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Just Listen by Sarah Dessen (YA Fiction)

I was beginning to see, though, that the unknown wasn’t always the greatest thing to fear. The people who know you best can be riskier, because the words they say and the things they think have the potential to be not only scary but true, as well.

Just Listen

Sarah Dessen (YA Fiction)

Annabel Greene is sixteen years old and, from the outside, seems to have it all. With her good looks and successful modeling career, no one would ever suspect that she carries a dark and shocking secret…one that robs her of her friends, her reputation, and her self-worth. What’s worse is that she can’t even tell her family who are battling their own demons. Like the glass house that Annabel lives in, all seems perfect when looking from the outside, but on the inside is a world of chaos. Things get more unsettled when she befriends Owen Armstrong, an imposing, quiet loner with a penchant for music. As Annabel’s fragile façade slowly breaks apart, can she break free from her glass prison and finally find freedom and forgiveness?

Unless it’s historical fiction, I don’t often steer towards young adult books when choosing my next read. Books filled with teenage angst and melodrama tend to lose my interest quickly. Dessen’s Just Listen is happily the exception to the rule. The relationship between Annabel and her sisters Kirsten (the loquacious Drama Queen) and Whitney (the isolationist with an eating disorder) provides a provocative dynamic and their individual character evolution is compelling and realistic. Change is gradual versus epiphanal so we witness each sister’s slow and methodical journey of becoming a better version of herself.

The relationship between Owen and Annabel is also refreshing as it is grown organically. They’re just two lonely people (one by choice and the other by circumstance) seeking companionship and commonality. Owen’s morality pushes Annabel to come to terms with all aspects of her life: past, present, and future. His accept-me-as-I-am attitude is in direct contrast to Annabel’s constant molding into something that appeals to the broad masses. This dichotomy is compelling and makes for a pleasant change with our heroine wanting to be better for herself rather than to be popular or to get the guy.

Throughout the book, music is an integral part of the story. Owen’s way of expressing himself is through sharing music, and he once advised Annabel to “just listen” rather than immediately think or pass judgement. Healing begins for all characters through listening—whether it is to others around us, to our own body, or to our own heart. Sometimes when things around us are the loudest, the most unnatural yet healthy thing to do is to become quiet and just listen.

Rating: 4/5

* Book cover image attributed to: www.abebooks.com

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (Adult Autobiography)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou (Adult Autobiography)

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.

Before she became Maya Angelou, she was Marguerite Johnson. When she was three, Marguerite—along with her four-year-old brother, Bailey—was shipped from Long Beach, California to Stamps, Arkansas bearing little more than an identification tag with instructions on her wrist. The pair was sent to live with their paternal grandmother and crippled uncle. It was here where young Marguerite would watch the poor Blacks picking cotton in the fields, fall in love with Shakespeare, experience prejudice and hate from people far poorer and less educated than herself, and learn her multiplication tables. In the years following, she would be shuffled back and forth between her mother, father, and grandmother while surviving rape at the age of eight, celebrating her first library card, getting her first job, and experiencing motherhood.

Angelou’s autobiography, which details her life from age 3 to 17, spent two years on the New York Times paperback bestseller list, was nominated for a National Book Award, received the Literarian Award in 2013, and yet remains one of the most banned and/or challenged books in America for its violence, racism, sexuality, childhood rape, and teen pregnancy.

Banning Angelou’s work—set in the 1930s and 40s and told from the lens of a young Black girl—because of its violence and racism is akin to banning a book on war because it’s too bloody. To measure a book set in the past using today’s racial, moral, and ethical standards is unreasonable, unfair, and unrealistic. It’s a false equivalent and no historical work, person, or idea could ever pass such a litmus test. Yes, Angelou’s book contains everything that it was banned for, but chastising these honest and true observations, experiences, and thoughts through removal doesn’t make our schools or society any better for it. How can it?

