Laurie Halse Anderson 1961–
Laurie Halse Anderson 1961–
INTRODUCTION
PRINCIPAL WORKS
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
TITLE COMMENTARY
FURTHER READING
American author of young adult novels, juvenile novels, and picture books.
The following entry presents an overview of Anderson's career through 2007.
INTRODUCTION
With razor wit and uncanny understanding of teen psychology, Anderson's young adult novels sympathetically portray the daily lives of contemporary high school students as they struggle with relationships, identity, class, and one another. Her stories willingly confront the darker aspects of modern adolescent life, incorporating such topics as date rape, teen pregnancy, and internet threats with a realistic and keenly perceptive authorial tone. Her first novel for teenaged readers, Speak (1999), centered around a high-school girl's year-long struggle following her rape by a classmate at a party, earned her nominations for the 1999 National Book Award in Young People's Literature and a Printz Honor Medal Book Award, among many other honors. Her dialectic approach to the material imitates the confessional language of diaries and the smart-aleck tenor of teens themselves, creating a communion of discourse that vitalizes her characters for the young adult reader. Now the author of a diverse canon of works—encompassing a breadth of age groups from picture books and easy readers to her widely-read novels targeting adolescents—Anderson has continued to demonstrate an insightful awareness of her various juvenile readerships.
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Anderson was born on October 23, 1961, in Potsdam, New York, to Frank, a Methodist minister, and Joyce Halse. As a child, she was an avid reader, developing a strong rapport with works of historical fiction and science fiction in particular. After a stint as a foreign exchange student on a Danish pig farm during her senior year of high school, Anderson returned to the United States, attending Onondaga Community College for two years before transferring to Georgetown University, where she graduated in 1984 with a B.S. in Linguistics and Language. The summer before her graduation, she married Greg Anderson, with whom she had two daughters, Stephanie and Meredith, before the couple ultimately divorced in 2002. Shortly into her marriage, Anderson decided to attempt a writing career, finding work as a freelance reporter while penning stories on the side. In 1996, after many rejection letters, her first published work, Ndito Runs, a picture book, was released. She eventually wrote several more picture books, including Turkey Pox (1996)—about her daughter's bout with chicken pox on Thanksgiving—and No Time for Mother's Day (1999). Following her success as a picture book author, Anderson decided to try her hand at writing for an older audience and began researching a book about an epidemic in 1793 Philadelphia. However, she decided to take a break in the middle of composing that story to return to a novel that she had been envisioning since a nightmare in 1996. The book, Speak, became a critical and commercial success. After finishing Fever 1793 (2000), she released two other picture books—a tale about her adopted hometown of Philadelphia in The Big Cheese of Third Street (2002) and the story of a distant relative in Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving (2002)—before deciding to return to young adult works with 2002's Catalyst. Anderson has also authored a series of juvenile novels in the "Wild at Heart" series (2000-2002), which was later re-released under the series title "Vet Volunteers." In 2005 she married her second husband, Scot Larrabee.
MAJOR WORKS
Anderson's teen-oriented novels often focus on the relationship between out-of-school behavior and its repercussions upon classroom life, typically told in the first person in a confessional-style narrative. Her protagonists are engaging, normal teens who seek the same things as their classmates—popularity, love, parental approval, and the chance to attend a good college. Yet the inevitable adolescent mistakes of bad choices and events beyond their control come back to haunt each one, forcing them to reevaluate the manner in which they had been living. Each of Anderson's young adult novels challenges the normative patterns of a teen's life, throwing up roadblocks that, through careful navigation, ultimately change the course of their lives. In Speak, Melinda Sordino is about to start her first year at high school when she is raped by an acquaintance at a party. The unspoken trauma, which she leaves unnamed until the story's finish, has left her nearly mute and emotionally broken. Her attacker, Andy Evans, attends school with her, and Melinda finds herself fading into the background of high-school life. Keeping the rape a secret—even from the reader—she has no outlet to release her pain. Formerly a good student, her grades drop, and she becomes moody and withdrawn, causing her friends to spend less time with her and her parents to become frustrated and anxious over her abrupt change in personality. Ultimately, navigating this lonely path by herself, Melinda finds solace in an abandoned janitorial closet at her high school, where she tries to center herself. A supportive art teacher helps her to express herself through abstract artwork, and Melinda finally begins to rediscover herself. The story centers around Melinda's complete inability to absorb and sound out the pain she feels. During the rape, her attacker covered her mouth, creating a symbolic lock she cannot overcome. Cut off from the world, she is left adrift in the already confusing world of high school. Her thoughts are expressed to the reader, though her memories of the rape itself are left unsaid until such time as she is able to process and find a place beyond its effects. Melinda's ability to express herself is lost, and she becomes flat, effectively voiceless. With her art, she finally begins to find a release and, thanks to its recuperative effects, is able to find strength enough to warn her friend Rachel when she begins to date Melinda's rapist. Her feelings are further validated through her creation of a warning about Andy in the girls' bathroom stalls, which evolves into a female bulletin board about the boys at her school. A final confrontation with Andy, in which he tries to attack her again at school, breaks his hold on her when her screams bring help and a release from his invisible grip.
Anderson's other young adult novels further investigate adolescent pain, utilizing unique frameworks synchronized to the high school experience. In Catalyst, Kate Malone is a chemistry whiz, and Anderson uses prescient quotes from a chemistry textbook to highlight events to come. Recently rejected by M.I.T., her dream college, Kate's perfectly arranged life is further torn asunder when her minister father brings a difficult high-school classmate and her little brother home to live with them after a fire. The arrival of "vo-tech" Teri Litch disturbs control-freak Kate, and she finds her life spiraling out of control, leaving her on the edge of a breakdown. It is not until the tragically disturbing events of Teri's life come to light that Kate is finally able to step back and appreciate the value of what she has. Similarly, Tyler Miller of Twisted (2007) undergoes a complete transformation, shedding his nerdy image for that of a bad boy after he spray-paints his high school and is sentenced to summer labor as penance. Returning to school with a reputation and a new more muscular body, he finds himself living the dream of popularity, even gaining the eye of his dream girl, Bethany. However, unfortunate events spiral around him after he rejects Bethany's sexual advances. Subsequently, suggestive pictures of Bethany turn up on the internet after a party, and Tyler is accused of being responsible. In Prom (2005), Anderson revisits the American tradition through the eyes of nonconformist Ashley Hannigan. Happy with her disreputable and aimless boyfriend, through a series of odd circumstances, Ashley finds herself forced to plan her high school's prom, despite her distaste for the ritual. Eventually, she is able to salvage the prom—which is constantly challenged by repeated obstacles—and discovers, in the course of doing so, unexpected reserves of ability and confidence that cause her to reevaluate her plans for the future.
CRITICAL RECEPTION
Anderson's adolescent novels have earned her critical praise for their forthright presentation of high-school lives punctuated by tragedy or pain. While her subject matter—rape, incest, and other strong sexual themes—can be difficult for young readers, critics have lauded Anderson for portraying such taboo issues realistically with sympathy and frank language. Speak has been widely hailed for its accurate depiction of the trauma of rape and inspired a 2004 HBO movie. Don Latham has called the novel "by turns painful, smart, and darkly comic," and Speak has frequently been cited by librarians and critics as a potential resource for high school students seeking to better understand the issues surrounding rape. Janet Alsup has suggested that because Speak "tells this story of rape in an unconventional way, using a nontraditional narrative structure that includes lists, multiple subheadings, extended spacing between paragraphs, and script-like dialogue introduced by names followed by colons, the effect of the discourse is magnified. Speak does not tell the ‘rape story’ in a way that is identical to others readers have heard or in a way that is easy to ignore." As a result, Alsup has contended, Anderson has created a book that can "‘speak’ to teen readers, and help them cope with problems such as dating violence, divisive peer groups and cliques, and feelings of isolation and alienation from school." Anderson's other novels for teens have continued to earn critical approval, with James Blasingame arguing that Prom "holds a mirror to the average girl's high school experience and reflects some images that will have readers nodding their heads, images including an unappreciative, unreliable boyfriend; popular cliques; authoritarian school administrators; and embarrassing but loving parents." Erin Schirota has similarly commended Anderson's everyday attention to detail in Twisted, asserting that "concerns with sex, alcohol, grades, and family are all tackled with honesty and candor. Once again, Anderson's taut, confident writing will cause this story to linger long after the book is set down."
PRINCIPAL WORKS
Young Adult Novels
Speak (young adult novel) 1999
Fever 1793 (young adult novel) 2000
Catalyst (young adult novel) 2002
Prom (young adult novel) 2005
Twisted (young adult novel) 2007
Chains (young adult novel) 2008
"Wild at Heart" Series of Juvenile Novels
Fight for Life: Maggie (juvenile novel) 2000
Homeless: Sunita (juvenile novel) 2000
Manatee Blues (juvenile novel) 2000
The Trickster (juvenile novel) 2000
Fear of Falling (juvenile novel) 2001
Say Good-Bye (juvenile novel) 2001
Storm Rescue (juvenile novel) 2001
Teacher's Pet (juvenile novel) 2001
Trapped (juvenile novel) 2001
End of the Race (juvenile novel) 2002
Masks (juvenile novel) 2002
Time to Fly (juvenile novel) 2002
Picture Books
Ndito Runs [illustrations by Anita Van der Merwe] (picture book) 1996
Turkey Pox [illustrations by Dorothy Donohue] (picture book) 1996
No Time for Mother's Day [illustrations by Dorothy Donohue] (picture book) 1999
The Big Cheese of Third Street [illustrations by David Gordon] (picture book) 2002
Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving [illustrations by Matt Faulkner] (picture book) 2002
Independent Dames: What You Never Knew about the Women and Girls of the American Revolution [illustrations by Matt Faulkner] (picture book) 2008
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
Laurie Halse Anderson and James Blasingame (interview date September 2005)
SOURCE: Anderson, Laurie Halse, and James Blasingame. "Interview with Laurie Halse Anderson." Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 49, no. 1 (September 2005): 72-3.
[In the following interview, Anderson discusses how issues of social interaction, romance, and personal challenges are expressed in her young adult novel Prom.]
James Blasingame corresponded by e-mail with Laurie Halse Anderson about her latest book, Prom.
***[James Blasingame]: In your bookProm (2005, Viking), the protagonist, Ashley Hannigan, is hardly the person to care about the prom, but in the end she takes on 90% of the responsibility for making sure this prom-that-wasn't-going-to-happen does happen and becomes something of a folk heroine in her school. How and why did you ever shoulder this sort of counterculture-march-to-her-own-drummer person like Ashley with the burden of making sure the quintessential symbol of school social acceptability is a success? Ashley + Prom = the null set before the story—how and why could that possibly change?
[Laurie Halse Anderson]: Well, that's a tough question! "Null set?" Man!
I wanted Ashley to reach outside her narrowly defined world (in the preparation for the prom) and I wanted her to have a triumph (the shining moment when everyone is dancing to the same beat).
Teenagers often allow themselves to be limited by how the culture sees them. Come to think of it, some adults do, too. True freedom comes from the realization that it doesn't matter what other people think of you. When you start making decisions based on your internal compass, that's when you come to life.
