Upright Women Wanted weaves the conceits of a Western romp with the fabric of an anti-fascist call to arms, all wrapped in a love letter to queer resistance and community. The short, sharp plot moves swiftly, and Gailey’s biting voice shines in this setting, brimming with wit and alive with joy. They demonstrate the patriarchy inherent in the tropes of the genre, and they write resistance into it. They reckon with the complexities of 'fighting back,' of violence as resistance, of the weight of killing, even in self-defense. They give queer women and nonbinary folks agency, letting them be the heroes of their own stories. They center this narrative on Esther choosing to resist.
The deliberate misunderstanding of 'deviancy' as a capital offense, whether in sexuality, gender or political thought, is not fiction, and though the novel begins with the unjust, state-sanctioned murder of a queer woman and alludes to many more, Gailey lets that injustice read as injustice. There’s queer tragedy here, but it’s never exploitative.
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