Event: Girlpower? Teenage Heroines in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction (Part 3)

(If you missed them, please check out parts one and two!)

Finally, it was time for questions! I got the ball rolling, noting that I thought it was interesting that Tally was the more progressive of the two characters when laid out side-by-side like this, yet Tally came into being five years or so before Katniss, and I wondered if Broad saw anything of significance in that we went "backwards," so to speak. She responded that Tally as a character-type certainly never had a chance to be cemented like Katniss has been, due to The Hunger Games' explosive popularity. Tally seems to be unique, unfortunately, and Broad didn't have any other texts to reference for characters like Tally. Uglies may be the only contemporary YA dystopian story with a progressive character like Tally.

Next question was about whether either author had written about their goals in writing these stories and characters. Broad mentioned Scott Westerfeld's Blog and how he has said many times that he was interested in writing about rebellion, and that Westerfeld has edited an anthology of other writers writing about his work, from which we can infer at the very least which opinions on his work he considers worth looking into, even if they weren't his exact intention. Suzanne Collins, on the other hand, doesn't keep a blog and has said less about her goals in writing The Hunger Games, other than the famous story of how she was flipping between coverage of the Iraq War and reality television.

Another audience member wanted Broad's opinion on The Hunger Games movie, as the plot seems more straightforward in the film, and she wondered how it might influence the audience's perception of the story. Broad noted that since the books are from Katniss' perspective, not only do we have her constant inner dialogue, but we never get to leave her point of view. Because so much of the romance plot in the first book is from Katniss' inner turmoil about it, Broad felt that in the movie it was actually less pronounced. Additionally, in the film the idea of the brewing revolution is amplified, because we get to cut away from the Games as see more of the Capitol, President Snow, and the general political state of Panem, meaning that from a revolutionary perspective, the movie might be even more interesting than the book.

And then possibly my favorite questioner brought up issues of race and heteronormativity, first asking about the intersection of girlpower and the predominantly white narrative (perhaps best exemplified by the uproar over casting a Black actor as Rue, though personally I would have added the uproar over casting a blond white woman for a character described as having olive skin and brown hair), and then wondering if YA fiction for women is experimental enough to challenge the heteronormative narrative. First, Broad acknowledges that YA dystopian fiction, and YA lit in general, is very whitewashed (a topic regular readers of this blog are surely familiar with at this point). Hunger Games has some awareness of race, but it's not foregrounded (and I wish Broad had taken time here to point out that in some ways race is completely eliminated from the picture in Uglies, as Tally notes that, at least after the Pretty surgery, everyone is the same shade of tan). Readers bring in assumptions of whiteness, and in order to fight that assumption authors need to do more than offer vague cues of "olive" or "dark" skin.

Second, in order to challenge a heteronormative narrative (I just like repeating that phrase), it requires an active, conscious step, that few (if any) books are making now. She also took this time to bring up how there is no disability in these stories. There is a lot of potential for the genre to explore and challenge assumptions of race, sexuality, able-bodiness, etc, but the drive to cash in on this super hot genre may limit the drive to challenge and experiment.

And what did I think of the whole presentation?

There was a boatload of details here - seriously, even though this summary has spanned over three posts, I still have un-tapped notes. And, due to the speed of the presentation, I'm sure that I missed more than a few details. Hopefully none ended up misrepresenting Broad's point of view.

When it comes to analyzing The Hunger Games, I never would have thought to look at it through the lens of its romantic subplot - because you all know how anti-romance I am in general, and especially anti-romance in view of The Hunger Games. But like I said in my first post on this subject, I think when you look at the trilogy as a whole, for better or for worse, the romance becomes increasingly important as the story goes along. It's not nearly as prominent as some dystopian stories that have followed (I swear sometimes "dystopian" has become a synonym for "angsty teen love triangle"), but it definitely affects the narrative in a big way by the time we get to Mockingjay. Broad's analysis of Katniss's "happy ending" in Mockingjay was absolutely spot-on in terms of why it disappointed me. Not necessarily because it was a betrayal of the character (though I don't think Katniss of The Hunger Games would recognize the Katniss of Mockingjay's epilogue), but because it's an ending I've seen over and over again, and I didn't want this character that truly had some revolutionary potential to fall into such a trope.

A few times I felt Broad left out a few important details in her analysis. For example, Katniss ends up having lots of thoughts about babies in Catching Fire. Now, anyone who has read Catching Fire knows exactly where those thoughts come from - Peeta has once again constructed a story to try to ensure Katniss' survival, and has told all of Panem that she is pregnant. Not once was this plot point mentioned in the presentation, so it felt like Katniss just spontaneously went from thinking "I'll never have children" to obsessing over hers and/or Peeta's future babies in Catching Fire.

Looking at the Uglies portion of the talk, I can totally understand why this may have been tangential to the topic, but I really would have liked to hear a bit about the remarkable relationship between Tally and Shay, both how it conforms to tropes (such as girls competing against each other, especially for the love of a man), but also how it defies those tropes (Tally and Shay keep coming back to each other, protecting each other even after apparently unforgivable failures in friendship). I think an argument could be made that Shay's friendship had far more of an impact on Tally than her relationships with David or Zane (man, do I wish we had a female-equivalent to "bromance" because I would totally use it for Tally and Shay).

Overall, however, I'm super excited that there's some academia out there on Uglies now - I wrote my senior thesis on the series and, while I haven't exactly been looking, I haven't seen any other scholarly writing on it since. As mentioned previously, Broad has a book coming out this winter from Routledge - Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults, and looking at the list of essays in it just makes me salivate. The site lists the publication date as November 30th and I can only hope publication doesn't get pushed back! Sounds like an amazing contribution to the academic literature on young adult fiction.

Event: Girlpower? Teenage Heroines in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction (Part Two)

(If you missed it, check out Part 1!)

Here's where Broad began to really dig into the two texts, filled with spoilers and plot summaries (and she had a ton to say, all of it very interesting, that I won't recap fully here in the interests of brevity and the fact that much of this talk forms the basis of a chapter in a book Broad is co-editing for release this winter). As an aside, I was mildly amused by her summary of Catching Fire: "They're thrown into another Game." She pretty much moved directly from The Hunger Games to Mockingjay with only a line for Catching Fire. Which I'm not sure I can fault her for. I happen to love Catching Fire, and think it brings us some important character moments, but in retrospect it really is setting us up for the big battles of Mockingjay.

