Borderline by Mishell Baker
IDs: Bisexual, Amputee, Physically Disabled, Mentally Ill, Chronic Pain, Neurodivergent, Borderline Personality Disorder
Author IDs: Borderline Personality Disorder, Queer
CWs: Violence, death, mention of suicide, self-harm, and sexual assault
In Baker’s novel, Millie, a young filmmaker living in LA, is recovering from a suicide attempt in which she jumped off the roof of a building. She survived, but lost both of her legs, and had a significant amount of reparative surgeries. She is approached by a mysterious young woman named Carol and asked to join the Arcadia Project, a secret organization that communicates with a parallel reality. In that reality, magic exists, and their world is brimming with magical creatures. Millie must must reckon with this new knowledge of a parallel reality and magic while also trying to heal herself.
Millie has experienced a significant amount of trauma, and the novel does not back down from the ways that this trauma impacts Millie's feelings and actions. Millie’s Borderline Personality Disorder is one of her largest hurdles, and she must also learn to navigate the world again after her accident. To make matters more complicated, she cannot actually enter Arcadia or touch anything magic. She has a large amount of metal in her body because of her reconstructive surgeries, and magic can be destroyed by metal. Millie soon discovers that this was a big draw for the Arcadia Project when they recruited her. She also learns that nearly everyone in the Arcadia Project has serious mental health issues, and that the project tends to recruit specifically from halfway houses, psychiatric wards, and mental health clinics. They claim that this is because people with mental health issues tend to be more tapped into the magic coming from Arcadia, but Millie learns that another part of this is that they don’t want their recruits to leave. People who are coming out of psych wards or halfway housing and have nowhere to go are excellent recruits when they are guaranteed housing and food as part of their position. The novel explores the morals of this, critiquing the ways that such a system takes advantage of vulnerable populations while also examining how people with mental illnesses or psychiatric disorders may be tapped into or experiencing alternate realities.
Discussion Questions
1. How does Millie’s relationship with magic parallel her relationship with her body? What does it mean that she has knowledge of this world, but cannot enter it or physically touch pieces of it?
2. How does Millie’s physical disability function as a “super-ability”? An impairment? What about her mental illness?
3. Is the Arcadia Project helpful or harmful to Millie and their other agents? How so?