Hard Love

Hard Love, it is a fact of life. We've all been there, or will be at some point. The moment you realize that often love is not the happily ever after, easy love of fairy tales but instead can be chaotic, confused, and can seem at times indistinguishable from pain. Especially when you fall in love with the wrong person. What do you do then? This is exactly what John Galardi struggles to figure out in Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger. When we first meet John, he claims to be immune to emotion, which he states is fortunate because people can't play off his sympathy. He doesn't have any. Living during the weeks with his emotionally distant mother and spending weekends alone at his absentee father’s apartment, John has perfected the art of keeping people at a distance. At school, he is a loner. He even describes his only friend as "just another hallow soul, trying to pass for normal." He is so cut off from himself, he can’t even decide whether he is gay or straight, he’s just indifferent. That is until he stumbles into the world a zines. Zines are like a written form of blogs, self published magazines that offer expression to anyone with an imagination and the commitment to produce them. Through zines, John discovers the outlet that writing can offer to his self-exploration. It also brings him into contact with fellow ziner Marisol. Marisol is a self-proclaimed “rich spoiled lesbian private-school gifted and talented writer virgin looking for love.” Marisol is unexpected, to say the least, but the two quickly become friends, as each recognize in the other a kindred spirit. As the two become closer John finds himself letting down barriers he’d forgotten were there and discovering what it means to be alive. Soon, however, the fact that Marisol is a lesbian begins to create difficulties as each tries to figure out how to love the other and both discover just how hard love can be.

Hard Love is a great novel, very deserving of the Printz Honor Award it won in 2000. This novel touches on the difficulty of loving and being loved in a very human and authentic way. The great Russian author Dostoevsky wrote, "Love in practice is a hard and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams." Love is not easy. Sometimes we hurt those we love or are hurt by them. It is unavoidable and something that we can't change. So, what do we do about it? John retreats. He becomes defensive, creates a barrier around himself that cuts himself off not only from any other person, but also from himself. He alienates himself and in the process of doing so, he stops feeling alive. But with Marisol, John begins to love again, he begins to live again. And it is not easy, because she cannot love him the same way that he loves her. It is hard as each must make decisions that will ultimately hurt the other, but that is just how love sometimes is.

At one point, John hears a song entitled "Hard Love," and he immediately feels like it was written about him. Listen to it here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ejMPz5yOb0 . What makes a guy hear this and understand exactly what the artist (Bob Franke) was communicating? Read Hard Love and find out. It is definitely worth the time.

The "Other America"

Alright, Native Americans...the forgotten minority. I mean really, after the early Americans colonized the land and relegated the natives to small chunks of more or less useless land, they were basically removed from the American conscious. Sure, I've visited Cahokia Mounds, the local archaeological site of an old Indian city, but other than that, I sometimes forget that there are still tribes living on reservations. I am not, in other words, fully aware of a very important part of our population. When I picked up The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, I wasn't sure if it was about a Native American Indian or a India Indian. I just thought is sounded interesting. Turns out, it is about Junior, a Native American living on a reservation. Junior becomes infuriated one day at school when he sees his mother's name in a school book he is given. The book is at least 25 years older than he is! Losing his temper, he throws the book at his teacher's head. Later, that teacher stops by and urges Junior to get off the reservation forever, for, he says, hope cannot be found in the devastating poverty and rampant alcoholism of reservation life. Junior must make a tough decision. Either stay on the reservation and remain trapped in the cycle of despair, or leave and risk alienation by his tribe. Junior decides to leave and tells his parents he will be attending the white high school off the rez. In the process he loses his best friend and is thrown into a world where at first, he is just the Native American kid. As Junior attempts to chase his dreams and faces devastating loss, one cannot help being sucked into his world and find oneself fervently hoping for things to work out.