While on many levels, The Hunger Games trilogy is obviously an action/adventure dystopian story, on another level it's a love story, tracing Katniss' feelings for Peeta and Gale. The courtship(s) within the love triangle directly shape the narrative potential. Now initially this is the sort of commentary that gets my hackles up, but looking at the series in its entirety, it's kind of hard to argue that this is the direction Collins ultimately went in. And Broad makes some interesting arguments how even early on in the first book The Hunger Games falls into traditional romance tropes - for example, in traditional romance literature, the heroine often shows a disinterest in love and is changed over time by the hero. He convinces her that she craves love, while she gets to remain "pure" by stating she has no interest in such base emotions (and, it's implied, the carnal actions that come along with such emotions that Western society has often told women we shouldn't crave). Katniss fits that to a T, as she starts out being so adamant against marriage and children, and then the book concludes with disturbing (to me) references of how Peeta convinced her to have children.

Ultimately, Katniss isn't a character who makes a lot of choices. In terms of the romantic narrative, Katniss ends up with the boy that follows her back home. The men make the choices for her and Katniss follows along. While Katniss in many ways served to inspire a great revolution for the fictional universe, her ultimate choice to fall back into the modern-day status quo of marriage and children forces us to ask what has really changed by the end? Katniss hasn't presented any sort of alternative story for young women reading of her adventures, and in fact has fallen into a long line of adventuresome girl stories where the endings find them "less active, less assertive, and tamed by marriage."

And right there, I think Broad has put to words why I was just so disappointed with the ending of Mockingjay. Yes, within a fictional context, Katniss has won her freedom - to enjoy something she spent the first two books she wanted no part of. It falls back onto tropes of how young women just don't really know what they want and they'll eventually change their mind about things like raising children. And while overall clearly Katniss has a better future than what she would have had before the revolution, from a contemporary standpoint, getting married and having children as a happy ending doesn't look revolutionary at all.
In short, girls stories often end with marriage. Stories of empowered young women must subvert that, bringing us to Uglies.
In my view, when viewed through the romantic narrative lens that Broad used, Tally actually initially has a lot of regressive traits, rather than progressive. While the Tally/Shay BFF relationship is awesome, Tally spends three books being driven between ideologies by David or Zane. David drives Tally's first revolutionary act, to defy Cutter and protect the Smoke. Then, as Broad points out, Tally agrees to undergo the Pretty surgery and essentially go undercover only after David tells her she is beautiful without the surgery. Of course, the surgery is very successful and Tally forgets herself, essentially becoming a Pretty damsel in distress. It's Zane, and his drive to be Bubbly, that "enables Tally's revolutionary tendencies."

So, in my view, it's only in the latter half of Pretties that Tally becomes an empowered hero, when she starts to think her way out of being a Bubblehead. And not only does she think her way out, she realizes that while kissing new people and being in love is one way to stay Bubbly, other things like her trek through the woods can produce the same response. As Broad says, romance doesn't equal personal transformation. Tally ends up embracing change on her own, even if it was inspired by a boy.

At the end of Specials, Tally creates a revolutionary place for herself, not just in the context of her world, but in the context of ours as well. And while she is out there in the wilderness with David, it's not a romantic getaway for them, and she even made the decision before re-connecting with David. Broad states that Tally "asserts a place for herself defined by actions, not gender."

In conclusion, when examining YA dystopian fiction, readers should look at how the fiction imagines the results of adolescents striving to be something more and do something different. Do these rebellious characters get to keep that streak even as they grow up? In a setting that relies on traditional gender roles, how does the hero react against them? In Katniss, we see someone who lost her rebellious streak and falls into very traditional gender roles. Tally on the other hand is going to be a rebel of some kind for the forseeable future, in an action hero role that ultimately defies most feminine literary tropes.

There's one final upcoming post, covering questions and my own reactions to Broad's presentation! Check out part three!

Event: Girlpower? Teenage Heroines in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction (Part 1)

I forget when or where exactly I ran across the press release for this event, but on Tuesday the New York Public Library presented a lecture from the  Wertheim Study, titled Girlpower?: Teenage Heroines in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction.

I pretty much loved every word of that. It was like it was made just for me! So I took a long, late lunch break from work to listen to Katherine Broad present this lecture, based on part of her PhD dissertation about the romance trope in feminist Utopian literature.

(Swoon)

Now, this talk was so interesting and exciting that I kind of got ahead of myself and created one huge massive post. So in the interest of not breaking anyone, this is going to be divided into three parts - first, some background on the genre and the title Broad chose for the presentation. Second will be her dissection of the texts, and the third will be the questions from the audience and my thoughts!

The audience definitely skewed older for this talk - looking around the room I was almost the youngest there. There were a trio of people in the back row that looked like they might have been on the upper-end of the teenage spectrum, and then someone brought their six year old along. It's always so weird to still find myself as the youngest in the room so often.

Anyway.

Broad focused on two of my favorite dystopian works ever, Uglies and The Hunger Games, so I had a lot to chew on as she breezed through her presentation (in fact, that would be my biggest critique of the whole thing - I'm betting Broad had a time limit and wanted to make sure she fit in all of the fascinating bits of her paper into the presentation so at times she just sped through the lecture, making note taking very difficult at times). Another interesting demographic note - Broad polled the audience briefly to see who had read the two series, or at least seen the movie of The Hunger Games. I wasn't surprised that only a fraction of the audience had read Uglies, but the answer wasn't even close to unanimous for readers/viewers of The Hunger Games. There are people interested enough in YA to sit through a scholarly discussion of it on a sunny Tuesday afternoon but haven't read The Hunger Games? My mind boggled.

Broad came out of the gate with fighting words, noting that both Katniss and Tally have been celebrated as feminist heroines, but in fact Katniss ends up with a pretty conservative plotline overall, as she grows up, settles down, marries and has children. Tally is actually the one with far more potential as a strong feminist role model.

I would never argue against Tally as a feminist role model, but to say Katniss isn't one?! Whoa. I needed to know more.

The presentation started with some interesting insights into the origination of Utopian and dystopian genres. For example, did you know that Utopian stories do not require the society to be perfect? Just has to be better than our current society is, and is often concerned with the process and outcome of progressive social change. Dystopias, of course, are the flip side of the coin - but may not be as different as they seem at first glance. After all, most Dystopian stories (especially those aimed at the YA reader), end with a Utopian setting, as social change has been implemented (or is in the process of being implemented), and the dystopian society won't merely be better than it was before, but will clearly be better than our contemporary society. Both Mockingjay and Specials demonstrate this (and we see more of it in Extras, the fourth Uglies book).

