SLAYERS, EVERY ONE OF US: How One Girl in All the World Showed Us How to Hold On, by Kristin Russo and Jenny Owen Youngs
“The story you most often hear about divorce, about heartbreak, is the story of an ending. A light switch flicked into the Off position,” writes Jenny Owen Youngs in “Slayers, Every One of Us,” a memoir written with her ex-wife, Kristin Russo. “But what if you clicked the bulb back on?”
Restoring the power is the dominant theme in their book, with that light source being the creative partnership the two achieved through their podcast about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” even as their romantic partnership went dark five years after their 2013 marriage.
The book is narrated by both women, with each providing her perspective on their shared history in alternating sections. Russo (a speaker, a consultant and an “Italian-born, Long Island-raised triple fire sign”) comes off as the more ebullient and emotional partner. Youngs (a musician and songwriter who has “always been a bit more grounded in reality”) is more sardonic and taciturn.
Boom-and-bust romance memoirs are common, but mix in fervent fandom and original music and we’ve got ourselves a different approach to the well-trod ground here — all spurred on by a 1990s television show about a girl with superhuman strength fighting evil with help from her pals. (The book’s title comes from an inspirational speech, given by Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers, to a room full of young women in the final episode of the series: “I say my power should be our power. … Slayers, every one of us.”)
The pair’s mutual love of “Buffy” led them to create a podcast in 2016 called “Buffering the Vampire Slayer.” Their show stood out among the usual nattering nerd productions, thanks to the intelligent, queer-centric commentary and a handcrafted soundtrack; each episode included at least one original song about the series. The podcast became popular enough to be a “Jeopardy!” question. Huge numbers of listeners turned out for live recording sessions and “Buffy”-themed proms. And it is the women’s devotion to producing this labor of love — even while in the throes of the breakup — that drives the narrative.
The book’s seven numbered chapters retrace the authors’ lives together and are roughly mapped to the trajectory of the seven “Buffy” seasons. It’s a convenient structure, but just like a long-running genre TV show, there’s some obvious filler and bits of melodramatic foreshadowing sprinkled here and there: “If only we’d consulted the ‘Buffy’ mirror in which we increasingly saw our lives reflected, we could have glimpsed our futures.” (With a revival of the television series reportedly in development, Russo and Youngs may have to write a sequel.)
Devotees of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and the podcast are most likely the target audience for this book, but it can also be viewed as a joyful ode to the awesome ability of pop-culture arcana to create a solid community — especially in the modern era where the internet and digital tools give fans more options for connecting and creating new content from their own interpretations of the material. Fan culture has come a long way from those mimeographed Kirk-Spock love stories that used to circulate at “Star Trek” conventions in the 1970s.
William Shatner, Kirk himself, once joked that ardent “Star Trek” fans should “get a life,” and some people may dismiss taking direction from a TV show. But humans have been using myth and legend as motivation for centuries, and Buffy’s challenges are just a modern variation of the trials faced by Odysseus, Beowulf and other warriors. And as “Slayers, Every One of Us” illustrates, the hero’s journey is easier with friends.
SLAYERS, EVERY ONE OF US: How One Girl in All the World Showed Us How to Hold On | By Kristin Russo and Jenny Owen Youngs | St. Martin’s Press | 256 pp. | $28
J.D. Biersdorfer has been writing about consumer technology for The Times since 1998. She also creates the weekly interactive literary quiz for the Book Review and occasionally contributes reviews.
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