“I Who Have Never Known Men” Is a Warning

When my twelve-year-old self picked up “ I Who Have Never Known Men ” from a church rummage sale in 1998, I was certain it was a book written for children. I don’t remember why. Maybe it came from a pile of young-adult books, misfiled by a volunteer. Or maybe the book itself, a $3.99 mass-market paperback from Avon’s science-fiction imprint, felt like it was being marketed to me specifically: a gauzy-pastel cover with a provocative title and a gnarly summary on the back, promising me a young woman mired in mysterious circumstances in a dystopian world.

Either way, the book enticed me and then inflamed me—I had never read anything like it. I still have that copy; I’ve carried it through half a dozen states and a dozen moves and uncountable phases of my life. Twenty-seven years later, its