The dissection of Utopia/dystopia was followed by a dissection of Broad's choice of title for the presentation: Girlpower. As someone who spent her formative years in the 90s, I definitely remember the girl power movement, and even at a tender age it didn't sit entirely right with me. Yeah, it sounds awesome, you can't argue with the idea that girls should have more power and be recognized for their awesomeness, but I really didn't want to be a Spice Girl when I grew up. And in fact, Broad cited an article that mentions the Spice Girls by name, noting that the girlpower movement grew out of Riot Grrrl music, and co-opted the idea of feminine power into something non-threatening: like the Spice Girls. So, that's the question of the title: Katniss and Tally are both held up as role models of female power, but are they truly powerful or have they been de-fanged and dressing up the idea of "powerful women" in the same-old packaging?

Come back on Monday to see part 2, digging into the texts of The Hunger Games and Uglies!

Nonfiction Monday: Wheels of Change by Sue Macy AND #SpeakGeek Day 1!

My first Speak Out With Your Geek Out post ties into the Nonfiction Monday theme, so I figured I'd combine the two in the name of efficiency! First the review, then the #speakgeek post.

Before I had a car, my bicycle was my life. Since third grade I lived close enough to my schools that the district didn't provide a bus, so any time there wasn't snow on the ground, my bike got me to and from school. When a new branch of the library opened up in my neighborhood, my bike delivered me to air conditioned and full-of-books bliss on a daily basis. But despite the way the world opened up for me when my parents let me start biking off by myself, I never considered how the bicycle was once a political statement.

Sue Macy opens up this fascinating element of women's history in an inviting and easy to understand way. It's an excellent way to introduce teen readers to the history of women's rights, because the bicycle is such a universal experience, even in our modern lives. I imagine few people living today can even imagine what it would be like to not be allowed to ride a bicycle - either because it's considered unseemly for a young lady, or because her clothing was too constricting to allow for such physical activity.

Macy examines how the bicycle was truly revolutionary for women. They suddenly had a way to transport themselves without relying on anyone else. The popularity of bicycles first encouraged ingenuity in their design (side-saddle bikes, with both pedals on the same side!), and then encouraged greater acceptance for dress-reform - everything from split-skirts to abandoning corsets.

The only thing I was left wanting more of was more information about the evolution of bicycle design. The book never did answer why on earth early bicycles had those ridiculous giant front wheels.

The book design is engaging and fun - all of the pictures are presented in big circles, mimicking bicycle wheels.

Any book that calls attention to women's history is going to be a big plus for me, but one that does so in an engaging and unique way is even better!

Review copy provided by Media Masters Publicity.





This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Wrapped in Foil. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

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Speak Out With Your Geek Out - Day 1: Nonfiction Books!

I'm hoping to have a post for Speak Out With Your Geek Out every day this week. I'll post any that are book related here, and will provide links on either Twitter or Google+ for ones that are non-book related. Tomorrow on my husband's and my podcast we'll also be highlighting the event - I'll probably do some book-talking in there, too!

Since I'm getting back into the swing of blogging with Nonfiction Monday, I figured I could start of this week of geeky celebration with a short ode to nonfiction books.

Before the Nonfiction Monday meme started, I certainly liked nonfiction books, but they weren't terribly high on my radar. When I was a kid, I was all over the fiction section - it took a pretty special subject to get me to wander into the  nonfiction section of the library. Nonfiction books were associated with research and school projects. I didn't get an excuse to read fiction for school very often, so my pleasure-reading time was reserved for fiction.

But now as an adult, I don't know what it is, but I've discovered that I absolutely love nonfiction books. If I wanted to sit back and psycho-analyze it, it probably has something to do with my relatively unstructured adult life. There's no more research papers, no more group projects, no more speeches that need to be written, so I'm not getting a constant nonfiction-fix elsewhere. But just because I don't have any assignments to turn in any more doesn't mean that I don't crave those days of fact-finding. So now any time I hear about the existence of a nonfiction book that sounds even remotely interesting, I search it out.

What nonfiction am I reading right now? Unfortunately it's all adult - there really does seem to be a gap in nonfiction for young adults. So much of it seems to be either way too young, or so dry it's clearly only intended for classroom use. I'm still plugging through a biography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (author of the famous The Yellow Wallpaper, which just changed my life in high school), and I just started Super Mario, a history of Nintendo. On the waiting list at the library is the autobiography of nerd-hero Simon Pegg. 

Not only do I wish there was more nonfiction out there for young adults, but I wish more was coming out in more "adult" formats. Sometimes the oversized books filled with pictures are necessary - I liked the set up in Wheels of Change, after all, and I absolutely loved the design of Frozen Secrets. But the format doesn't lend itself well to taking the book along in a purse, or even a backpack where space is at a premium. I haven't done any research, but it sure feels to me like nonfiction could grab some more readers if it was in the more-familiar novel-size format. It'd look like a novel, and even look more like the adult nonfiction books I've been getting, but not necessarily as dry and bogged down with footnotes as adult nonfiction can be.

But all isn't dark for young adult nonfiction - in fact, I think it's getting better than ever, just like the young adult genre as a whole is! Since starting this blog, I've discovered nonfiction books that have sparked passions I didn't even know I had - Antarctica is now fascinating to me, and it's all because of some excellent nonfiction finds that I want to write a novel set during the US civil war.

Do you love nonfiction? What are you a geek about? Let me know if you make a post for Speak Out With Your Geek Out (whether it's book-related or not) - I'd love to see what else people are geeking out about this week!

Book Thoughts: Why I'm Not Worried about Boys (or Men)

Image via Wikipedia

Ooh, provocative title is provocative ;-)

Last night was another meeting of the #YALitChat on Twitter. And part of me really wanted to join in, because I loved the authors being highlighted (Michael Grant, Scott Westerfeld, and Jay Asher). The other part of me wanted to avoid the internet for a couple of hours because the topic of the evening just grated my nerves in the worst possible way.

The topic? Why men write YA.

If nothing else, this was annoying because it's not a topic worthy of a two hour chat, because I can answer it in three words: they want to.

