Yours For the Taking

Yours For the Taking (pub. date December 5, 2023) by Gabrielle Korn is a completely-engrossing, near-future (set in 2050) story about one possible solution to climate change–governments building completely-enclosed compounds called “Inside” and taking applications for those who would be chosen to live Inside. Each Inside would be self-sufficient and built strong enough to withstand the extreme weather that has gotten so much worse that Long Island, Brooklyn, and Queens have been essentially wiped out by hurricanes, and California burned to a crisp from forest fires. The Midwest has become a tornado highway, and everyone that can, in North America, is moving north to Canada.

Jacqueline Millender is the founder of the Manhattan Inside, due to a significant donation from her inherited wealth, her founding of Refillables (personal products refilled by drone to reduce the plastic problem) and her association with a feminist book that shares a name with this book. That is, before her enormous wealth allows her to escape earth and hide on the space shuttle.

If we stay on our current course, women will not become truly equal to men before the world is made uninhabitable. Yours for the Taking! Reclaiming Female Power in a Changing World by Jacqueline Millender

Millender secretly sabotages the future career of a lesbian African-American female doctor, Olympia, forcing Olympia to accept a job as the medical director of the Manhattan Inside. Jacqueline has an interesting idea for Inside–instead of recreating the world they came from, with its inherent power dynamics, what if only women-identified people were allowed Inside? Millender has ideas for the Inside population reproducing itself, and is willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve her vision, including getting a surrogate to bear her child to live Inside.

Meanwhile, trans woman Shelby becomes Millender’s executive assistant, dropping out of college to her family’s disappointment. Although initially Shelby had been drawn to apply to an internship with Millender through her book, she begins to notice flaws in her corporate, white feminism.

Finally, Ava, a queer woman who is a plant biology lecturer, who is in a relationship with Orchid, a carpenter, receives her acceptance to Inside. But Orchid is not accepted, although she worked on the building of it. Ava reports as expected, but Orchid journeys north, to Canada.

I loved most of the characters–Ava and Olympia, especially, and just read, horrified by Jacqueline Millender’s actions as things go terribly awry. I loved the subplots about mothers and daughters and the love stories and how women create a more just society, without patriarchy.

As far as anti-fatness, I have to consider it mixed. Orchid, Ava’s beloved, is described as having a belly, but Jacqueline Millender is very image-conscious, and is described as “always aware of women’s body sizes”. There is some discussion about weight gain and weight loss, and Jacqueline is very specific about what the women Inside should and shouldn’t eat. But these things aren’t a major component of the book.