Structure

The short story “Weightless and Hysterical” by Amanda Miska begins in media res, with the narrator and her friend talking about abortion while they volunteer in front of a pregnancy clinic:

Mariel was telling me how even a fetus the size of a shrimp can feel pain, her mouth stuffed with a hush puppy from the Long John Silver ’s next to the clinic. ‘But they don’t even have brains yet,’ I protested. I slurped my Coke loudly through the straw to indicate how done I was with the conversation. I wanted to eat my seafood in peace.

From the beginning, the narrator’s sharp reply hints that she is not entirely on the same wavelength as her Christian friends. This moment foreshadows the narrator’s internal conflict between what she thinks and what she was taught to believe. Later on, when the narrator thinks about the things she has in common with her friends, she claims that they agree about Christianity “on the surface anyway”, hinting that her thoughts and beliefs do not fully align with theirs. 

The main story develops chronologically during the Saturday the girls volunteer at the clinic. However, the narrative introduces several flashbacks that illustrate the narrator’s relationship with her boyfr...