And I think it became quite clear that it wasn't a hot topic because while there were some great conversations going on, few of them that I saw actually addressed what was the main topic of the night!

Instead, there was a lot of hand wringing over what do boys want to read, and whether it's important to have male authors in order to appeal to them.

Which makes me roll my eyes, because I spent years in English classes reading nothing but male authors and fighting like hell to get to read women. For more on this, I direct you to Maureen Johnson.

I'm not saying what's good for the goose is good for the gander - that because my education sucked boys should now be forced to read nothing but Little Women and Little House on the Prairie and Twilight. That doesn't help anybody.

What bothers me is seeing authors talk about writing specifically what appeals to "boys" and what appeals to "girls." First of all, it sets up gender as a binary, which current scholarship on gender and sexuality doesn't support. Second, even if gender is binary, it implies that all boys want the same thing, and all girls want something totally different.

At one point I jumped into the chat when Scott Westerfeld asked if "the shift from paranormal romance to dystopian been correlated to more boys reading?" I replied that recent dystopian novels have all looked awfully romancey to me (which could be a whole other post - anyone interested in my thoughts on Whither?). I'd love to see a straight up dystopia again, in the vein of Uglies or the first book of The Hunger Games. Instead a lot of these books are paranormal romances, but with dictatorial governments rather than vampires or fairies or angels. Sarwat Chadda, of the awesome Billi SanGreal books, asked me if I thought dystopian was "real" or something bigged up by publishers. After fangirling for a second over a REAL LIVE AUTHOR actually asking MY OPINION on something, we got into a great discussion about dystopian lit, and paranormal, and paranormal romances, that culminated with Dawn Metcalf coming up with the best ACT vocab comparison of the night: "romance" is to "paranormal" as "lemony" is to "fresh."

However the most illuminating part of the dystopian/romance part of the convo was when fellow chatter mimicross said, in response to my point on dystopians becoming more like romance, "Well, if world is ending, what would you want to be doing?" And this got me back to my thinking on boy books vs. girl books. Because when I was in high school, I hated romances. Part of this was because I was more interested in dating other girls at the time and wasn't finding many books that addressed that, but even after I started dating my first girlfriend I wasn't all that romantically inclined (this may be why the relationship didn't even last a month...). Writing a book that is supposed to appeal to "girls" is likely to backfire on someone like me - I want explosions and guts and car chases. And I know plenty of boys and men that prefer more relationship-oriented books (maybe not straight-up romances...or maybe they're just embarassed to discuss such an 'un-manly' topic with me!).

It was especially troubling to hear authors talking like this. I expect the marketing department to worry about who is going to end up reading a book - it's their job to get it into the hands of the most profitable demographic. But as writers, why don't we concentrate first on writing an appealing story - and if you want to think about marketing, think about the type of person you want to read the book - is this for someone quiet and nerdy, someone brash and hyperactive? What about brash and nerdy? These are qualities that aren't attached to gender.

Ultimately my opinion of the night boils down to Twitter being a terrible place to have a nuanced chat - something that came up earlier in the day during the new #GayYA chat, where all of us were unfailingly aware of how limiting those 140 characters were (and the one time outside of a specifically feminist space I've heard people throwing around terms like "cisgendered"!) #YALitChat is great for promoting an author or a broad subject (why a genre is popular, how to break into the business), but delicate subjects related to gender should probably be left to overly-long blog posts.

Nonfiction Monday Review: Flesh and Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and its Legacy by Albert Marrin

My fascination with the tragedy at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911 has been well documented on this blog, but one thing I've been looking for since reading my first book on the fire is a great, YA-focused nonfiction account of the fire. I love historical fiction as a way to introduce readers in a compelling, creative way to historical events, but eventually I start to hunger for some cold, hard facts. Finally, 100 years after the disaster, Albert Marrin provides me with the book I've been looking for.

Marrin gives a detailed account of late 19th-early 20th century immigrant life, focusing on the Southern Italians and Russian Jews who dominated the workforce in factories like Triangle. Marrin goes back to Italy and Russia to look at the "pushes" that started the huge waves of immigration that brought these people to New York City.

From there we see life in New York's poor immigrant neighborhoods, how the livelihoods of the immigrants back in the home country affected what jobs they took in America, how insulated the neighborhoods were, and how textile factory work became the position of choice for young immigrant women.

And then comes the terrors of factory life, and the nightmare that was March 25th, when the fire broke out just before closing time. Marrin provides plenty of contemporary accounts, from brief quotations from witnesses to longer excerpts of written accounts. When I told my husband I was reading a book about the Triangle Fire his response was "Another one? Don't you know everything?" But there was a lot here I didn't know. For example, I knew the fire escape quickly proved to be useless, tearing away from the building under the weight of the terrified workers. What I didn't know was the fire escape was never truly designed to be useful - it ended directly over a skylight in the roof of the next building, and was surrounded with a fence topped with four-inch spikes. If falling from the fire escape didn't kill someone, landing on those spikes did.

Marrin ties the story of the Triangle factory into today, looking at the governmental corruption that was overcome in order to ensure some basic workplace safety and the right for workers to unionize (a right that is, of course, under attack again today). Marrin also looks overseas to modern sweatshops in Asia, looking at the ethical implications of boycotting sweatshop labor, since the women who work in these factories have so few other options. (For an alternative view, that I don't think will be presented in YA lit anytime soon, no matter how "dark" we're getting, check out this recent Slate article)

I appreciate that Marrin hasn't white-washed history. When explaining the ethnic makeup of the workers at the Triangle factory, he notes right away that African-American women were absent due to racism. And then during the Uprising of 20,000, he brings up the important decisions African American women had to make regarding their own opportunities for job advancement.

The Triangle Factory Fire was such a pivotal moment in American history, it's a shame it isn't taught about more often, and that the names of those associated with it have been generally lost. I'm so thankful that Marrin introduced me to Clara Lemlich through this book - she was a tireless labor organizer during the Uprising of 20,000 (a massive garment worker strike that ended a few months prior to the Triangle Fire), she was blackballed from the industry afterwards, but continued to dedicate her life towards social welfare and became what we now call a community organizer. She was so bad ass, that even when she was in a nursing home in her 80s, she encouraged the orderlies to organize and form a union! What an amazing person.