I very much appreciated the insight this book gave me into reservation life. I am not Native American, nor do I live near a reservation, so I am glad Alexie gave a voice to a portion of our population that doesn't always get the attention it deserves. This book is both hilarious and heartrending, depressing and inspiring. The narrator is witty and caustic, not hiding any of the ugly side of life. As an added bonus, the author plays with format, including illustrations that really add to the story itself. Alongside humor, however, is the devastating poverty of life on the reservation, the sub-par quality of education, and the rampant alcoholism that destroys families. The reservation is a hopeless place, full of the pain of death and the despair of being unable to dream. At one point, Junior says that his white friends can count the funerals they have attended on one hand. He on the other hand can use every body part and still not get close to the number of deaths he's experienced. The worst part, he says is that "About 90 percent of the deaths have been because of alcohol." Many people don't realize the immense problem that alcohol presents to Native American families. As Junior puts it, you're either an alcoholic, or you don't drink. And alcohol merely leads to more death and despair. It is horrendously sad because it is a reality for many people everyday. However, at the same time, this book is also inspiring, watching Junior commit to hope and dream, refusing to give up like so many of his family and friends. We all leave our families at some point. Whether it is to go to college or move to another country, we all experience the pain, uncertainty, and loneliness of leaving behind one's beginnings, one's core identity. Junior still loves his tribe and his reservation but he knows he must leave and he only prays that they forgive him and that he can forgive himself.

This is a great book, truly excellent. It gives us insight into an often ignored perspective, into the "other America," that really isn't so other. It forces us to recognize the reality of extreme poverty, rampant alcoholism, and lack of options through education prevalent on reservations as well as our own ignorance of it which helps keep it in existence. It also teaches us to hope and to dream, to never settle with what we are given, to never give up. It is a story of determined persistence, of humanity, of life, and ultimately, of hope.

The Power of Power: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Frankie Landau-Banks attends a boarding school where there exists a secret society, the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds, an all-male club dedicated to breaking school rules, throwing illegal parties, and pulling the occasional prank. Frankie desires more than anything to become a member of this club but there is only one problem: Frankie is a girl and girls are not welcomed into the Loyal Order. However, Frankie is determined and ambitious, not one to be deterred by mere formalities. Upon returning for her sophomore year, Frankie realizes that the four inches and 20 pounds she gained, all in the right places, has changed her social status from invisible debate club member to...well, to the popular girl who snags the hottest, most eligible senior on campus--Mathew Livingston. Mathew just happens to be the co-president of the Loyal Order, along with the newly returned rebel Alpha. As Mathew progressively becomes more preoccupied with the Order, canceling plans with Frankie for mysterious meetings, Frankie decides she's had enough and begins following him. When, Mathew shows no sign of ever informing Frankie about the Order, let alone asking her to join, Frankie decides it is time to take matters into her own hands. But, as events escalate, the reader can't help but wonder just how far she'll go to prove herself to Mathew and Alpha.

The Disreputable History tells the classic "girl-falls-in-love-with-the-uber-popular-senior-soccer-player-story" in a refreshingly new and amusing manner. It's a girl-power novel but without being nauseatingly so, so boys don't knock it just yet. One of the best aspects of this novel is that it engages multiple issues: class issues, the idea of acting according to societal expectations, gender issues, etc. It not one-dimensional and it is also not shallow. One of the major themes of the novel is the influence gender has on how one is perceived and what one can do. The book does an excellent job portraying the difficulty of girls breaking into an all boys' world. Frankie wants more than anything to prove herself to the boys so that they will take her seriously. She is not merely Mathew's pretty girlfriend, no matter how much she enjoys the role, and their inability to acknowledge her intelligence and ability chaffs at her. She commits to gaining their respect at all costs, but along the way, she also uncovers some problematic tendencies within the school itself. The pranks she pulls are, in her own words, acts of "creative civil disobedience of students who are politically aware." Through her vandalism, Frankie reveals the absence of female authoritative presence on campus as well as the hypocrisy and out-datedness of the Old Boy club mentality. At the same time, it gets us thinking about these same elements in our own society. At one point, Frankie's sister tells her that, "The institutions of male supremacy only have real power over you if you buy into that notion." Really? Aren't we all products of thousands of years of male domination to varying degrees? Aren't we just now beginning, within the last 100 years, to truly recognize the equality of men and women? Does it really matter whether or not we, as individuals, recognize this? Does ignoring the remnants of the patriarchal paradigm make them less real?

This novel raises all these questions without making gender the sole focus. It is not a sermon on female power, or lack thereof. It is a comic, entertaining story about a secret society and a rich boarding school. It is a narration of an ambitious girl who, perhaps, goes to far. To be honest, I liked this book, but I did not love it. It was a good, quick read and I was thoroughly entertained, but it is hard to relate to the ridiculously rich and at times Frankie's fawning over the boyfriend annoyed me. However, in the end, Frankie is a strong, independent individual...a force to be reckoned with, really.