The things that I resist the most often become significant pieces of my own growth and development. Eleanor Roosevelt said, "You must do the thing you think you cannot do." And those are words to live by. I handed Ashley a thing she didn't want and couldn't do, and she did it.
You have captured the dialogue of teenagers masterfully (and managed to do so without needing to resort to much in the way of obscenity), including slang expressions like "bling bling" and also some real jewels of school administrator platitudes like "Listening is an opportunity, people." Did you hang out in high schools to capture these? Where did they come from?
If I (or any other YA author) were to write truly realistic dialogue, our books would overflow with curse words, and they would probably not be published. But if they were, they would never make their way into bookstores and libraries and the hands of readers because a part of the American public would be outraged that authors use such filthy, inappropriate gutter language. Not all teenagers spice their daily conversations with obscenity, but most of the ones I've met do.
Teens understand this situation. They know that, just as they get in trouble for dropping the "F-bomb" in front of teachers, authors get nailed for it, too. So we have an unspoken pact about pretend language in books. It's another one of the confusing hypocrisies that makes being an American teenager so damn—I mean darn—hard. However, it presents an interesting craft challenge to the author. We must show through action and narrative details the situations of daily high school life that lead teens to curse a lot. It's fun to struggle with that.
I stole most of the administrators' platitudes while visiting high schools. When announcements are made over loudspeakers, even visiting authors have to shut up and listen. Some visiting authors take notes.
Ashley describes herself as "normal." What do you think a "normal" high school student is in values and behavior?
Ashley uses the word normal as a defense. In her mind, those other kids, the kids you see on TV who are going to college and are given cars on their 16th birthday, there is something wrong with those kids. She is comfortable being "normal," fitting in with the world around her.
I think the average teenager just wants to get by without attracting too much attention. They live on an ice skating rink and they are trying very hard not to fall flat on their faces.
Ashley seems to be in love with her boyfriend T. J. all the way through the novel until the end, at which point she cuts him loose and shows no regret. Why did she do this? What realization had she come to about him or that relationship?
Ashley is following the model of her parents' relationship: Fall in love at the end of high school and commit to that first love. But she has nagging doubts about T. J. The world he offers her falls short of her dreams, though she is still figuring out what those dreams are.
There is true love and respect in her parents' marriage. Over the course of the book, Ashley realizes that, despite all his good qualities (and his yummy abs), T. J. cannot look beyond his own desires to see what she needs and wants. He is not good enough for her.
You have successfully created a tension between two conflicting views of the prom: (1) It's all pretend and ignores the reality of life; it commands a disproportionate amount of a teenager's or that teenager's family's discretionary spending money, especially for this one time, short-lived social event. (2) For once in their lives, the kids will get to pretend they are glamorous socialites; it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that they will remember the rest of their lives, lives that will have few opportunities for glamour and luxury. Even Ashley seems able to hold both contradictory ideas in her head at the same time. How do you view this American cultural phenomenon, "the prom?"
The book reflects my ambivalence about this bizarre ritual. On the one hand, proms are a wonderful celebration. High school is hard, being a teenager is hard, and they deserve a chance to dress up and party together, to push beyond the envelope of their daily routines and experiment with dressing up and feeling special.
On the other hand, the money spent on proms is truly obscene and stupid. I wonder if there are any high schools out there that have thought of deliberately scaling back the glitz. I doubt it. And I wish we could find a way to convince teenagers that this is not the night to get drunk, or get high, or have sex.
Maybe the attention that teens lavish on the prom tells us that they want more in the way of coming-of-age rituals. They want a public acknowledgement that they have moved from childhood into adulthood. Hmmm….
TITLE COMMENTARY
SPEAK (1999)
Publishers Weekly (review date 13 September 1999)
SOURCE: Review of Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Publishers Weekly 246, no. 37 (13 September 1999): 85.
In a stunning first novel [Speak ], Anderson uses keen observations and vivid imagery to pull readers into the head of an isolated teenager. Divided into the four marking periods of an academic year, the novel, narrated by Melinda Sordino, begins on her first day as a high school freshman. No one will sit with Melinda on the bus. At school, students call her names and harass her; her best friends from junior high scatter to different cliques and abandon her. Yet Anderson infuses the narrative with a wit that sustains the heroine through her pain and holds readers' empathy. A girl at a school pep rally offers an explanation of the heroine's pariah status when she confronts Melinda about calling the police at a summer party, resulting in several arrests. But readers do not learn why Melinda made the call until much later: a popular senior raped her that night and, because of her trauma, she barely speaks at all. Only through her work in art class, and with the support of a compassionate teacher there, does she begin to reach out to others and eventually find her voice. Through the first-person narration, the author makes Melinda's pain palpable: "I stand in the center aisle of the auditorium, a wounded zebra in a National Geographic special." Though the symbolism is sometimes heavy-handed, it is effective. The ending, in which her attacker comes after her once more, is the only part of the plot that feels forced. But the book's overall gritty realism and Melinda's hard-won metamorphosis will leave readers touched and inspired. Ages 12-up.
Janet Alsup (essay date October 2003)
SOURCE: Alsup, Janet. "Politicizing Young Adult Literature: Reading Anderson's Speak as a Critical Text." Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 47, no. 2 (October 2003): 158-66.
[In the following essay, Alsup examines the value that controversial/realistic texts such as Anderson's Speak can have in a classroom environment.]
As I write this article, the television news blares details about the latest school shooting in the United States, this time in California. Another adolescent boy managed to kill two fellow students and injure 11 others before he was taken into custody. By now, this scene is eerily familiar. We have seen similar pictures from Colorado, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Arkansas, and we have heard about numerous other potential shootings that have been stopped in the nick of time.
This latest school shooting brings to our attention yet again that something is wrong in our schools and perhaps within the psyches of our teenagers. The perpetrators of these shootings share certain characteristics: they are adolescent white boys from suburban, middle-class families who, for whatever reason, were bullied, teased, and ostracized by schoolmates until they finally "cracked." What is perhaps most important is that they rarely talked to anyone about their feelings of isolation and emotional pain. Peers describe them as loners, without many friends, and uninvolved in extracurricular activities.
If we can identify these characteristics and create profiles of these violent teens, why can't we change their behavior before they act out? Teachers and administrators, parents, and university teacher educators have asked themselves this question many times, but there appears to be no simple answer. So we keep asking: Why can't we help these students? How can we help them?
It is a common assumption that adolescence is a very difficult time of life. Psychologists have long described the confusion and self-doubt that accompany puberty. Young people have to face raging hormones and changing bodies that they are not yet comfortable inhabiting. Hall (1904) characterized this time as one of "storm and stress" as teenagers try to understand their new biological urges and emotional needs. The difficulties and stresses adolescents face are not surprising to high school or middle school teachers. They interact with adolescents every day and often watch them grow emotionally. But what happens when students cannot quite seem to make this transition from child to adult? What happens when adolescents, dependent on peer acceptance, feel like outsiders in their schools? What happens when self-esteem is not nurtured, and teens come to dislike themselves and hence others around them? I do not want to imply that these difficulties, however painful, necessarily result in violence. On the contrary, most young people, with the support of friends, relatives, and teachers, are able to make it through this stage of life and grow into well-adjusted adults. However, in the past few years, it seems that feelings of isolation and frustration long associated with adolescence have erupted more and more often into violence, and not just schoolyard fights.
English and reading teachers, like teachers of every discipline, have their own strategies for easing students through this time of "storm and stress," and their tool is often books. A recent novel by Todd Strasser, Give a Boy a Gun (2002), tells the story of a school shooting at fictional Middletown High. The two young, male perpetrators end up dying (one shoots himself and another is beaten to death by fellow students who finally overtake him), but only after shooting a fellow student and the school principal. Strasser narrates the events through a series of quotes from various characters who were witnesses to the shooting. He also includes several footnoted descriptions of real school shootings since the mid-1970s along with saddening statistics about gun deaths and the prevalence of teasing in U.S. schools. In this book Strasser makes a definite and powerful point about the seriousness of teen violence. However, I do not want to imply that asking students to read and respond to a book such as Strasser's can stop school shootings from occurring. Although this is a wonderful thought, it would be far too idealistic. There are clearly other issues that must be addressed in order to stop the problem, including the trivializing of peer teasing and the resulting humiliation that often leads to depression and anger. But what I do want to suggest is that reading literature can be an ethical as well as an intellectual process, and as such it can assist adolescents in coping with their tumultuous lives.
The Power of Literature
Reading and English teachers understand the power of literature. They can remember reading novels, poems, or stories and feeling as if the author had a window into their souls, understanding and counseling them from afar. They have experienced variously what a book's narrator experienced, and they believe they have grown as people because of it. They have managed to learn about various kinds of people and places through literature, and, consequently, they have become more empathetic and educated human beings. Such teachers believe in the positive effects literature can have on readers, even if their beliefs come off sounding like clichés. They want their students to read literature and other texts not only to become "critical thinkers" and do well on standardized tests, but also to become "critical feelers." Rosenblatt (1938) made this point when she wrote, "As the student shares through literary experience the emotions and aspirations of other human beings, he can gain heightened sensitivity to the needs and problems of those remote from him in temperament, in space, or in social environment" (p. 261). In short, many teachers tend to see reading and responding to literature as a pathway to becoming more human.
Nussbaum (1997) explained this function of literature by defining the concept of "world citizenship" as
[cultivating] in ourselves a capacity for sympathetic imagination that will enable us to comprehend the motives and choices of people different from ourselves, seeing them not as forbiddingly alien and other, but as sharing many problems and possibilities with us.
(p. 85)
Nussbaum saw literature as one way to teach this "world citizenship." "In a curriculum for world citizenship, literature, with its ability to represent the specific circumstances and problems of people of many different sorts, makes an especially rich contribution" (p. 86). Nussbaum also viewed literature as more than a text to be "analyzed" for symbols, figurative language, or character development. She saw it as a way for readers to develop a "narrative imagination" and become more caring people.
I agree with Nussbaum, and I can think of no other time of life when such an education is more important than adolescence. Sometimes adults see adolescents as hedonistic and cruel to their peers. Under the most trying of circumstances, they can see them as materialistic, selfish, mouthy, and sometimes just plain mean. Often adults do not understand that these negative characteristics stem from frustration and sadness, and, frankly, sometimes it is just hard to remember when they are so upset with an adolescent's behavior.
Literature can be a way for teens to release these tensions, and the literature class can become a forum for talking about issues adolescents want and need to talk about but are often too shy or embarrassed to address. Students can read a book, for example, about a teenager reaching puberty and can talk about what the character is feeling in the third person, not the first. They can say "she felt" instead of "I felt." While they might actually share many of these feelings, they do not have to admit this fact in order to have frank conversation about an issue.
Young adult literature seems to have special potential to help students understand their tumultuous time of life. Donelson and Nilsen (1997) defined young adult literature as "anything that readers between the approximate ages of 12 and 20 choose to read" (p. 6), and in their textbook they discuss how YA literature often mirrors adolescent problems. Bushman and Bushman (1993) defined young adult literature as "literature written for or about young adults" having themes and conflicts of interest to young people (p. 2). Both texts recognize that above all, YA literature is something that adolescents want to read, as opposed to being forced to read by teachers. Why do they want to read it? Perhaps because it helps them feel as if they are not alone.