This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Chapter Book of the Day. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Nonfiction Monday Review: Amelia Lost by Candace Fleming

Amelia Earhart has always been a legendary woman for me. A larger than life person who defied the odds and the conventions of the day, only to find her life cut tragically short (or was it?!) in pursuit of her dreams. But I have to admit, I've never known much beyond the myth, which is where Amelia Lost comes in, as Fleming does an amazing job of describing not only the myth of Amelia, but bringing to life the human woman as well.

Fleming skillfully uses alternating chapters to explore both the search for Amelia Earhart after she was lost in 1937, and a biography of her life up until that point. The book opens on the coast guard cutter Itasca, which was scheduled to meet up with Amelia and refuel her plane before she made the hop to Honolulu and then back on to the United States. As the crew of the Itasca grows frantic trying to contact the missing pilot, Fleming then brings us back to Amelia's childhood - where she was known early on as a tomboy.

Even though I knew how the story would end, Fleming does an amazing job building up the tension of Amelia's final flight, as she edged closer and closer to the final Pacific leg of the journey. A real nail biter. But what's perhaps most amazing is that Amelia had made it to that point at all. Flying in the 1920s and 1930s wasn't always the safest proposition, and it seems like Amelia may have had more than her fair share of accidents, in part because she was always pushing herself to establish or beat the next record.

If ever there was a book that seems like it's a candidate for the enhanced ebook treatment, Amelia Lost is it. Okay, I don't have an ereader so I have no idea if they're up to the task of handling all of the pictures (these are 99% black and white, so the grayscale e-ink wouldn't be a problem), but Fleming judiciously includes URLs in the text where appropriate - such as learning Morse code - that could easily be incorporated into the ebook version. She also includes links in the bibliography.

This is also a wonderfully designed book. I love the Art Deco-style chapter headings, which really add a historical flair to the story, and then the chapters about the search for Amelia are set apart on gray paper, giving an additional visual cue that this is a different part of the narrative.

If you've ever been at all curious about Amelia Earhart, Amelia Lost is definitely a must read.




This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Writing Nonfiction for Children. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Pink by Lili Wilkinson

I was super excited for this book - Australia, theater, and, most importantly, a bisexual protagonist! And in fact, there are lots of small things to love here, but I was never quite sold on our protagonist.

Ava has always been a dutiful daughter - going with the flow at her public high school, eschewing pink (and most other colors) from her utilitarian wardrobe, and spending lots of time with her radical anarchist girlfriend. Did I mention that Ava's parents are anti-establishment types? But Ava yearns for some normalcy in her life - demanding academics, pink argyle sweaters, and maybe even a boyfriend or two. So she convinces her parents that she should start attending a rigorous private school, a place where no one knows the old Ava and she can make herself over without anyone from her old life commenting on the change.

While her new look immediately ingratiates Ava with the popular "pastels" of the school, that doesn't make her new life easy. Joining the stage crew of the school musical (after an epic crash and burn at the actual auditions) in order to be close to the cutest boy on campus, Ava finds the "Screws" are the school's social lepers - and decides that she's now qualified to give them a social leg up even while she's precariously balancing her new social status, and hiding her new self from her old girlfriend and family. Most troubling to Ava is balancing her emotions - she still feels close to her girlfriend Chloe, but she undeniably finds the lead guy in the musical hot, and then there's the cute and helpful leader of the Screws who makes her feel all sorts of confused. Which Ava is the real Ava? And will she ever become comfortable with herself?

For me, Ava herself was the biggest problem of the story, in that she doesn't seem to actually grow in any meaningful way. The best illustration of this for me was when she tried to play matchmaker among the Screws, and it fails miserably, in part because Ava makes a lot of assumptions about the people whose hearts she's toying with. But in the end, Ava pulls the exact same stunt...only because it's a platonic set up everyone's okay with it? Also I have to say that while I love having a character proudly call herself a feminist, Ava has some extremely retrograde and ill-informed feminist thoughts. Which would be okay if she'd come up with them independently but considering her parents are professors and should be on the cutting edge of gender studies, it doesn't make sense that Ava would be so incredibly wrong sometimes (and really, asking the kid of Asian descent where he's "really" from? Wow, not okay. And that's pointed out in the text, but is again illustrative of just how out of touch with progressive and feminist thought Ava is).

BUT, it is encouraging to see a story with a bisexual protagonist - not that Ava uses the label for herself, but it's probably the closest label that fits. She makes it very clear that her relationship with Chloe is real and important and certainly not just a phase, and while it's a little preachy I did feel it was important to include some acknowledgement of the legitimacy of that relationship to make it clear that Ava wasn't just a lesbian until the "right guy" came along to straighten her out.

Also, science fiction geeks will have a lot of fun with Ava's stage crew friends, as they are huge nerds. In a delightful way. Lots of discussions of Star Trek and Lord of the Rings and zombies and...just general geekery. Gotta love that.

Review: Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland

My first introduction to Susan Vreeland was in high school when I read The Passion of Artemisia. At the time it was being considered for the BBYA list because of the teenage protagonist. It didn't end up making the list, but it was a powerful story - based on the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, a 17th century painter who often depicted strong women of the Bible and mythology. A haunting and captivating story. So when I heard that Vreeland had a new book, I knew I needed to get it - I didn't even look to see if it was based on a real person this time around and just dove in!

Like Artemisia, Clara Driscoll is an artist constricted by society's attitudes about what women can and should accomplish. Instead of paintings, however, Clara works in glass, and is responsible for creating some of the most famous designs for Louis Comfort Tiffany's innovative glass lamps.

While working for Tiffany is a dream come true in some ways, it's incredibly stifling in others. The unionized male glass workers don't appreciate the women's department, headed by Clara, getting some of the greatest commissions. And while Tiffany is rather forward thinking in hiring women at all, he has old fashioned notions about married women, namely that they shouldn't be working. Clara resigned from Tiffany's once before to get married, but returned upon the death of her husband. She longs to have a romantic companion in her life again, but is also loyal to Mr. Tiffany, and then there's the matter of her life's passion in being an artist. How is Clara supposed to choose?

There are also wonderful subplots and minor characters - Clara has several gay friends she interacts with throughout the story, growing quite close to some of them, but my favorite recurring subplot had to be Clara's burgeoning social consciousness and labor organizing. When the male glassworkers start grumbling about all the work the women are doing, Clara organizes all of the women to march to work in solidarity under the banner of labor rights and women's rights. She counsels many of the young women in her department to improve their skills so they can earn more money to support their families, and delay marriage as long as possible to be sure they can start their married lives with a bit of money of their own. She also gets a bicycle, which just makes me want to read Wheels of Change even more (NYPL, Queens Library: WHY DON'T YOU HAVE IT YET?!). I have a feeling Clara's bike rides really illustrate a lot of what that book is talking about.