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is gritty, sobering, shocking, and compelling while being uplifting, witty, honest, and hopeful. Angelou shares memories of her first Valentine, her 8^th grade graduation, the stability a new stepfather brought to her family, her multiple scholarships to the California Labor School, the summer when she and her father took an unforgettable trip into Mexico, the month she lived in a junkyard, and being the first Black to work on the San Francisco streetcar system. At every turn, Angelou seemed to live her mother’s advice: Life is going to give you just what you put into it. And Angelou gave it her all.

Angelou’s title of her autobiography is a reference to Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “Sympathy”, which is filled with empathy for a bird longing and crying out for freedom. After reading Angelou’s early years, I felt that the caged bird sings because that was what it was born to do. Angelou is that bird and despite the limitations and bars placed around her, she refused to be a prisoner or a victim. She never stopped at finding a way to make the impossible possible and whenever she felt helpless or weakened, she rose above it all and sang because that was what she was born to do. Through her books and poetry, generations will continue to enjoy Maya Angelou’s song as long as we, as a society, are brave enough to keep the cage door open for all to hear.

Rating: 5/5

* Book cover image attributed to: www.abebooks.com

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Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (YA Fiction)

Speak

Laurie Halse Anderson (YA Fiction)

It’s Melinda Sordino’s first year at Merryweather High. A time of change and cliques, of fitting in or being left out, and lots of ups and downs and possibly even a few sideways. But for Melinda, her year is already beginning with a dark cloud hanging over her. While other teens are covering up their acne, Melinda is covering up her shame of being raped…and it’s not easy. Every fiber in her being wants to scream out and tell the world what happened to her, but why speak when nobody—not even your best friend—wants to listen?

Speak is the very reason why I immediately have to get my hands on a book as soon as it’s been challenged or banned. It’s like a bat signal that drones over and over again read me read me read me. Published in 1999, Speak was ranked 60^th on the American Library Association’s list of Top 100 Banned/Challenged Book for 2000-2009 and 25^th for 2010-2019 for its inclusion of rape and profanity, deemed biased against male students, and blasted for containing a political viewpoint. I am shaking my head so furiously right now that I’m awaiting our local meteorologist to report a 6.5 magnitude tremor for my area any minute now. The profanity is mild, a fellow student stands up to a teacher who is trying to stifle a class debate, the girls in the book come off WAY harsher than the boys, and the rape scene is as follows: …he smells like beer and mean and he hurts me hurts me hurts me and gets up and zips his jeans and smiles. Feel that? I think that tremor may have hit 6.8 by now.

This is a gritty, raw, painful, and ultimately inspiring book about a young girl desperately trying to piece her life and sanity back together after it was gutlessly and maliciously ripped apart—her innocence robbed one summer night on the wet, dark ground. Told from Melinda’s point of view adds another layer to this complex and haunting story that shouldn’t be banned, but instead handed out to every teenager on the planet. By banning this book, the “powers that be” are truly no different than Melinda’s friends who choose to excommunicate her as she brings light to an unfortunate truth…that some individuals are just bad, no matter how attractive the packaging might be. Anderson’s message is far too important to ban to a dark corner. They say light is the best disinfectant and this book needs to be on every bookshelf and in every hand and hopefully there is a teacher or parent or trusted advisor there to read alongside to offer insight, context, and comfort.

I’ve never pored through a book so quickly before and that’s simply because Anderson ensnares you from the very first page with her poem “Make Some Noise”. More chills await as you slowly understand the significance of the cover design as Melinda’s story begins to stretch and her truth desperately reaches upward toward the sun so that it may live rather than die in darkness. I hope this book finds the right hands and that any Melinda out there finds someone like Melinda’s art teacher, Mr. Freeman, who says, “You’re a good kid. I think you have a lot to say. I’d like to hear it” because then, maybe, that would open up the door for someone to speak.

Rating: 5/5

* Book cover image attributed to: www.abebooks.com

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