History Forgotten: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing

I've read a fair amount of historical fiction in my life. In fact, I have always enjoyed the genre, feeling that it gives me a deeper insight into the history I learned from textbooks. The most recent work of historical fiction that I've read is The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation by M.T. Anderson. Set in Boston during the period leading up to the Revolutionary War, Octavian Nothing documents the life of a rather unique slave boy. Raised with his princess mother by a group of philosophers, Octavian is given the best of classical educations. As a small child, the oddity of his life escapes his attention. Soon, however, the fact of his own slavery is brought to his attention. But Octavian is unlike any other slave. He is an African prince, and his education is a part of a larger agenda that he only gradually begins to understand. With greater awareness of his prescribed role comes greater awareness of his freedom, or lack thereof. With the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Octavian must decide where his loyalties lie in a world that severely limits his choices.

Octavian Nothing is not like any other slave narrative I have ever read. Far from the plantation slavery of antebellum south, Octavian's slavery is radically different, yet simultaneously exactly the same. His life is, for legal purposes, not his own and yet he receives an unparalleled education and grows up with a semblance of freedom, so that he must come to realize that he is a slave. Once he does, Ocatian must confront exactly what it means to be free, espcially in a world where the color of his skin makes him a subordinate creature, incapable, or so he is told, of being truly free and equal with the white person. In the portrayal of Octavian's struggle, the novel also reveals that awareness of freedom, or lack thereof, is inextricably tied to resistance. From the moment Octavian becomes aware of his own slavery, he also begins to resist, first in small ways, the restrictions placed on his being. His own movement is reflected in the climate around him. Americans begin to rally against the British to prevent themselves from becoming slaves to the king. One of the great paradoxes of the Revolutionary War is that Americans fought for freedom from Britain while staunchly defending their right to own slaves. Black freedmen and slaves fought on the front lines but the freedom they fought for was not their own. However, this historical reality is often overlooked because it was not a primary concern of the white population. People often fail to consider the place of slaves in the American battle for freedom and the role they played in the fight for freedom that would not benefit themselves. It is a history forgotten because those on the underside of society are rarely remembered unless they command the attention of the powerful majority. Octavian Nothing gives us an insight into this often neglected world of a slave during the Revolution and raises questions about the nature of freedom and resistance that continue to be asked today. What constitutes freedom? How does one obtain it? As Octavian struggles to understand these questions, the reader's own notions are challenged and ultimately one begins to understand that freedom is more complex than one may have thought.

Some people complain that this book takes a while to pick up, and it does. The action does not begin until a few chapters into the novel. However, even in the opening sections the prose is beautiful and Octavian's insights enjoyable. What is not to like about a work that quotes Seneca and ends the opening chapter with, "How doth all that seeks to rise burn itself to nothing."? It is provoking. Plus, the action becomes more exciting farther into the novel, so I really encourage you to stick with it.

Statement of Intent

Lately, it seems that I have been accused of being purposeless an inordinate amount of times. I mean, how often do you go around asking people what they're doing with their lives? I for one, rarely engage in such behavior. Well, just wait until you are a senior in college and then you might want to start a FAQ section on your facebook page dealing solely with your life goals, then you can just direct professors, family members, career councilors, strangers you meet on the street to that page and be done with the whole business. As an English and Theology double major (so useful, I know), my career options are endless and NO I do not know what I am going to do six months from now so don't bother asking. OK, but what does this have to do with Y.A. literature, you ask. Simple, it has been brought to my attention that my blog lacks a clear purpose. No one can discern from my entries who my intended audience is meant to be. Well, this is because I did not have one until now. I was just writing for whoever happened upon this page. So, I am going to make my audience explicitly clear. This blog is written for and dedicated to my six younger cousins--Alex, Erik, Sam, Ashley, Taylor, and K-dizzle. These six exceptional individuals all happen to be currently in highschool and at least three of them inherited, or so I like to think, my love of literature. So, I am writing to 15-18 year olds, one boy, five girls, all very intelligent young adults.