Clara has some thoroughly modern attitudes, but they're tempered by some truly Victorian attitudes that keep her from coming across as too 21st century, such as buying into the "benevolent" stereotype that women are more attuned to color so it's okay that they are segregated in their own department in the glass factory. She's overall a great character because she has so many different interests, passions, and problems that she truly comes to life. The same can't be said for all of the side characters, as especially some of the men in the periphery of Clara's life are hard to distinguish from each other.

So was Clara Driscoll a real person? Absolutely - though no one knew it until 2006. Because I'm a huge geek I would have liked a longer author's note at the end about Vreeland's research. While she relates the discovery of Clara's letters that led to the re-evaluation of the design of Tiffany lamps, I wondered how much of the characterization of other historical characters were based on fact - especially Louis Comfort Tiffany himself. But hey, I suppose I can find a biography of him on my own and try to learn for myself what may have been fact and what was fiction in Vreeland's complex depiction.

Sci Fi Friday Double Review: ANIMORPHS #1 & #2, by K.A. Applegate

I've mentioned a few times before, here and in various blogger profiles I've done for other blogs, that I absolutely loved the Animorphs series when I was younger. It's been just about 14 years since I got my first book - Easter Sunday, 1997, I woke up to find a book tucked in amongst the candy in my Easter basket. A red book with a weird picture on the cover of a girl turning into a cat.

I stuck through the whole series for five years, through the ups and (devastatingly terrible) downs that the 62 book series took. I ran a fan website, wrote tons and tons of fan fiction, and made some of the best friends a girl could ever hope to have, all because of these books.

So even though the books didn't go out on the highest note, I was beyond excited when I heard they were getting re-released, with some small updates to correct mistakes and bring the books into the 21st century. And when Cindy asked me if I wanted to check out the galley copies she had, I about had a heart attack from excitement. I still have all of my original books (including that 14 year old copy of The Visitor...as well as a copy of the second print run version and a copy in German) but I wanted to see what had been changed in these new versions. What I was entirely prepared for was a) the huge wave of nostalgia I felt upon reading the opening lines and b) just how awesome these books still are all these years later! Trust me, there's nothing else like Animorphs out there for this age group right now.

The Invasion introduces us to Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie and Marco - five totally ordinary kids who make the fateful decision to walk home one night by cutting through an abandoned construction site. Their leisurely walk home is interrupted by a crashing space ship - and the kids make contact with their first alien, an Andalite called Prince Elfangor-Sirinal-Shamtul. He warns the group, telling them their planet is already being invaded by the Yeerks, slugs that crawl in through a person's ear before wrapping themselves around the brain and taking complete control of the body. Elfangor gives them the only weapon he can to defend their planet: the power to morph, to acquire the DNA of any animal and then change into that animal.

Jake, serious and responsible, quickly slips into the role of the leader of the group. The others all have strongly defined personalities as well: Rachel is fearless, Cassie compassionate, Marco a wiseass with a tragic past, and Tobias is quiet and shy with a good dose of tragedy of his own. Each book is told from a different character's point of view, so these first two give us the deepest looks into Jake and Rachel. If the other characters don't seem the most complex yet, just you wait.

The Visitor is set a short time later. Just long enough for the group to recover after some of the horrors they experienced in the last book before launching into another mission. This time we follow Rachel as she spends most of her time on reconnaissance missions into enemy territory, sneaking into the home of a friend in order to spy on her parents who are Controllers - people who have been taken over by the Yeerks. It's less action packed than The Invasion, but still filled with tension and drama of a different sort.

If you thought The Hunger Games was a little too violent...well, Animorphs isn't much better. It's not kids killing kids, but it does involve aliens being eaten alive by other aliens on a semi-regular basis. And Applegate doesn't pull away from these darker scenes - they're not gratuitous, but are certainly well-described.

K.A. Applegate absolutely doesn't condescend to her audience or pull any punches. I know the books end up dealing with some really serious moral issues, including war, murder/killing, the nature of evil and so on, but I'd kind of forgotten how outright violent they start. And I love it. The theme of the whole series is about war and its affects on people (much like the culmination of The Hunger Games), and you can't adequately explore that without getting into some bleak moments. Like I said, the descriptions aren't gratuitous - there isn't a grisly scene just for the sake of being edgy or dark - but they are definitely there, and are part of what really set these books apart (they're intended for ages 8-12...I was 12 when the series started. omg, I'm so old, and always have been in this fandom!).

There are also lots of little bits of awesome commentary that slip into these books. I immediately identified with Rachel back in the day (and she remains one of my favorite literary characters of all time), not only because she was tough and fierce and tall like I wanted to be, but she has lots of feminist moments, taking jabs at the boys when she thinks they are being unreasonably protective. There are also two characters of color - Marco is Hispanic and Cassie African-American. Their races are only mentioned in passing (until time travelling starts happening much later in the series), but it's there. There's also a bit of class consciousness - Marco's dad is extremely messed up after the death of Marco's mother a few years ago, meaning that money is short and they don't live in the greatest of neighborhoods. Meanwhile Rachel is the daughter of divorced parents but has her own credit card. It gets a little bit into Five Token Band territory (warning: TVTropes link), but as their distinct personalities develop it doesn't feel like lazy stereotyping.

For a 15 year old series (I got into the game a year late), it holds up surprisingly well. There's nothing here that screams mid-90s, and as someone who read these books obsessively, I can also tell you that the updating is quite minimal. The biggest update was changing a major continuity error in the first book (well, it wasn't a continuity error then, but they made a big deal out of the opposite thing happening in subsequent books). Otherwise it was like changing the name of a specific game system to just say "system." When I read the new Babysitter's Club prequel last summer, the writing felt like it definitely could have fit in with the original books...which wasn't the greatest thing. Those books were kind of clunky - like the template of the second chapter of every book detailing the characters. Nothing about these books feel dated, other than the fact that they are designed to be a monthly science fiction series - a genre you don't see at the book store too often anymore.