While there are young adult books being published for a high school or upper adolescent audience (for example, many books by Chris Crutcher and Robert Cormier), I believe that the majority of young adult books recently published in the United States are written for a middle school or early adolescent audience. For example, recent Newbery Award winners include Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust (1997), Louis Sachar's Holes (1998), Christopher Paul Curtis's But, Not Buddy (1999), Richard Peck's A Year Down Yonder (2000) Linda Sue Park's A Single Shard (2001), and Avi's Crispin: The Cross of Lead (2002). While these are all wonderful books, they were written primarily for an audience of 9- to 12-year-olds, and, with the possible exception of Out of the Dust (which seems ageless), they often read that way. For example, Holes tells an almost fable-like story of a boy's discovery of hidden treasure, and Bud, Not Buddy is a rather innocent story about a young boy running away from home to find his musician father. Even though Holes has a fairly complex plot that takes many twists and turns before the novel's end, including a subplot about an interracial romance, and Bud, Not Buddy takes place during the difficult years of the Great Depression, both books focus on conflicts that are either somewhat fantastical or that end happily. For example, in Holes a 100-year-old stash of preserved peaches ends up saving a character from dehydration and serving as a remedy for foot odor, and in Bud, Not Buddy the orphaned main character almost effortlessly finds a loving extended family by the end of the book. The conflicts are relatively straightforward and easily solved, and therefore seem more appropriate for younger adolescents who are just beginning to experience the difficulty of the teenage years.
One possible reason young adult authors might focus on a middle school-aged audience is because this age group is where publishing companies have identified the greatest potential for sales. Donelson and Nilsen (1997) proposed several reasons for this belief, ranging from demographics (e.g., there are currently fewer children of high school age in the United States, and more middle school teachers are implementing whole language or "immersion" approaches to reading instruction and hence buying more books for classrooms) to more negative pronouncements about today's youth (e.g., older teens are spending more time watching television and playing video games than reading). Regardless of the reasons, as one scans the bookstore shelves there appear to be a greater number of YA books with middle school age protagonists that address the concerns of early adolescence. Much young adult literature meant for the middle school or junior high student avoids issues especially relevant and traumatic for older students, such as drugs, alcohol, violence, and sex. While such issues, of course, are also of concern to many younger adolescents, I believe that high school teens confront them on a more consistent and persistent basis; therefore, high school teachers often find themselves seeking out texts that explore these so-called "controversial" issues. However, high school teachers of English and reading may have difficulty finding contemporary, high-interest books for their students that are written at an appropriate level of difficulty and with age-relevant content. Because of this difficulty, many teachers find themselves reverting to traditional canonical texts that have a long history of use in high schools but at times also a long history of eliciting student apathy and disinterest.
While we may have to look harder to find them, there are high-quality young adult novels being published that are written for a senior high (14- to 18-year-old) audience. Many of these books address difficult or explosive issues that, whether we like it or not, are real in students' lives. I have found that when YA books are directed to the older teen reader, they tend to be about issues like violence, drug use, and sexuality; therefore, they sometimes make teachers, parents, and administrators nervous or uncomfortable.
In the rest of this article, I focus on one of these books, Speak (1999) by Laurie Halse Anderson. Through analysis of this book, I argue that as a critical young adult text it can help us redefine and broaden the use of young adult literature in the high school classroom. While sometimes teachers are understandably hesitant to teach such books because of possible resistance from administrators and parents, I argue that such books should be made available to students as often as possible because they may be a first, small step toward helping teenagers find their voices and come to terms with an intensely difficult phase of life.
Speak
There is an inherent contradiction evident in some high school classrooms. The same young girls who often claim they are not "feminists," because of the erroneous connotations with radical bra burning and man hating, desire equal opportunity and a chance at happy, fulfilling lives as adult women. Sometimes they are even victimized in an abusive or violent relationship with a boyfriend or a male relative, yet they lack the emotional maturity or knowledge necessary to seek help. Speak a is about a girl named Melinda who is raped at a beer party the summer before her first year of high school. As a result she becomes depressed and alienated, retreating into silence throughout most of the book. The novel is written in an unconventional style including short, vignette-like chapters and life-like visual representations of Melinda's report cards (her grades steadily fall throughout her freshman year).
Speak begins this way: "It is my first morning of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache" (p. 3). This is the first time the reader hears Melinda's voice, which is consistently sincere and engaging throughout the book. The emotional and psychological effects of Melinda's rape are devastating, not only because of her personal trauma but also because none of her girlfriends know or understand what happened. The reader does not even learn about the rape until the very end of the novel (although there is much foreshadowing of it). We simply know that Melinda is intensely unhappy, none of her former friends will talk to her, she is failing in school, and she cannot talk to anyone about it, not even her parents. At one point Melinda says, "I open up a paper clip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this? A whimper, a peep?" (p. 87). Melinda does not attempt suicide, but this scene demonstrates the depth of her emotional pain and also reveals the likeability of Melinda, who despite her difficulties, displays an ironic, subtle humor throughout the book. But Melinda cannot "speak" about her pain, and, consequently, the adults in the novel tend to see her as arrogant and apathetic and get angry at her lack of participation in class, her failing grades, and her all-around "bad" attitude. Only Melinda and her rapist, a high school boy named Andrew, truly know why she is so quiet.
The end of the book is positive as Melinda begins to come to terms with her trauma and regains her dignity (and her voice) with the help, in part, of a supportive art teacher. In fact, there is a wonderful ending scene where Melinda fights back against her attacker and overpowers him. However, this "happy" ending to her teen angst is one of the few similarities between this book and some more traditional young adult novels. Speak tackles issues that many other YA books will not touch due to publisher constraints or a preoccupation with marketability. But Speak, in addition to being a skillfully written novel, is a book that might "speak" to teen readers and help them cope with problems such as dating violence, divisive peer groups and cliques, and feelings of isolation and alienation from school.
Teaching Speak in the Critical Classroom
I teach methods or pedagogy courses to preservice teachers, and they are often hesitant to consider using books such as Speak in their future classes. They worry that parents, colleagues, or their principal would condemn their choice of such a book, and they might consequently lose their jobs. They hear horror stories about teachers being called before school boards for teaching controversial books, and they recognize the risk involved, especially in a rural or small-town community such as the one in whichI teach. While in some conservative districts it might be a problem to require high school students to read a book about teen violence, alcohol, or any issue related to sexuality, I argue that, if at all possible, teachers should try to teach or make available for independent reading such books and thereby politicize their literature classrooms. In some districts it may not be possible to teach the book as a whole-class assignment; however, perhaps it could be available in a classroom or school library for independent reading.
While the contextual and bureaucratic restraints of teachers in high schools cannot be ignored, I worry about the proliferation of "self-censorship" whereby teachers do not introduce books into their classrooms based on a fear of what retributions might occur, not what actually has occurred. While teaching or making available a book such as Speak might be a risk, we can no longer draw a thick line between what students are really doing after school hours and what we can talk about in school. I believe we can no longer pretend that after classes end students go home to stable families and hot dinners. We can no longer waste the ethical opportunities literature provides in the face of increasing teenage apathy, anger, and violence. The stakes are too high.
Critical pedagogues following Freire (1970) have written about the "critical classroom" in which teachers encourage student "liberation" and "critical consciousness" through dialogue and student-centered curricula. In such classrooms, students are asked to read, write, talk, and think about social-cultural issues permeating their world and then critically analyze these realities. As Applebee (1993) wrote, "Instruction becomes less a matter of transmittal of an objective and culturally sanctioned body of knowledge, and more a matter of helping individual learners learn to construct and interpret for themselves" (p. 200). School in general (and English and reading classrooms are no exception) does not often seek to be critical but instead encourages students to be quiet and conform to the status quo. Consequently, as Bleich (1988) wrote,
We—teachers and students—have learned not to name or identify in school most of the consequential things in our lives, and we have few ways of teaching others a literacy that shows conviction, motivation, and social and political discourse.
(p. 329)
In the face of recent problems, such critical literacy instruction seems a necessity—a course of action that can help students become more critically literate and self-aware in an increasingly dangerous and unpredictable world.
Young adult books like Speak can provide opportunities for writing activities or conversations about teenage problems in an attempt to achieve such critical literacy. Imagine a class in which students are having a discussion about Speak, and the issue of "speaking out" or "having a voice," a major theme in the novel, comes up. Students may raise the point that if Melinda had spoken about her rape earlier, she might have received help sooner and hence avoided some pain. They might also mention that her peers, her supposed friends, did not try very hard to talk to her or understand her plight. They might also discuss whether they have ever seen anything violent occur at parties, and if so, whether alcohol was a factor.
These discussions could have direct implications for real experiences the students have had and might have in the future. However, they might never have felt comfortable discussing these issues openly in class or with teachers when they would have had to implicate themselves directly in such behavior. But they do feel comfortable talking about Melinda, a fictional character, and her experience. They can talk or write about real problems vicariously and with little personal risk. They can try out certain responses to Melinda's situation, certain suggestions for what she might have done, with no fear that the teacher or peers will think they are talking about themselves. Consequently, in the words of critical pedagogues, students might become more "critically conscious" of their social and cultural realities, and hence better able to deal with them in real-life situations. They are using literature as a tool for thinking about their world. In addition, I would argue that they are simultaneously becoming better readers, thinkers, and communicators.
Trites (1997) described voice as "essential to a girl's subjectivity" and stated that "those who are denied speech, denied language, are also denied their full potential as humans; they are denied community" (p. 62). One of the things I like best about Speak is how its theme of finding voice (and hence identity and personal power) is one that is mirrored every day in real teenagers' lives as they seek to become independent, yet integrated, members of their school and home communities. Any adult who has lived with or taught a teenager knows how difficult it can be to have an open conversation with him or her. While this lack of speech can just be an annoyance to adults, it can become a much more serious situation when students do not tell about potentially dangerous experiences with violence, sex, drugs, or alcohol. In the most extreme of situations, silence not only isolates adolescents, it can actually put their lives at risk. One of the facts that has recently emerged about the California school shooting is that the young perpetrator apparently told several peers, and even adults, about his plan, yet no one took him seriously or reported his threats to school officials. They kept silent out of fear or apathy or perhaps a failure to believe that what they could say would be heard.
Women and girls are often afraid to tell that they were raped because they believe they will be blamed or they could be seen as "defiled" and untouchable by other males. When rape stories are told, either verbally or through a written or visual text, the narrative tale of rape has certain features—certain charac- teristics that define it as a female cultural genre. These characteristics often include guilt and self-blame on the part of the victim. The rape survivor has to justify why it was preferable to be raped and live rather than to fight back and die. This cultural narrative has become so pervasive that it is seen as the "truth" about rape. Books are written with "10-step plans" for surviving rape, and victims appear on talk shows to tell their "rape stories" in relatively predictable ways. The narratives begin to seem identical, and it is assumed that every rape survivor's experience has a kind of sameness. Consequently, the stories become easy to ignore, and they blend into the cultural landscape. Rape is just something that happens to some girls and women. We learn the "story" of the rape survivor, just as we know the "story" of the victim of domestic violence, the alcoholic, or the addict. The viewer or listener who is not a rape survivor thinks she has heard it all before, and in the event that she is ever raped, she will know almost subconsciously how to respond, or at least how she has been taught to respond.
