A smart and incisive exploration of everyone’s favorite dinosaur movie and the female dinosaurs who embody what it means to be angry, monstrous, and free

The Jurassic Park series is one of the most famous and profitable cinematic experiences of all time, with an entire generation of people who have never known life without these CGI dinosaurs. But while the movie spectacle broke film and merchandising records, pioneered special effects, and made Jeff Goldblum into an unlikely sex symbol, it has also been re-envisioned as a classic of queer feminist storytelling.

In Clever Girl, Hannah McGregor argues that the female-only dinosaurs of Jurassic Park are stand-ins for monstrous women, engineered by men to be intelligent, violent, and adaptive, and whose chaos resists the systems designed to control them. As they run wild through their prison, a profit-driven theme park, they destroy the men and structures who mistakenly believed in their own colonialist and capitalist power, showing the audience what it means to be angry, monstrous, and free. The velociraptors were not just jump scares for children, but also revelatory and predatory symbols of feminist rage. Clever girls, indeed.

About the Pop Classics Series

Short books that pack a big punch, Pop Classics offer intelligent, fun, and accessible arguments about why a particular pop phenomenon matters.

Hannah 2024-09-17's profile page

Hannah McGregor is an academic, podcaster, and author living on the traditional and unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations (Vancouver, BC). She is the director of publishing at Simon Fraser University, co-director of the Amplify Podcast Network, and co-founder of feminist media company Witch, Please Productions. McGregor co-edited Refuse: CanLit in Ruins and authored A Sentimental Education.

“In Clever Girl, Hannah McGregor offers a queer feminist reading of Jurassic Park that celebrates the wild, the ravenous, and the rageful while honoring the kinship and care we need in our apocalypse survival kits.” — Zena Sharman, author of The Care We Dream Of

“It’s a joy to watch Hannah McGregor examine the film like a prism, with each rotation revealing a new flash of intimate memoir, brilliant feminist analysis, and apocalypse survival guide. This book bites back.” — Tajja Isen, author of Some of My Best Friends

“If you love reading smart books, you’ll appreciate this artful dance of storytelling and cultural criticism.” — Chantal Gibson, author of With/holding and How She Read

“Clever Girl is attentive and open, engaging a depth of academic research alongside lively prose that moves at a quick clip.” — andrea bennett, author of Like a Boy but Not a Boy

“Hannah McGregor is the most astute, engaging guide you could ask for, whether you’re navigating a dinosaur-infested island or the patriarchy-infested wider world.” — Jess Zimmerman, author of Women and Other Monsters

“This is the dinosaur book I didn’t know I needed. Read it now!” — Zoe Todd, Fish Philosopher

“Hannah McGregor reminds us that nothing is disposable when you try to make your way through the end of the world.” — Karen Tongson, author of Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us

“Clever Girl is a book that is going to introduce the ‘monstrous feminine’ and be sexy and fun while doing it … one that will leave you as hungry for more as a T. rex after a blood-sucking lawyer.” — Out Front Magazine

“Clever Girl is a fierce reclamation of the power and necessity of showing up to the movies as your own unique, monstrous self.” — LA Review of Books