The Invasion and The Visitor will be released in May. Right now I believe the plans are for the first six books to get re-released over the next two years, so this definitely won't be the snappy pace I got used to back in middle school. Old school Animorph fans won't find much terribly new here - if your original books are still in your parents' basement, you're not missing out on anything if you just stick with those. But if tragedy struck so you don't have them anymore, and now you've got a serious craving for some old school Animorphs, you'll be pleased with these. Though I'm sad the corner morphing flipbook is gone :-( On the other hand: lenticular covers! The original cover style never excited me (that's book #4 to the right), and the new cover style isn't translating well into online images - the background patterns are much richer in real life, and the lenticular action is really quite good!

So, to sum up an incredibly long entry, let me just say this: I am so excited to see these books come back so that a whole new generation can get to know these amazing books.

Reviewed from galley copies. The Invasion and The Visitor will be released in May!

Review: Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang

Found via: Reading in Color


Considering how much historical fiction out right now is about privileged Western European and American girls in the last 150 years or so falling in love with various bad boys, it's refreshing to find a novel that is so completely different. In Daughter of Xanadu, we're talking 14th century Mongolia, and while there's a certain amount of privilege present (our protagonist is a princess), the romantic story arc is relegated to the back burner. Instead, this is a true coming of age story for a young woman trying to find her place in a world that is simultaneously foreign and totally familiar.

Emmajin is the eldest granddaughter of the great Khan Khubilai. While her sister and other women of the palace are content with the life of luxury being royalty brings, Emmajin has one dream: to become a soldier in her grandfather's army. When foreigners from Christendom come to the palace on a trade mission, the Khan asks Emmajin to work as a spy and befriend the foreign man Marco Polo, and report back on everything she's learned. Emmajin agrees, hoping that her compliance, in addition to her amazing archery and horse riding skills, will ensure her entrance into the army.

Marco is utterly foreign to Emmajin. He cannot shoot an arrow or wield a sword - his only defenses are his wit and his storytelling, less than useless to Emmajin. And yet despite her best defenses, Marco's charm begins to work on Emmajin, and even as her dreams are fulfilled she finds herself questioning if the way of the warrior is truly her destiny.

One thing I absolutely loved about this is that Emmajin becomes a warrior on her own terms, rather than having to masquerade as a man. Yes, being a princess helped, but she also recognizes that in order to be accepted by the men she's going to have to be even better than they are - just as modern women often feel they have to be to compete in male-dominated fields.

Every once in awhile, the relationship between Marco and Emmajin made me a little anxious. Christendom (Europe) and Mongolia are often presented as total opposites - and more often than not Emmajin seems to be coming around to the Western view of how things "should be," so at times I was getting vibes of the Western man civilizing the wild savages of the east. Thankfully, Yang is able to thoroughly describe Emmajin's evolving ideas so it becomes clear it's not just Marco's influence. I'd have liked it if we could have seen Marco adapting a bit more to Mongolian ways so it would be more like a true cultural exchange, but the ending is left open enough that maybe Yang can pull together another book out of that!

Like I said in the introduction, above all else this is Emmajin's coming of age story. She's truly learning what it means to be an adult and have to make tough choices and learn new things about herself. Yang has done an excellent job describing 14th century Mongolia, and by including the familiar character of Marco Polo she has a seamless way to weave all of the amazing facts about this setting into the narrative while rarely dragging down the story. A refreshing change of pace from a lot of the historical fiction/romance out there today! (And a brief aside: a book with a wonderful cover! After the whitewashing controversies of the last few years, 2011 is shaping up to be an amazing year for proudly putting the faces of characters of color on covers!)

Sci Fi Friday Review: XVI by Julia Karr

This has probably been one of my most-anticipated books of the year so far. What wasn't there to love about it? Dystopian SF that is actually feminist? So perhaps some of my ultimate disappointment comes from high expectations, but I'm pretty sure even if I'd gone in blind I would have come to a lot of the same conclusions.

All Nina Oberon wants is a totally normal, ordinary, boring life. Unfortunately, Nina is mere weeks away from turning 16 - an age all of her friends are eagerly waiting for, since they will receive their government-mandated tattoos and finally be "sex-teens," free to have sex whenever they want.

But Nina doesn't want to have sex. She doesn't even want a boyfriend. She wants to live in peace with her mom and little sister, and avoid her mom's skeevy boyfriend. But when her mother is mysteriously murdered, all of Nina's carefully laid plans are thrown out the window. With her dying breath, Nina's mother makes her promise to deliver a baby book to her father. The only problem: Nina's father died the night she was born. The truth about her father is one of many mysteries Nina must unlock, while trying to avoid her mother's evil ex, meeting a mysterious new boy, and trying to counter her best friend Sandy's increasingly sex-teen ways.

While the premise here is sound, it totally falls apart in the execution by committing one of the gravest sins in speculative fiction - failing to define the new world the readers are dumped in to. Many of the important aspects of this future society are left unexplained - most egregiously the importance of the titular XVI tattoos. Why on Earth is the government so invested in the sexual goings-on of teenage girls? And while I can easily come up with half a dozen reasons the tattoo is mandatory for girls but apparently not for boys, I'd really like to have seen at least the government cover story for the tattoo. Another under-explained point were the Female Liaison Specialists, or FeLS - we know it's really the only way for lower class girls to rise in rank and that they must be virgins, and we end up learning what the real purpose of the organization is, but the cover story is foggy.

Almost as bad, is the fact that I couldn't stand the protagonist. Nina is the worst kind of dystopian protagonist: the one that not only recognizes she lives in a dystopia, but coincidentally holds 21st century values and isn't afraid of telling us and anyone else that will listen why she is better than everyone else for her enlightened views. I don't know why she and Sandy put up with each other - Nina clearly is contemptuous of everything that Sandy finds important. Why would Sandy not only put up with that disdain, but consider Nina her best friend? Nina is also conveniently open minded about people from all classes - she doesn't have a classist bone in her body and goes out of her way to help homeless people, even when it means putting herself in great physical danger. Noble indeed, but very little textual support for having such a counter-cultural attitude.

Slang is a tricky part of any YA novel, and most SF in general, but Karr comes across as quite tone deaf when she makes one of the most-used slang words in the novel a 21st century slur against transgendered people. Really, there was no better way to refer to transportation as "transports" which is then shortened into "trannies"? It was especially disturbing when, before it was made clear what trans/trannies was short for, a character who's been in a fight is asked if he "kissed a trannie." It just made me really uncomfortable and kept pulling me out of the book (which happened quite often because damn do these kids talk about the various transportation options a lot). Please folks, if you're going to make up words for your book, do a quick Google search to make sure it's not associated with something else (do not Google "trannies" while at work - the first several hits are porn sites, which should be the first clue this wasn't the best word choice).