However, some testimonies by rape survivors can break the silence and disrupt dominant, oppressive discourse. Hooks (1989) wrote, "True speaking is not solely an expression of creative power; it is an act of resistance, a political gesture that challenges politics of domination that would render us nameless and voiceless" (p. 8). In other words, speaking out can be an action in its own right. Discourse of resistance, such as Melinda's loud "NNNOOO!!!" as she fights off Andrew Evans at the end of Speak, as well as her eventual decision to narrate her story to her art teacher ("Me: Let me tell you about it," p. 198) has power and can have a positive effect on material reality. In addition, because Speak tells this story of rape in an unconventional way, using a nontraditional narrative structure that includes lists, multiple subheadings, extended spacing between paragraphs, and script-like dialogue introduced by names followed by colons, the effect of the discourse is magnified. Speak does not tell the "rape story" in a way that is identical to others readers have heard or in a way that is easy to ignore. Anderson narrates Melinda's story so that adolescent readers are compelled to pay attention instead of dismissing it as yet another example of a sad story like so many others they have heard in the past.
To sum up, Champagne (1996) stated that the difference between a survivor of violence and a victim of violence is the "political meaning made" of the experience. She writes, "Survivors move to a place where they reject the demand to remain politely silent. Polite silence condones the social order of the law of heteropatriarchy" (pp. 2-3). By speaking up, by deciding to no longer be silent and polite, the survivor takes a sort of control over her story and her experience. Only through this kind of resistant testimony, as exemplified by Melinda in Speak, can the oppressive cultural scripts be exposed and subverted.
Can YA Literature Really Be an Answer for Troubled Teens?
A critical text is a text that confronts difficult issues in society—a text that does not break down into meaningless clichés and predictable plot patterns. A critical text could also be called a resistant text, because it not only resists some of the "rules" of its genre but also encourages its readers to resist the "rules" for mindless, complacent reading. Such books have found their way into classrooms before (e.g., J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye), but not without controversy. However, these books are almost universally loved by students and often become cult classics, read under the sheets at night or stuck inside a math book propped on a desk. Why can't we bring such resistant texts into the open? Why don't we allow students to read them within our sight and then talk to us about them? If we did so, the critical text could be addressed in the critical classroom and consequently opened up to critical reflection in a supportive environment containing an adult voice.
Yagelski (2000) wrote about the importance of "local literacies" if students are to become truly literate readers and writers. Students need to read, write, and talk about issues that are relevant and real to them and that have immediate meaning for them in their lives. This is not to say that students should never read about people or places to which they cannot easily relate, but first they have to discover that books are places to see themselves, to re-experience and rethink their lives. Carey-Webb's Literature and Lives: A Response-Based, Cultural Studies Approach to Teaching English (2001) provided an accessible introduction to teaching literature through critical theoretical lenses, such as feminist, Marxist, and postcolonial theories, that encourage such reflexive thought. Carey-Webb argued that such a cultural studies approach may not only help students see the relevance of literature but also encourage them to experience it as a catalyst for social activism or personal change.
Reading a novel such as Speak could be personally relevant for most U.S. teens. Critical pedagogues have consistently asserted that asking students to cri- tique dominant ideologies and their own role in such configurations of power can be quite unsettling to students who are thinking critically about themselves and their culture for the first time; however, such an experience is often essential for intellectual and emotional growth. While reading Speak, perhaps students will see a little of themselves in Melinda or in her friends, and after reading, writing about, and discussing the book in a classroom, they might act a little differently the next time a classmate seems unnaturally withdrawn or when they witness violence at a weekend party—or even at school. They might even begin to acquire a mature "narrative imagination" that will help them be better citizens and more empathetic human beings.
References
Anderson, L. H. (1999). Speak. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Applebee, A. (1993). Literature in the Secondary School: Studies of Curriculum and Instruction in the United States. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Bleich, D. (1988). The Double Perspective: Language, Literary, and Social Relations. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Bushman, J., & Bushman. K. P. (1993). Using Young Adult Literature in the English Classroom. New York: Merrill.
Carey-Webb, A. (2001). Literature and Lives: A Response-Based, Cultural Studies Approach to Teaching English. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Champagne, R. (1996). The Politics of Survivorship: Incest, Women's Literature, and Feminist Theory. New York: New York University Press.
Curtis, C. P. (1999). Bud, Not Buddy. New York: Delacorte Press.
Donelson, K. L., & Nilsen, A. P. (1997). Literature for Today's Young Adults (5th ed.). New York: Longman.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Hall, G. S. (1904). Adolescence (Vols. I & II). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Hesse, K. (1997). Out of the Dust. New York: Scholastic.
hooks, b. (1989). Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston: South End Press.
Nussbaum, M. (1997). Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Park, L. S. (2001). A Single Shard. New York: Clarion.
Peck, R. (2000). A Year Down Yonder. New York: Penguin Putnam.
Rosenblatt, L. M. (1938). Literature as Exploration. New York: Modern Language Association.
Sachar, L. (1998). Holes. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Strasser, T. (2002). Give a Boy a Gun. New York: Simon Pulse.
Trites, R. S. (1997). Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children's Novels. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press.
Yagelski, R. (2000). Literacy Matters: Writing and Reading the Social Self. New York: Teachers College Press.
Don Latham (essay date winter 2006)
SOURCE: Latham, Don. "Melinda's Closet: Trauma and the Queer Subtext of Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 31, no. 4 (winter 2006): 369-82.
[In the following essay, Latham suggests that Anderson's Speak can be seen as a "queer" novel due to its reliance upon repression themes and its transgression of "the boundaries of accepted norms in the treatment of trauma."]
Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson's Michael L. Printz Honor Book, can be read as a coming-out story. The novel tells the story of Melinda Sordino, who, during the summer before her freshman year in high school, is raped at a party by an older boy who goes to the same school Melinda will attend in the fall. After the attack, Melinda, knowing that she needs help, calls the police, but when the dispatcher answers the phone, she is unable to speak. When everyone discovers that Melinda has called the police—although they do not know why—they ostracize her. Still, in spite of the anger, pain, and loneliness she feels, she cannot bring herself to tell anyone what really happened that night. Instead, she retreats—literally and metaphorically—into a closet in order to keep people from learning the truth and to help her cope with her trauma.
Melinda's narrative, recounting her experiences as an outcast and her slow journey toward recovery, is by turns painful, smart, and darkly comic. What is inter- esting about it, though, is not so much that it reflects her (re)construction of her identity, but that in so doing it reflects the queerness of the strategies she uses to effect her recovery, strategies that, paradoxically, serve both to suppress her voice and to help her recover/discover a voice with which she can speak the truth. Speak is thus a queer novel in that, by presenting a view from the closet, it questions and subverts dominant heterosexist assumptions about gender, identity, and trauma.
Trauma
One way of approaching Anderson's novel is to see Melinda's behavior as symptomatic of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As outlined by psychiatrist Judith Herman in her groundbreaking book Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, trauma survivors, including survivors of sexual trauma, often experience a "conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud" (1). This conflict gives rise to symptoms that "call attention to the existence of an unspeakable secret and deflect attention from it" (1). As a result, survivors typically "alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event" (1). Recovery, which Herman clearly expects to occur within the context of psychotherapy, involves three key stages: "establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and restoring the connection between survivors and their community" (3).
In contrast, Ann Cvetkovich, in An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures, offers a queer perspective on trauma studies, a perspective that "resists the authority given to medical discourses and especially the diagnosis of traumatic experience as post-traumatic stress disorder" and instead focuses on what she calls "cultural responses to trauma" (4). In her view, trauma cultures share important characteristics with gay and lesbian cultures. She notes, for example, that speaking out as a survivor of sexual abuse is often similar, emotionally and psychologically, to coming out as a gay person (94). In addition, because trauma is often "unspeakable and unrepresentable," it does not necessarily generate conventional kinds of documentation but instead "giv[es] rise to new genres of expression, such as … monuments, rituals, and performances" (7). Likewise, gay and lesbian cultures often produce, of necessity, unorthodox archives that "stand alongside the documents of the dominant culture" (8).
In some ways, Melinda does evince the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. These symptoms, according to Herman, can be divided into three main categories: "hyperarousal," "intrusion," and "constriction" (35). She explains, "Hyperarousal reflects the persistent expectation of danger; intrusion reflects the indelible imprint of the traumatic moment; constriction reflects the numbing response of surrender" (Herman 35). Melinda is clearly in a state of hyperarousal, constantly on the alert for danger. Just choosing a seat on the school bus on the first day of school proves to be an ordeal for her. When her biology lab partner, David Petrakis, invites her to a pizza party at his house, she turns him down, rationalizing her decision by telling herself, "The world is a dangerous place. You don't know what would have happened" (Anderson 132). Melinda also experiences periodic intrusion of the traumatic event into her consciousness. She says, for example, that she is finding it increasingly difficult to sleep at night. More than once she feels so burdened by the memory that she considers telling someone what really happened. And, try as she might to forget the event, her mind keeps circling back to images of "the party" and "that night." At the same time, Melinda experiences constriction—withdrawing from her family and friends, allowing her grades to falter, skipping school, spending hours in an abandoned closet she discovers at school, and talking less and less.
Melinda's slow process of recovery also resembles the stages of recovery as outlined by Herman, so in what sense may we say that Melinda's coping and recovery strategies are queer? The term "queer," according to Karen Coats, suggests a resistance to "norms of all kinds," including norms related to gender and identity (110). Melinda's strategies are queer in the sense of transgressing the boundaries of accepted norms in the treatment of trauma. Her strategies are largely self-initiated and self-constructed, and her recovery occurs outside the context of professional intervention. Moreover, the particular strategies that shape Melinda's response to and recovery from her trauma serve to question and undermine accepted norms concerning gender and identity. Specifically, these strategies are the closet, performativity, and the unconventional archive.
The Closet
Melinda's performative strategies are designed largely to conceal and to deflect attention. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that she adopts a performative strategy long associated with gay identity—namely, the closet. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, in Epistemology of the Closet, discusses the closet as a metaphor for homosexual secrecy and disclosure. She notes, however, that "[t]he gay closet is not a feature only of the lives of gay people" (68); in fact "the closet" and "coming out" "now [verge] on all-purpose phrases for the potent crossing and recrossing of almost any politically charged lines of representation" (71). One might assume, then, that the metaphor of the closet has been divested of its specifically gay connection. Sedgwick, however, argues that "exactly the opposite is true" (72). Instead, she sees the closet as a metaphor for "a whole cluster of the most crucial sites for the contestation of meaning in twentieth-century Western culture [which] are consequentially and quite indelibly marked with the historical specificity of homosocial/homosexual definition" (72). These sites of contested meaning include secrecy/disclosure, private/public, masculine/feminine, innocence/initiation, and knowledge/ignorance—especially sexual knowledge/ignorance (72-73).
