’s house:

Mariel’s house was a huge bri...