World Book Night: The Final Batch

We've come to the end of the road. I made it through twenty-three of the thirty Wold Book Night picks. Couple that with the six I'd read in the past and we're up to twenty-nine with only one odd duck. I'm still making my way through The Stand and I can't picture myself finishing that one before I go out to distribute copies of A Prayer for Owen Meany tonight. Here are my reviews for the last of the books I have read:

Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is the story of a young boy trying to escape the cycle of poverty and alcoholism that is life on the Spokane Indian Reservation. This is such a fantastic book. It is funny and tragic and perfectly executed between the prose and the illustrations. The idea to tell the story in the form of Junior's diary was an inspired one; I don't know if this could have been a novel for young adults without the humor and levity that the format allows. This is such an important book and such a great book for younger readers. One of the many goals of art is to act as a mirror to society. The Absolutely True Diary functions as one of those mirrors. I encourage you to hold it up - you may not like all that you see.

Before I talk about Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings I'll let you know why, it sings for the same reason that Sisyphus is happy. It sings because it must, because life is what it is and you get the most out of it through happiness and song. Angelou's memoir feels very reserved as though this is a memoir written by someone that does not relish talking about themselves. Maybe it is just that we are in the midst of an age of shock and awe memoirs, but the quiet reservation and doling out of secrets that Angelou's book contains made it feel all the more honest. This is a sad story but one about personal triumph; it is inspirational in the best sense of the word (especially, when Angelou talks about the power of literature).




The sense of deep longing that Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake encompasses is emotionally galvanizing. It is the story of Gogol Ganguli, a second generation Indian immigrant to the States, and the distance between his two cultures. It is very much so a novel about the difficulty of defining oneself, and Gogol's yearning is the force that propels it onward. It is a story that is peppered with loss, and it is moving and beautifully written. Definitely a good choice for World Book Night - I can imagine many passionate readers giving this one out tonight.



Q is for Quel Surpise. I was not looking forward to Q is for Quarry by Sue Grafton. I've already been through one gory mystery with this list and I did not want to force myself through another. But I read it anyway and it was good! I'm ashamed to admit that I thought all mysteries were the same prior to cracking the spine on this one. Q is not violent and it is much more about the characters than the mystery at its core. This is the seventeenth book in as twenty-six book series that Grafton has been able to sustain by creating compelling characters. I was definitely surprised to enjoy the book and I'll probably check in with Kinsey Milhone again sometime.

#YAsaves

For those not familiar with Twitter lingo the # before a word or phrase tags it and is called a hashtag. Using a hashtag makes searching for a subject easier. After the publication of Meghan Cox Gurdon's WSJ article someone, I've heard it was YA author Maureen Johnson, created the hashtag #YAsaves. The entirety of the YA community caught on to the tag and twitter was ablaze with stories of the good that comes from YA. This isn't love, kittens, and sparkly vampires good; this is actual "this book saved my life" good. Today, I'm not even going to talk about how all YA is not dark. I covered that earlier. There's plenty of love and kittens and those sparkly Cullens. All that is well and good but today I've got an answer to this question: "Contemporary fiction for teens is rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity. Why is this considered a good idea?"

Darkness in YA literature (darkness in any literature, in any art) is a response to the darkness in society. Let's face it, the daily news is a whole lot more grim than many of the books that Gurdon calls out in her article. She calls these dark and violent books smut (she uses that word - without irony. Who does that?). If it's called smut when it is fiction what are we to call the nonfiction? Lauren Myracle's "Shine" is one of the dark and violent books Gurdon specifically calls out, noting that it opens with a gay teenager being "savagely beaten." So, what are we to call Judy Shepard's book "The Meaning of Matthew" about her life (and the world) after the murder of her son? Or, is it okay for Shepard's book to deal with darkness because it was not aimed at a young audience? Are we to assume that teenagers are so oblivious to the world that they don't know hate crimes happen? I should hope not. Then, isn't it right that they should be able to read a book about it? A book that may help them to understand the world even if it's in response to a completely non-understandable situation.

This is the problem with challenging the acceptance of dark subject matter: if you are not interested in it then it is not meant for you. Maybe your life has been relatively free of darkness; you haven't experienced it and you don't want to read about it so why should you? You don't have to. That's a perfectly valid option. But don't judge those who do. As Sherman Alexie pointed out in his response to Gurdon's article:

When some cultural critics fret about the “ever-more-appalling” YA books, they aren’t trying to protect African-American teens forced to walk through metal detectors on their way into school. Or Mexican-American teens enduring the culturally schizophrenic life of being American citizens and the children of illegal immigrants. Or Native American teens growing up on Third World reservations. Or poor white kids trying to survive the meth-hazed trailer parks. They aren’t trying to protect the poor from poverty. Or victims from rapists.
No, they are simply trying to protect their privileged notions of what literature is and should be. They are trying to protect privileged children. Or the seemingly privileged.

Life is difficult for just about everyone, especially teenagers. To combat that some people escape into "hyper-violent" dystopias like "The Hunger Games" or maybe they relate to the damaged characters in "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian". That's why I think "abuse, violence and depravity" are a good idea in young adult literature. Not only is it a good idea, but it is absolutely necessary. These books are needed; they are doing actual good. These books are saving lives. And really, do I have to say this, are we actually complaining about kids reading?

I know I stated that I don't really read YA, but one of the YA books that I have read is Laurie Halse Anderson's "Speak". "Speak" is a genuinely good book and an important book, and Laurie Halse Anderson is awesome. For the tenth anniversary of the publication of "Speak" she wrote a poem in honor of the feedback she received from the book, which is about a girl who was raped. The poem is called "Listen" and you can watch her read it below. After you hear this poem you will fully understand just how #YAsaves.