Sedgwick's epistemological analysis resonates with Anderson's novel in several interesting ways. For example, Sedgwick notes that homosexuality is "the love that is famous for daring not speak its name" (67; emphasis added). The word speak is, of course, what Anderson uses as her title, a bit ironically perhaps because for most of the novel Melinda works very hard not to speak. On the night she is raped, Melinda is unable to speak—literally unable because her attacker, Andy Evans, covers her mouth. But later she chooses silence, retreating into it almost as if taking on a role. When her English class studies The Scarlet Letter, she notices the parallel between Hester Prynne's reticence and her own. She imagines that the two of them would get along well and might even live together, with Hester "wearing that A, me with an S maybe, S for silent, for stupid, for scared. S for silly. For shame" (101). According to psychologist Annie G. Rogers, people who have experienced sexual abuse often find that their trauma is "unsayable," and thus it gets manifested through "unconscious reenactments—but at a terrible cost" (72). The terrible toll that Melinda's secret exacts on her is evident in a number of ways. In this sense, her silence displays a similarity with what Sedgwick describes as one of the closet's primary effects, that is, "the reign of the telling secret" (67). In other words, the reticence of closeted gay people concerning their sexuality hints at the very secret inscribed within the closet's boundaries. Melinda's secret is a "telling" one in that her behavior (her uncharacteristically poor performance in school, for example), her appearance (most notably her cracked, swollen lips), and her (heretofore uncharacteristic) silence and sullenness betray her. When her rather superficial friend Heather says to Melinda in exasperation, "You are the most depressed person I've ever met" (105), it is clear that, while the nature of Melinda's secret may remain hidden, its existence is obvious even to someone as self-absorbed as Heather. In fact, she tells Melinda, "I think you need professional help" (105). Given that several people, including her parents and guidance counselor, notice the change in Melinda's behavior, it may seem remarkable that no one is able to decipher the clues and get help for her. But such is the nature of the unsayable. In her work with traumatized children, Rogers observed that "these children were crying out urgently to be heard…. [However] this cry was muted: difficult or impossible for adults to discern" (xii).
It is the tension between the desire for disclosure and the desire for secrecy—between what Herman describes as "the will to proclaim" and "the will to deny" (1)—that gives rise to the feelings that Melinda says are "chewing [her] alive" (Anderson 125). Melinda uses her bedroom closet at home as a place to hide her true feelings. She places her mirror there—facing the wall—so that she does not have to confront the reality of her scars, both those on her lips and those on her psyche. One night, after her parents confront her about her failing grades, she writes a runaway note and leaves it on her desk—but she runs no further than her closet, where she falls asleep. Later, when she learns that Rachel, her former best friend, is now dating Andy Evans, she rushes home to her closet, where she buries her face in her old clothes and screams "until there are no sounds left under [her] skin" (162).
Melinda is no less closeted at school. Her great achievement early in the school year is discovering, quite by accident, an abandoned janitor's closet, which she appropriates as her own secret hiding place. This closet was once the domain of the sexist janitors, who now have a new lounge. Melinda says that the girls avoid the new lounge "because of the way [the janitors] stare and whistle softly when we walk by" (26). Melinda claims their old closet, this formerly sexist space, as her own, transforms it into a comfortable, private place, and in so doing attempts to accomplish what Herman identifies as the first stage of recovery—establishing a sense of "reliable safety" (155). Still, seven after much cleaning, the closet retains its old smells, suggesting perhaps that sexism cannot be escaped entirely. In a very real sense, what has forced Melinda into the closet—both literally and figuratively—are the sexist attitudes surrounding rape and the victims of rape. Clearly, Melinda feels it is somehow better to be ostracized by her (former) friends because they do not understand why she called the police than to face the consequences of having to admit that she called them because she was raped. Speaking up, she intuitively understands, entails potentially greater dangers than not speaking at all. Her fear of the possible social repercussions—of not being believed, for example—drives her into the closet. She gradually refurbishes the abandoned closet, a process she likens to "building a fort" (50), and, indeed, the closet serves just such a function for her, providing "a quiet place that helps [her] hold these thoughts in [her] head where no one can hear them" (51). In some ways Melinda's closet is the place where she is most alive. She sleeps, cries, draws, and thinks there. It is also worth noting that, whereas she says that she cannot seem to redecorate her bedroom at home to reflect her adolescent personality, she is quite adept at refurbishing this closet at school, adorning the walls with her art work, bringing in books, and adding an old comforter.
The View from the Closet
From the queer perspective of the closet, Melinda is able, perhaps a bit more clearly than her peers, to see the performative, nonessentialist nature of identity and gender. Judith Butler, in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, argues that gender and, by extension, identity are not manifestations of some essential inner core but are instead performative, that is, constituted "through corporeal signs and other discursive means" (173). As Rosemary Ross Johnston puts it, "Who I am does not shape what I do; what I do shapes who I am" (135). Sustaining the enactment of gender/identity, according to Butler, "requires a performance that is repeated" (178). Failure to repeat this performance results in "a fluidity of identities" and the possibility of gender/identity transformation (Butler 176, 179). Gender and identity, then, are "sustained social performances" (Butler 180) that can be disrupted, transformed, and even parodied. As Butler says in the preface to the tenth anniversary edition of her book, little did she suspect that Gender Trouble would have such a wide audience or that it would "be cited as one of the founding texts of queer theory" (vii). Offering a postmodern interpretation of the notion that "all the world's a stage," the theory of performativity would not at first glance seem particularly queer. As Butler explains, however, her overriding purpose was "to criticize a pervasive heterosexual assumption in feminist theory": "It was and remains my view that any feminist theory that restricts the meaning of gender in the presuppositions of its own practice sets up exclusionary norms within feminism, often with homophobic consequences" (vii-viii). In other words, there is no "natural" or "essential" role for any man or woman, and that includes sexuality and sexual practices as well. Not surprisingly, Butler's theory became a cornerstone of queer theory, allowing for subversive, "queer" readings of apparently "straight" texts.
Melinda's narrative reflects her strong sense that gender and identity are performative, and one suspects that this awareness has developed since, and probably because of, her rape. She notices, with some consternation, how fluid identity can be. At the beginning of the school year, her former best friend Rachel transforms herself into "Rachelle" and begins wearing black stockings, sporting heavy eyeliner, and hanging out with the international students. In her narrative, Melinda starts mockingly referring to her as "Rachel/Rachelle," signifying not just her disappointment in Rachel's betrayal of their friendship but also her discomfort with the fact that her ex-friend's identity has proven to be so fluid. What is really bothering Melinda, of course, is the fragmentation of her own identity. She thinks of herself before the rape as having been "a one-piece talking girl" (97), and she wonders if David Petrakis, her lab partner, might like "the inside girl I think I am" (111). But, as she soon discovers, identity is much more complex and fragile than that.
Because of her rape, Melinda has become, to borrow a term from Suzette A. Henke, a "shattered subject" (xii, xiv). Henke cites Sidonie Smith's definition of subject as "the culturally constructed [as opposed to essentialist] nature of any notion of ‘shelfhood’ " (Smith 189n). It is this notion of her own selfhood that Melinda has been forced to acknowledge precisely because it has been shattered. Confronted by feelings of alienation from her former self and feelings of unease with her current, fragmented self, Melinda at times wants to erase her identity completely. When forced to work out a problem on the blackboard in algebra class, for example, she says that she wishes she could "gobble [her] whole self" (39). After she overhears a group of girls talking about how "creepy" she looks, she goes into the bathroom not just to wash the tears from her face but to try to erase herself completely: "I wash my face in the sink until there is nothing left of it, no eyes, no nose, no mouth. A slick nothing" (45). But the most obvious indication of Melinda's self-alienation and fragmentation is evident in her attitude toward mirrors and other reflections of her (physical) self. After she is raped, but while still at the party, she sees her face reflected in the window over the kitchen sink and wonders, "Who was that girl? I had never seen her before" (136). Weeks later, she is still unnerved by her appearance. Looking at herself in her bedroom mirror, she is horrified by her scarred lips, which she keeps biting obsessively: "It looks like my mouth belongs to someone else, someone I don't even know" (17). Consequently, she takes the mirror off the wall and puts it in her closet facing the wall.
The mirror stage in developmental psychology, as Jacques Lacan has famously explained, signals an infant's ability to recognize the reflection in the mirror as herself. This outer image of an integrated whole stands in direct contrast to the infant's inner feelings of "turbulent movements" (Lacan 2). "This Gestalt," Lacan says, "symbolizes the mental permanence of the I, at the same time as it prefigures its alienating destination" (2). In repudiating mirrors, then, Melinda is repudiating this illusion of the self as an integrated whole. It is not simply that she does not like who she is right now, although that is no doubt part of it. More importantly, she can no longer accept the illusion that she is a whole, integrated self. When she takes over the abandoned janitor's closet at school, one of the first things she does is cover the cracked mirror with a poster of Maya Angelou, who, in her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, describes her own childhood rape and subsequent silence. It is unclear whether Melinda knows how closely Angelou's experience parallels her own, but she admires the fact that one of Angelou's books has been banned by the school board: "She must be a great writer if the school board is afraid of her" (Anderson 50).1
The only mirror that Melinda can countenance is the three-way mirror she finds in the dressing room at the department store where her mother is manager. The reason this mirror appeals to her is that it reflects her image infinitely and symbolizes her status as a shattered subject. In art class Melinda has become fascinated with Cubism and its ability to portray more than what is on the surface. This mirror exerts just that effect, turning her into "a Picasso sketch, [her] body slicing into dissecting cubes" (124). Melinda finds these multiple, distorted reflections strangely appealing, but she wonders, "Am I in there somewhere?" (124). Symbolically embracing these fractured images of herself, she reaches out and pulls in the side flaps of the mirror, "folding [her]self into the looking glass and blocking out the rest of the store" (124).
Melinda's ultimate growth, I would argue, is not toward any sort of "integrated" self but rather toward an acceptance of the performative nature and inherent fluidity of identity. As she begins to recover from her trauma, she imagines that "[s]ome quiet Melinda-girl" (188-89), whom she has not seen in a long time, is about to emerge. I think the word some is crucial here in conveying Melinda's understanding of identity. She does not suggest that the person she really is is about to emerge; she says that some identity is emerging, and she makes a conscious decision to nurture this part (or version) of herself.
Closely related to identity is the performance of gender, and Anderson's novel focuses on how performative strategies both reflect and undermine societal notions about appropriate gender roles. Butler, taking her cue from Derrida, notes that performative acts gain their power not only through repetition but also through citationality, which, in short, is "the invocation of convention" (Butler, Bodies that Matter 234). In other words, people often choose their performative acts based on what they perceive is available and/or expected. Aside from her own experience with her attacker, Melinda notices numerous other cases in which men objectify women. As previously noted, she says that all of the girls avoid the janitors' new lounge because of the way the janitors objectify them as sexual objects. While reading a book on Picasso, she notices that the artist "sure had a thing for naked women" (118). Speculating on why he did not draw naked men, she concludes "[n]aked women is art, naked guys a no-no, I bet" (119). And on the issue of the constantly morphing school mascot, she thinks that "Overbearing Eurocentric Patriarchs would be perfect" (49).