But why write, you know, other than for your class? I write because literature is magical. It allows us to enter into and understand the worlds of people drastically different from us. Through it, we who have never been slaves, or prisoners, or victims of plague, etc., can reach greater depths of empathy, of realization, that the limits of our self would otherwise deny us. Thus, reading literature makes us better people. Literature is also extremely powerful. James Baldwin said that, "You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world... The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way ... people look at reality, then you can change it." Literature can be radical. It can subvert power systems and ideologies, or conversly it can reinforce them. Either way, literature exerts an influence in our world that no one can deny. Therefore, it is important to engage it, to study it, and to critically analyze just what forces are at work in texts. So, my task is two-fold. 1. To inform my cousins about the great, entertaining novels I stumble across; the ones that are must-reads. 2. To help them recognize aspects of the text that perhaps are not immediately visible. In short, to help them become better readers, even as I try to become a better reader. And of course, because this is a blog, my own musings and tastes will surface as well.

So, now you have my intent, for now at least.

Lethal Society: Hunger Games and Dystopian Literature

For those of you who like dystopian literature, The Hunger Games is for you. In The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins sets up an Orwellian society in which freedom is limited if not non-existent and the government wields total control. As a means of enforcing and maintaining the dominance of the Capitol and to discourage revolt, the nation of Panem created the Hunger Games. Every year, two children, one boy and one girl, are randomly chosen in a lottery from each of the Twelve districts of the Capitol. These twenty-four individuals are then granted the privilege of representing their homes in a fight to the death in the Capitol, in which only one survivor attains glory, the rest just a body bag. When Katniss's younger sister gets chosen, Katniss volunteers to go in her stead. She and Peeta, the boy chosen to compete with Katniss, are whisked away to the Capitol where they encounter a foreign world of indulgence and frivolity unknown to two kids from the poorest district in the state. As they try to navigate this new world and maintain their identities in a system set up to push them to their breaking points and turn them against one another, Katniss and Peeta learn just how little their lives matter to those in power.

This book reminded me of Shirley Jackson's short story 'The Lottery," in which a community has a lottery and whoever wins is stoned to death on the spot. No one is exempt, even small children. The Hunger Games had the same disturbing shock factor. It's sick, the idea that children would be thrown into an arena to kill one another while the entire nation watches as if it is the Olympics. But that is what dystopian literature is designed to accomplish, namely shock the reader into critically examining one's own society. Like "The Lottery," The Hunger Games asks the question, Do we set up society in a way that crushes people, a society of death and oppression? This novel takes the question a step farther making us consider whether we are the victims or the perpetuators of the system, as well as forcing us to consider the role government plays in controlling and limiting freedom. Panem is set up in Twelve districts with District One being the capital and the richest and Twelve being the poorest. There used to be a Thirteenth but the Capitol decimated it for rebellion, leaving the ruins as a reminder to the other districts of the price of revolt. The Hunger games is another means of this control, reminding each person that they are totally under government's power and the slightest offense means death. In the poorer districts people are forced to watch the hunger games, but in the richer ones, the games are a spectacle. People actually train their children to compete and the games represent a chance at honor. The game keepers even leave the stadiums of the games set up so that families can vacation there and replay the deaths of competitors on the spot where they occurred.

And no one questions this set up, knowing that to do so means certain death not only for oneself but one's family and friends. It the lie of silent assertion, as Mark Twain would say. We perpetuate oppression and inequality by remaining silent, as if nothing were wrong. And we all do this. But, you ask, how much power to the citizens of Panem really have, if their government exercises such iron control? Seemingly little. But the government draws its power from the people. If the richer districts recognized the extreme poverty of the poorest districts and the sheer wrongness of sending a twelve-year-old into a gladiatorial stadium with eighteen-year-olds and people stopped watching the hunger games, the games would no longer be effective as a means of control. It is the fact that people watch that make the games efficacious, not the games themselves. This, however, would require that the districts recognize one another as co-victims of the Capitol, meaning the rich would have to stop dominating the poor. As far as I am aware, this has never happened before. We do it to minorities, the poor, or currently suspicious people, depending on who we are in conflict with at the moment. People accept it and it continues. Thus, while Panem may appear to be an unrecognizably oppressive nation, elements of its exaggerated problems occur in our world as well, and it is important and neccesary to contemplate just what role we play in contributing to the state of things.

There is a sequel to The Hunger Games, Catching Fire. I have not read it but intend to, because now I am invested in the outcome. Will our heroes survive or will the system crush them like it has so many people?