Melinda also observes examples of citationality in the roles women adopt. The cheerleaders, for example, play two different, seemingly contradictory, roles. In one, they represent the ideal of femininity: beautiful, fashionably dressed, perfect young women. In the other, they are promiscuous party girls, who "worship the stink of Eau de Jocque … and get group-rate abortions after the prom" (30). When Melinda says that these girls "are our role models" (30; emphasis added), she is alluding to the performative nature of gender. The cheerleaders have adopted two traditional, socially constructed roles for women, and apparently they feel comfortable in both. Neither role reflects any sort of inner essence but is rather a collection of performative strategies that constitute gender identity within a given context. Another kind of feminine role model is offered by "the Marthas," a group of girls whose supposed raison d'être is to help others. The good acts by which they are known, however, truly are "acts," for they assign most of the work to would-be members while they themselves spend time criticizing the newcomers' handiwork and fashion sense. Like the cheerleaders, the Marthas are portrayed as simply adopting one of the feminine roles they see as being available to them. Even Melinda's mother, who works as the manager of a local department store, falls victim to society's expectations when she insists on cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Melinda says that this is something her mother sees as "a holy obligation, part of what makes her a wife and mother" (Anderson 58). The fact that the meal turns out disastrously and has to be discarded effectively undermines what Melinda calls the kind of "Kodak logic" that equates the essence of motherhood with excellent culinary skills.
Melinda's friend Heather also demonstrates a keen awareness of the performative aspects of gender, as is evident when she accepts a job as a model. In her first photo shoot, the photographer encourages her by saying, "Sexy, sexy, very cute … think beach, think boys" (83). Melinda is appalled at how readily Heather steps into this role: "[She] totally gets into it. She throws her head back, stares at the camera, flashes her teeth" (83). This scene not only underscores the performative aspect of gender, but it also typifies the sexual objectification of teenagers by an adult society that both fetishizes and simultaneously denies their sexuality. Because of her rape, Melinda sees her own emerging sexuality as dangerous. Not surprisingly, she yearns for her childhood, which she remembers as a time of innocence and asexuality. Her narrative is filled with childhood reminiscences that serve as a temporary escape from the pain of the present. At the same time, they play a vital role in facilitating what Herman identifies as the second stage of recovery—"remembrance and mourning" (155). What Melinda is remembering and mourning is her childhood. Although she feels, with some embarrassment, that her bedroom looks like that of a fifth grader, at the same time she wishes she were a fifth grader again: "Now, that is a deep dark secret, almost as big as the other one. Fifth grade was easy—old enough to play outside without Mom, too young to go off the block. The perfect leash length" (99; emphasis in original). In other places, she recalls such pleasant childhood scenes as picking apples with her parents, putting up a real tree at Christmas, hunting colored eggs at Easter, pretending to be a princess, and playing the part of a tree in the second-grade play. When she stays home from school because she is sick, she starts to imagine her rape as the subject of a talk show, but rather than deal with this traumatic memory, she watches Mister Rogers' Neighborhood instead and thinks "[a] trip to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe would be nice" (Anderson 165).
Melinda also wants to protect her peers from growing up. No doubt it is her perceived violation of childhood innocence that "creeps [her] out" (Anderson 83) during Heather's photo shoot. Later, when she sees Rachel kissing Andy, her hostility toward her former friend melts and she suddenly thinks of her as a child again: "She is not any part of a pretend Rachelle-chick. I can only see third-grade Rachel who liked barbecue potato chips and who braided pink embroidery into my hair" (150). Witnessing this scene prompts Melinda to send Rachel an anonymous note warning her about Andy. And, when she eventually discovers that Rachel is still dating Andy, she rushes home and goes directly into her closet, where she buries her face in her old clothes and screams. That Melinda buries her face in her old clothes—that is, her childhood clothes—is yet another indication that she yearns to take refuge in what she perceives as a more innocent time of her life.
This view of childhood, though, is, like gender and identity, socially constructed, and as such is problematic. In Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood, Anne Higonnet argues that the Romantic notion of the innocent child is changing and is being replaced by what she calls "the Knowing child" (12). This new image of childhood, explains Higonnet, has not lost its innocent connotations, but it has "also acquir[ed] others, exchanging and mingling commercial, sexual, and political forms of power in an increasingly tight knot of private and public forces" (148). Heather, much to Melinda's dismay, would seem to be just such a Knowing child, happily willing to let her innocence and sexuality be commodified. (The Marthas are so impressed with Heather's modeling job that they begin competing with one another to see who can be her best friend.) Roberta Seelinger Trites argues that "[s]exual potency is a common metaphor for empowerment in adolescent literature" (84). Heather clearly recognizes the power of her sexuality, and she is able to use it to her advantage. Her apparent innocence only heightens the appeal. In fact, it is this perceived innocence, according to James Kincaid, that makes the child so erotic. The allure of the innocent child is that adults can project their own individual fantasies onto it (Kincaid, "Producing" 247-48). The adolescent, then, is particularly vulnerable to this kind of interpretation because "[t]he adolescent has no center apart from a ‘confused’ and ‘transitional’ sexual energy, an energy available precisely because of this emptiness, this powerfully sexualized Otherness" (Kincaid, Child-loving 312). I would argue that what Melinda finds so disturbing about Heather's modeling session is an understanding, at least on some level, of this dynamic and a recognition of her own susceptibility to this kind of objectification.
As Trites notes, much adolescent literature reflects the ideology that sexuality is not only powerful but also potentially hurtful, "more to be feared than celebrated" (85). Because of her sexual trauma, it is understandable that Melinda would want to avoid sexuality. However, a retreat into childhood offers not an escape from sexuality but rather, as Jacqueline Rose says, another kind of sexuality: "The child is sexual, but its sexuality (bisexual, polymorphous, perverse) threatens [adults'] own at its very roots. Setting up the child as innocent is not, therefore, repressing its sexuality—it is above all holding off any possible challenge to our own" (Rose 4). Melinda's preoccupation with childhood images can be read as an indication of her acceptance of society's view of the innocent child, but it can also be read as a desire, perhaps a subconscious one, to return to a time in her life when she had a different, less rigidly defined kind of sexuality. Seen in this light, and from Melinda's vantage point, the potential fluidity of gender/identity is, perhaps, not so disturbing after all.
Coming Out
The closet is a safe space where Melinda can begin to recover, but it can only be a temporary haven, not a permanent home. The process of coming out involves her developing ways to express her trauma. For much of the novel, Melinda uses art as a substitute for speech. In art class she transforms her family's disastrous Thanksgiving turkey into a statement about her own entrapment and silence, positioning the head of a Barbie doll inside the carcass of the turkey and then placing a piece of tape over Barbie's mouth. Forced by her art teacher to read a book on various art movements, she becomes intrigued by Cubism, which she says "takes [her] breath away" because it is all about "[s]eeing beyond what is on the surface" (119). She then sketches a Cubist tree "with hundreds of skinny rectangles for branches," some of which look like "lips with triangle brown leaves" (119). Art thus becomes a way for Melinda, in lieu of speech, to express the unsayable. It is no surprise, then, that art is the only class in which she consistently receives A's. Her art works—her tree drawings, the turkey sculpture—constitute what Cvetkovich calls "trauma's archive." As Cvetkovich explains, "The memory of trauma is embedded not just in narrative but in material artifacts, which can range from photographs to objects whose relation to trauma might seem arbitrary but for the fact that they are invested with emotional, and even sentimental, value" (7-8). Melinda's archive is both a public and private one—public in the sense that the art teacher and other students in the class witness the creation of the various works throughout the year, and private in the sense that Melinda takes most of these works into her closet at school as a way of making the space her own and reconstructing her identity. This archive, then, constitutes a record, admittedly an ephemeral one, of Melinda's trauma and recovery.
One of the more intriguing aspects of Melinda's recovery process, and perhaps another example of citationality, is her reason for finally telling someone what happened to her. Moreover, this signals the beginning of Herman's third stage of recovery—"restored social connection" (155). Melinda's motivation to communicate appears to stem from what Carol Gilligan calls an "ethic of care," which she associates with the feminine, as opposed to an "ethic of rights" (or justice), which she associates with the masculine (164). Although Melinda clearly sees Andy Evans as a monster—she uses the terms "Beast" and "IT" to refer to him—her reason for finally communicating about her rape is not to see that he is punished for what he has done but rather to keep other women from suffering similar traumas. She communicates the truth about Andy in a rather unorthodox but time-honored public forum—by writing a warning on the wall of one of the stalls in the women's restroom: "Guys to Stay Away From…. Andy Evans" (175).
Later, she is gratified to see that her message has provoked a number of responses from other women with similarly bad things to say about Andy. This collaborative graffiti, which Melinda describes as "a community chat room, a metal newspaper" (175), also constitutes an archive, and as such it exemplifies the kind of cultural response to trauma that Cvetkovich describes in her work. And, finally acknowledging her rape, Melinda warns Rachel/Rachelle about Andy, first sending her an anonymous note and then writing to her during study hall (the librarian in charge has prohibited talking). At first sympathetic, Rachel, who is now dating Andy, balks when she learns who the rapist was. Eventually, though, this seed that Melinda has planted comes to fruition when Rachel breaks up with Andy after he tries to grope her during the prom.
At this point Melinda realizes, with some astonishment, that she is ready to quit her closet: "I don't want to hang out in my little hidey-hole anymore…. I don't feel like hiding anymore" (192). And it is when she is on the verge of coming out that she is most vulnerable. Melinda's decision to move out of her closet reflects the fact that, metaphorically, she has already come out of the closet as a rape victim. But coming out is risky, as she soon discovers, for there exists both internal and external pressure to remain in. While moving her things out of the closet, Melinda is cornered by Andy, who accuses her of lying to Rachel about his raping her. He then locks the door and attacks her once again—but this time she finds her voice and screams, "NNNOOO!!!" (194). She then slams the base of her turkey-carcass sculpture against the poster of Maya Angelou, breaking the mirror underneath. She quickly grabs a shard of glass and holds it against Andy's neck and, in a sudden and satisfying reversal of roles, renders him speechless. There is an immediate pounding on the door by the members of the women's lacrosse team, in response to Melinda's scream. Opening the door, Melinda not only "comes out" herself, but also "outs" Andy, exposing him for the rapist that he is. The closet, however, as both literal and metaphorical space, does not disappear. In an implicit acknowledgment of the power of the closet, Melinda wisely leaves some of her stuff behind, thinking, "some other kids may need a safe place to run to next year" (192).
The Other Side of the Closet
Speak depicts the queer strategies Melinda uses to both conceal and reveal the trauma of having been raped. Much like a Cubist painting or a three-way mirror, Melinda's identity, as reflected in her narrative, is multiply refracted, revealing the inconsistencies in her performances, and through these fissures we glimpse the other story that Melinda must tell in order to construct a new identity. By and large, Melinda effects her own recovery, and the process of telling/writing her narrative is crucial in the reconstruction of her subjectivity. The narrative—which may be a journal, a diary, a memoir, or some hybrid document—constitutes what Henke calls "scriptotherapy—the process of writing out and writing through traumatic experience in the mode of therapeutic reenactment" (xii). By empowering her protagonist to author her own recovery, Anderson steers clear of a pitfall that plagues many writers and therapists. According to Trites, "Male and female authors alike who communicate that sex is to be avoided to protect vulnerable females ultimately end up affirming the patriarchal status quo, no matter how good their intentions" (95). Similarly, Rogers argues that a therapist must not make the mistake of "listen[ing] to [a trauma survivor] only as a victim, as someone so radically innocent that she has no unconscious life at all," for to do so "erases subjectivity, morality, choice, complexity, and the capacity to transform suffering into strength" (Rogers 109). Although Melinda describes herself as a victim, this is ultimately a role she rejects, as she must in order to recover. By the end of the novel, having acknowledged the reality of her rape, she also recognizes her "capacity to transform suffering into strength": "It wasn't my fault. And I'm not going to let it kill me. I can grow" (198).
It is surely significant that, when Melinda, having faced her demons, finally completes the drawing of her tree for art class, she does so—in perhaps another homage to Maya Angelou—by adding birds (and, implicitly, their voices) to its branches. When her art teacher gives her an A+ on her drawing and then asks, "You've been through a lot, haven't you?" (198), Melinda is finally able to recover her voice and, presumably, tell him what she has just told us through her narrative. By performing and transforming her trauma, Melinda succeeds in recovering her ability to speak the truth of her experience and ultimately to re-create her identity. Melinda's insight, gained at great personal cost, is that gender/identity is neither essential nor fixed but is instead a proliferation of performances. For Melinda, this recognition is the key to the potential healing and liberation that await her on the other side of the closet. For adolescent readers, Melinda's queer coping strategies, in their questioning of dominant, heterosexist assumptions about gender and identity, offer a similarly liberating potential.
Note
1. The American Library Association reports that I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was one of the most frequently challenged books in 2004 because of its "[alleged] racism, homosexuality, sexual content, offensive language and unsuit-[ability] to age group." See "Challenged and Banned Books."
Works Cited
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak. 1999. New York: Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2001.
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House, 1969.
Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex." New York: Routledge, 1993.
———. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
"Challenged and Banned Books." American Library Association. 2005. American Library Association. 23 Nov. 2005 ‹http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/challengedbanned/challengedbanned.htm›.
Coats, Karen. Looking Glasses and Neverlands: Lacan, Desire, and Subjectivity in Children's Literature. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2004.
Cvetkovich, Ann. An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2003.
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1982.
Henke, Suzette A. Shattered Subjects: Trauma and Testimony in Women's Life-Writing. New York: St. Martin's, 1998.
Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. 1992. New York: Basic Books-HarperCollins, 1997.
Higonnet, Anne. Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood. London: Thames and Hudson, 1998.
Johnston, Rosemary Ross. "Carnivals, the Carnivalesque, The Magic Puddin', and David Almond's Wild Girl, Wild Boy: Toward a Theorizing of Children's Plays." Children's Literature in Education 34.2 (2003): 131-46.
Kincaid, James. Child-loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992.
———. "Producing Erotic Children." The Children's Culture Reader. Ed. Henry Jenkins. New York: New York UP, 1998. 241-53.
Lacan, Jacques, Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977.
Rogers, Annie G. The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma. New York: Random House, 2006.
Rose, Jacqueline. The Case of Peter Pan or the Impossibility of Children's Fiction. 1984. Philadelphia, PA: U of Pennsylvania P, 1992.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: U of California P, 1990.
Smith, Sidonie. Subjectivity, Identity, and the Body. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993.
Trites, Roberta Seelinger. Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2000.
FEVER 1793 (2000)
Anita L. Burkam (review date September 2000)
SOURCE: Burkam, Anita L. Review of Fever 1793, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Horn Book Magazine 76, no. 5 (September 2000): 562.
For fourteen-year-old Mattie Cook, the epidemic begins with the news of the sudden and unexpected death of her childhood friend Polly [in Fever 1793 ]. It is summer 1793, and yellow fever is sweeping through Philadelphia; the death toll will reach five thousand (ten percent of the city's population) before the frost. Mattie, her mother, and grandfather run a coffeehouse on High Street, and when others flee the city, they choose to stay—until Mattie's mother is stricken. Sent away by her mother to escape contagion, Mattie tries to leave, is turned back by quarantine officers, falls ill herself, and is taken to Bush Hill, a city hospital run by the celebrated French doctor Steven Girard. Without ever being didactic, Anderson smoothly incorporates extensive research into her story, using dialogue, narration, and Mattie's own witness to depict folk remedies, debates over treatment, market shortages, the aid work done by free blacks to care for and bury the victims, the breakdown of Philadelphia society, and countless tales of sufferers and survivors. With such a wealth of historical information (nicely set forth in a highly readable appendix), it's a shame that the plot itself is less involving than the situation. While Mattie is tenacious and likable, her adventures are a series of episodes only casually related to the slender narrative arc in which she wonders if her mother has survived the fever and whether they will be reunited. Subplots concerning Mattie's own entrepreneurial ambitions and her budding romance with a painter apprenticed to the famous Peale family wait offstage until the end of the book. Still, Anderson has gone far to immerse her readers in the world of the 1793 epidemic; most will appreciate this book for its portrayal of a fascinating and terrifying time in American history.
SAY GOOD-BYE (2001)
Jennifer Ralston (review date July 2001)
SOURCE: Ralston, Jennifer. Review of Say Good-Bye, by Laurie Halse Anderson. School Library Journal 47, no. 7 (July 2001): 102.
Gr. 4-6—When Zoe's mother moves to Los Angeles to pursue all acting career, the girl is shipped off to live with her grandmother, Dr. J. J. MacKenzie, a veterinarian who runs the Wild at Heart Animal Clinic [in Say Good-Bye ]. This fifth installment in the series finds Zoe struggling to deal with her mother's absence and learning to adjust to a new school. Her major project, however, involves her efforts to housebreak a new puppy, Sneakers, that just won't behave. Zoe learns through volunteer work at the veterinary clinic and advice from her cousin that sometimes the owner's lack of patience is the problem. Zoe also meets a therapy dog that was recently diagnosed with cancer. After working with Yum-Yum and his owner at the children's hospital, Zoe realizes how important the dog has become to the patients, and worries about how his death will affect them. Fans of animal-centered fiction will enjoy the undemanding story line and Zoe's dilemmas as she learns to fit in with the gang at Wild at Heart, train Sneakers, and prove to herself that she and her pet can make a difference in the lives of the hospitalized children. The author includes end matter about therapy pets.
CATALYST (2002)
Publishers Weekly (review date 22 July 2002)
SOURCE: Review of Catalyst, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Publishers Weekly 249, no. 29 (22 July 2002): 180.
Like its cross-country-running heroine, Anderson's (Speak ) latest novel [Catalyst ] starts off promisingly, then loses its pacing about midway through. The narrator, 18-year-old Kate Malone, has placed all of her eggs in one basket: she has applied only to her late mother's alma mater, MIT. Calculus is a cinch, chemistry is her favorite subject, even physics comes easily to her, but when her MIT rejection arrives, it acts as catalyst for the slow unraveling of her delicately balanced life. A preacher's daughter, she struggles between "Good Kate" and "Bad Kate" as she single-handedly keeps the household running (her mother died nine years ago). Anderson excels in conveying Kate's anxieties and her concomitant insomnia, and frequently intersperses evidence of Kate's sharp humor (she calls Mitchell A. Pangbom III "my friend, my enemy, my lust"). But Kate's relationships with others remain hazy. While this seems to reflect Kate's state of mind, since she slowly shuts everyone out as her MIT-less fate becomes clear, her detachment may create a similar effect for readers. This aloofness becomes most problematic in the dynamics of her relationship with Ten Litch, who once beat her up habitually. After Ten's house burns down, she and toddler Mikey Litch come to live with the Malones, and the action escalates to the point of melodrama. Yet another tragic event spurs a reconciliation between Kate and Ten, but the underlying changes in the individuals that lead up to this event remain unclear. Teens will take to Kate instantly, but as the novel continues, they may be confused about what makes her tick. Still, the universal obstacles she faces and the realistic outcome will likely hold readers' attention. Ages 12-up.
Lauren Adams (review date November-December 2002)
SOURCE: Adams, Lauren. Review of Catalyst, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Horn Book Magazine 78, no. 6 (November-December 2002): 746.
An unlikely friendship as a catalyst for change is a common element of adolescent literature, but Anderson's take on human relations succeeds through her fresh writing and exceptional characterization [in Catalyst ]. High-school senior Kate is a self-described science geek, an outstanding student who also runs the house for her minister lather and cares for her asthmatic younger brother. She has friends, rivals, a boyfriend, and one supreme ambition—to get into MIT. Kate is near the edge at admissions time, running miles or ironing laundry at night instead of sleeping—a "super Kate, the über-Kate," poised to collapse. Teri Litch is at the opposite end of the spectrum—a beefy girl in "votech" who fights back with her fists when teased, regularly, by the jocks. Kate is appalled when her do-good dad brings Teri and two-year-old Mikey Litch home to stay with them after a fire, but changes are only beginning. The novel is gently shaped by the chemistry terms that are Kate's second language; section titles "Solid," "Liquid," and "Gas" are an apt metaphor for Kate's loss of grounding. Well-chosen quotes from a chemistry textbook foreshadow events and set the tone for things to come; "The rate of a chemical reaction depends on the frequency and force of collisions between molecules." The collision with the Litches proves enormous, as the many tragedies of Teri's life culminate in the most unthinkable one—the death of a child. Anderson treats the tragedy—as well as serious issues of abuse—with respect and a steady hand, always remaining true to her characters. The changes wrought are human-scale and fully believable. Anderson returns here to the same high-school setting of Speak (now-verbal Melinda makes a cameo appearance); readers will return for Anderson's keen understanding and eminently readable style.
THANK YOU, SARAH: THE WOMAN WHO SAVED THANKSGIVING (2002)
Kirkus Reviews (review date 1 October 2002)
SOURCE: Review of Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving, by Laurie Halse Anderson, illustrated by Matt Faulkner. Kirkus Reviews 70, no. 19 (1 October 2002): 1462.
The impish Faulkner (The Monster Who Ate My Peas, 2001, etc.) illustrates [Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving, ] this rousing account of Sarah Hale's campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday with crowds of caricatured celebrants in buckskins, football equipment, and every style of dress in between. ("Thanksgiving Canceled—No Football Today.") Anderson (Catalyst , p. 1300, etc.), in a really silly mood, tells the tale with wide open theatricality: trumpeting, "WE ALMOST LOST … THANKSGIVING!" across a spread of dismayed diners and relieved looking turkeys, she introduces "a dainty little lady" as the holiday's champion. An unlikely hero? "Never underestimate dainty little ladies," the author warns, launching into a portrait of a 19th-century supermom—novelist, educator, magazine editor, widowed mother of five, eloquent supporter of many social causes and, yes, author of "Mary Had a Little Lamb"—who took on four Presidents in succession before finding one, Lincoln, who agreed with her that Thanksgiving, which had been largely a northeastern holiday, should le celebrated nationwide. "When folks started to ignore Thanksgiving, well, that just curdled her gravy." Dishing up a closing "Feast of Facts" about the day and the woman, Anderson offers readers both an indomitable role model and a memorable, often hilarious glimpse into the historical development of this country's common culture. Thank you, Anderson and Faulkner.
PROM (2005)
Paula Rohrlick (review date March 2005)
SOURCE: Rohrlick, Paula. Review of Prom, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Kliatt 39, no. 2 (March 2005): 6.
[In Prom, ] Ashley, age 18, can't wait to get out of her Philadelphia high school, and she certainly couldn't care less about the upcoming prom. All she cares about is her boyfriend, T J, even if he is somewhat unreliable, and getting away from her crowded and wacky, if loving, home. But when her math teacher (aka "Miss Felony Crane") steals the prom money and Ashley's best friend, Nat, who is the prom organizer, is devastated, Ashley reluctantly comes to Nat's rescue and helps her figure out how they can hold the prom after all. In between her job serving pizza in a rat costume at EZ-CHEEZ-E, minding her younger brothers for her pregnant mother, and evading detention and the school's nasty vice principal, who has it in for her, Ashley manages to save the day, with humor and flair.
Anderson, the award-winning author of Speak and other serious YA novels, has concocted a delightful confection here, full of laughs, warmth, and teenage dialog so true to life you might have heard it in the hall on the way to math class. Realistic, funny and touching, this is a treat that will be relished despite its somewhat predictable plot. For older teenage girls who have enjoyed the Princess Diaries books; there are a few profanities and references to sex here, making it more appropriate for mature readers.
Lauren Adams (review date March-April 2005)
SOURCE: Adams, Lauren. Review of Prom, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Horn Book Magazine 81, no. 2 (March-April 2005): 196-97.
Anderson's new novel [Prom ] weaves the singular spell of senior prom, captivating even jaded, streetsmart, practical-minded Ashley Hannigan. Ashley, one of the "normal kids [who] weren't going to college, no matter what anybody said," is more concerned with finding an apartment with her boyfriend, T. J., than with the one night of romance that has all the other kids at her urban high school enthralled. The prom is suddenly threatened, however, when first a teacher steals all the funds and then Ashley's best friend (and head of the prom committee) breaks a leg; Ashley single-handedly saves the prom in between exhausting shifts at the EZ-CHEEZ-E restaurant. Despite her heroics, Ashley's unserved detentions and a malicious vice-principal conspire to keep her away on the big night, while her over-involved but loving family will do anything to get her there. The novel is set in a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood, but Ashley and her friends could be any American teens, less defined by their background than by their dreams. Ashley's poor academic performance is hard to reconcile with her intelligence and ambition, though Anderson offers a credible distraction in the charming (but unreliable) T. J. In allowing herself a little magic and fantasy, Ashley begins to see a different kind of happy ending to her life after graduation. Few adolescent girls will be able to resist Anderson's modern fairy tale.
James Blasingame (review date September 2005)
SOURCE: Blasingame, James. Review of Prom, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 49, no. 1 (September 2005): 71, 73.
[In the following review, Blasingame characterizes Prom as an accurate depiction of the travails of modern high-school life and adolescence.]
The American high school prom is an annual phenomenon equal to any other cultural event in the world for unquestioned self-importance and bizarre ritual. Who better to highlight the insanity of the prom than Laurie Halse Anderson, whose honest portrayals of high school life (Speak, 1999, Farrar Straus Giroux, and Catalyst, 2002, Viking) have captured some of its less glamorous yet most important aspects. In [Prom, ] this work about rescuing a prom, Anderson holds a mirror to the average girl's high school experience and reflects some images that will have readers nodding their heads, images including an unappreciative, unreliable boyfriend; popular cliques; authoritarian school administrators; and embarrassing but loving parents.
As the story begins, Anderson's protagonist, Ashley Hannigan, finds herself in her last year of high school with the prom not even on her radar screen; in fact, she has no desire to go whatsoever. Here's her assessment of the prom:
You wear a pretty dress, buy shoes that don't fit, and pretend for one day that you don't go to Carceras [High School], you don't live around here, you pretend you have money, that you're a movie star or a rap star, or anything except what you really are which is a poor kid from a broke family going nowhere.
(p. 55)
But that will all change before she even realizes it.
Ashley's primary ambition in life is to spend as much time as possible with her boyfriend, T. J. Barnes, a teenage tough who looks and acts the part: "Everybody told me he was trouble, but underneath the trouble he was sweet and fun and he knew how to make me laugh. Plus, he was hot as hell. His kiss tasted like cigarettes and toothpaste" (p. 3). T. J. is a wild one who appears and disappears on his own unpredictable schedule. His idea of happily-ever-after with Ashley is a mattress on the floor of a spare room over an auto repair shop where he plans for the two of them to live together among the rebuilt transmissions and oil slicks. Unfortunately, Ashley has no Plan B to T. J.'s Plan A as the book opens.
Ashley calls herself "normal." Normal, by her definition, means no aspirations for college after high school and no plans for anything more than what she sees in her neighborhood. Another aspect of normal is her miserable job at EZ-CHEEZ-E Showtime Stage (a family restaurant and fun center) as Rompin' Ratty, a furry costumed table waitress who must endure birthday party brats, unreasonable parents, and an unsympathetic boss.
This lack of self-determination and initiative seems to be par for Ashley's course in life until a dysfunctional math teacher steals the prom funds and Ashley's best friend, Natalie Schmulensky, attempts to pick up the pieces. When Natalie breaks her leg, however, Ashley steps forward out of loyalty and becomes the most unlikely prom chair imaginable. The chances of pulling this off seem almost nil, completely hopeless, until something inside her rises to the challenge: "Once upon a time there was a girl who decided to make it happen" (p. 198), and the apathetic, fatalistic Ashley finds that she can defy fate itself if she wants to. No obstacle—and there are many, from a lack of resources (money) to a backstabbing assistant principal—is a match for Ashley Hannigan, primed and ready to rumble. This prom is going to be a huge success.
Anderson's description of high school hits the mark, and although it seems lighthearted at first glance, some fairly deep issues that deserve attention have been deftly finessed. The Ashley Hannigan who existed before the prom is very much the opposite of the postprom Ashley. Her appreciation for her parents deepens as she comes to understand that their loving and devoted relationship is one most married couples would envy (if it just weren't so obvious that they have sex: Mrs. Hannigan is eight months pregnant).
As more and more of her classmates demonstrate how much they are counting on this one night out of their whole lives to be something magical and memorable, Ashley comes to appreciate how precious and perishable it really is and how much it means to her fellow high school students, not just now but as a treasured memory for life. The most revealing and surprising change in Ashley, however, comes with her dismissal of T. J.; although the novel opens with Ashley describing her enchantment and obsession with him, shifts in her perception of what's important in life as the novel moves forward result in this surprising but laudable act. T. J.'s treatment of her is not what she wants for the rest of her life; she believes she deserves better and will now accept no less. And no amount of wheedling or manipulation on T. J.'s part can change her mind. At the novel's end, Ashley has moved out of her parents' home and is taking college classes after she graduates from high school. As she says herself: "Once upon a time there was a girl who got a life. Me" (p. 213).
TWISTED (2007)
Myrna Marler (review date March 2007)
SOURCE: Marler, Myrna. Review of Twisted, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Kliatt 41, no. 2 (March 2007): 6-7.
A Laurie Halse Anderson novel comes with certain standard features: lively prose, witty descriptions, short chapters, tense action, complex characters, and interesting themes that could be discussed at length should a teacher decide to assign it. This novel [Twisted ] fits right into the body of her work, yet offers a new ingredient: a male protagonist, a kind of Cinderella story in reverse. Tyler Miller, now a senior, has been bullied since sixth grade; he's the original 97-pound weakling. As an alternative to blowing up the high school, he vandalizes the flagpole and is sentenced to community service that forces him to work hard all summer. That summer produces physical growth and impressive muscles. He can now protect himself from the bullies and now perhaps capture the attention of Bethany Milbury, high school social queen, daughter of his father's boss, and sister to one of Tyler's chief tormentors. But for this potential Prince Charming, nothing goes as expected. Too many forces, including his former social standing and a dysfunctional family, work against him until he goes beyond flirting with suicide and violence to the borders of "no other choice."
Tyler truly suffers and the reader suffers with him, and yet, ultimately, Tyler prevails, ironically, through an act of violence, but more importantly, arrives at self-assertion and self-definition, much like the protagonist in Speak. The novel announces that it is "not for children," and it is not, but it will provide an excellent source of both entertainment and serious conversation.
Erin Schirota (review date May 2007)
SOURCE: Schirota, Erin. Review of Twisted, by Laurie Halse Anderson. School Library Journal 53, no. 5 (May 2007): 128.
Gr. 9 Up—Socially inept Tyler Miller thinks his senior year of high school is going to be a year like no other [in Twisted ]. After being sentenced to a summer of "character building" physical labor following a graffiti prank, his reputation at school receives a boost, as do his muscles. Enter super-popular Bethany Milbury, sister of his tormentor, Chip, and daughter of his father's boss. Tyler's newfound physique has attracted her interest and infuriated Chip, leading to ongoing conflicts at school. Likewise, Tyler's inability to meet his volatile father's demands to "be an asset, not a liability" adds increasing tension. All too quickly, Tyler's life spirals out of control. In the wake of an incident at a wild party that Bethany has invited him to attend, he is left feeling completely isolated at school and alienated at home, a victim of "twisted" perception. Tyler must tackle the complex issues of integrity, personal responsibility, and identity on his own as he struggles to understand what it means to be a man. His once humorous voice now only conveys naked vulnerability. With gripping scenes and a rousing ending, Anderson authentically portrays Tyler's emotional instability as he contemplates darker and darker solutions to his situation. Readers will rejoice in Tyler's proclamation, "'Tin not the problem here … I'm tired of feeling like I am." Teenage concerns with sex, alcohol, grades, and family are all tackled with honesty and candor. Once again, Anderson's taut, confident writing will cause this story to linger long after the book is set down.
FURTHER READING
Criticism
Booth, Heather. Review of Twisted, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Booklist 104, no. 2 (15 September 2007): 82.
Offers a positive assessment of Twisted, complimenting the authenticity of Anderson's narratorial voice.
Crawford, Philip Charles. Review of Twisted, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Horn Book Magazine 83, no. 6 (November-December 2007): 704.
Describes Twisted as a "tautly paced story."
Green, John. Review of Twisted, by Laurie Halse Anderson. New York Times Book Review (3 June 2007): 35.
Praises the emotional reality of Twisted, though notes that Anderson's portrayal of teen masculinity is a little "simplistic."
Additional coverage of Anderson's life and career is contained in the following sources published by Gale: Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Vol. 39; Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults, Vol. 16; Concise Major 21st-Century Writers, Ed. 1; Contemporary Authors, Vol. 160; Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Vols. 103, 135, 171; Literature Resource Center; Major 21st-Century Writers, Ed. 2005; and Something about the Author, Vols. 95, 132, 186.