There's lots more I could critique here - including the mystical Asian healer stereotype and this being another entry in the trend of dystopian stories eliminating/ignoring homosexuality - but I think we'd be here all day.

The novel wraps up rather neatly, so I don't think this is going to be part of that growing trend of releasing dystopian stories in trilogies. On the one hand, there's clearly a lot of worldbuilding that could be expanded upon in a sequel, but on the other, all of the major storylines were wrapped up so neatly that there's very little actual story left.

Nonfiction Monday Review: The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge

I'm kind of a bad English major - I've actually never read one of Edith Wharton's novels. So why did I pick up this biography? Because even if I haven't read her work, I'm still fascinated by women who defied social expectations and made a career for themselves - and Edith Wharton was certainly one of those women.

Born into a wealthy New York family, Edith lived a charmed life from an early age, especially as she spent most of her early years in Paris. When she and her family returned to New York, it was at a time of social upheaval, as the old guard of society was clashing with the uppity new money folks, who had made their money off of coal or railroads, rather than inheriting it as Edith's parents had.

While her mother was heavily invested in maintaining the old ways - notably including the notion that a woman's name should appear in print only when she is born, married, or has died - Edith rebels subtly. Obsessed with the written word, Edith writes mostly for herself for years before finally striking out to publish her works publicly - and under her own name.

Wooldridge has put together a fascinating look at this woman who was well ahead of her time. Not only did Wharton not much for social conventions against writing, she also made waves for socializing primarily with men in Parisian literary salons, spurring on the modern interior decorating movement, driving fast cars, and organizing massive relief efforts in Europe during World War I. But despite these trailblazing efforts, we also get glimpses at her weaker moments, too - her self-doubt about the quality of her writing, and the painful deterioration of her marriage and love life. The book is also peppered with plenty of period photographs and copies of Wharton's letters and manuscripts, really bringing the era to life. Living in New York myself now, I'll admit I was entertained to discover that I now work in the same neighborhood that Edith Wharton lived in when she was young - and chuckled at the idea that 59th street was so far up town that her family was worried they wouldn't be able to safely visit a family member that had moved there.

This is a lovely book, and I wouldn't really want to change anything about it, but reading this out in public was a little unwieldy, and it made me realize that almost all YA nonfiction is in a larger format than novels, or even a lot of nonfiction published for adults. Now, some books absolutely require large pages for pictures and for multiple pictures to be included right alongside the text in order to do the subject justice - Frozen Secrets and its amazing panoramas of Antarctica as well as its charts and illustrations of complex scientific facts comes to mind - but why must a biography be in the same oversized format? It makes it more difficult to bring the book along for reading on the go. Anyone out there know why all teen nonfiction falls into this format?




This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Picture Book of the Day. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Review: I Am J by Cris Beam

A book about a transgender teenage boy of color. Excellent. A book about a transgender teenage boy of color that I can recommend because it's a great book not just because it fills a void? Awesome.

For as long as he can remember, J has been positive that he is actually a boy. Unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn't see him that way - to his parents, he is still Jeni, their beloved daughter, despite the short hair, boxers, and baggy male clothes. All his life, J has hoped and prayed for some sort of miracle - that he'd wake up one day and be in the body he belongs in. A few months before his 18th birthday, the next best thing happens: he discovers testosterone shots, the best chance he has before surgery of starting to look how he feels.

Comfortable in his decision to truly live the way he sees himself, J still has a host of obstacles to overcome. Parents that don't want to lose their daughter. A self-absorbed best friend that J might have feelings for. And the cute girl at the downtown Starbucks that definitely has feelings for J - without knowing what he's hiding beneath his layers of clothes. But J is determined that nothing will distract him from his ultimate goal - living as the man he wants to be.

Some of J's struggles are incredibly intense. Reading about the discord between him and his parents was terribly painful, mostly because both of J's parents seem like real people. They're well-meaning, but flawed, blinded by their love for the child they want to be raising rather than the child they have. We see more of J's mother than his father, but his father still makes quite an impact on the scenes he's in.

I loved that, unlike many other LGBT novels, the angst and main conflict in this doesn't stem from J questioning his identity and freaking out over it - from page one J knows that he should have been born in the body of a boy, and the conflict arises from his struggle to get the rest of the world to recognize the validity of that feeling. However, I'm not quite sure I buy the fact that J didn't learn about testosterone or chest binders until he was almost 18 - not when he says he's seen pictures of sexual reassignment surgeries online. But it's about the only convenient coincidence in the novel, and having J learn about these at the start of the novel means we aren't subjected to awkward info-dumps on Trans 101.

This is a beautifully multicultural book - one that reflects what New York City actually looks like. All sizes, shapes, colors, genders, and sexual orientations are represented in a very organic way. The downside is this also means the darker side of people comes out sometimes - it was a little uncomfortable to see gay and trans characters calling bisexuals "gross," but it does go to show that just because you are a member of one oppressed group, that doesn't mean you magically understand and love all others.

Being a cisgendered woman, I can't comment on whether J's story is actually authentic or not - all I can say is that it feels totally real, both the good and the bad parts. Beam includes an author's note that details her research process - she's written a nonfiction book about transgender teen girls and the ideas for J's story sprung from her notes and research on transgender boys that didn't fit into her nonfiction work. She definitely seems like she's done the research, and has done an excellent job of shedding light on an under-represented community.

Reviewed from an ARC picked up at ALA annual 2010. I Am J is now available - check it out soon!

Book Links: Bitch, Please: Bitch removes titles from YA feminist list

Last week, Bitch Magazine posted a list of 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader. Considering I'd just put together my own list of feminist YA books the weekend before, I was definitely interested. I didn't have time to do a deep analysis of what made the list and what didn't, but I was happy to see that there was quite a bit of overlap between the two lists - including books that I consider slightly more obscurely-feminist, like Rampant and Sisters Red.

So imagine my surprise when I get on Twitter tonight and find that the list has been changed! First I was hearing about Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels being removed. Upon further investigation into the comments, I find that Elizabeth Scott's Living Dead Girl and (gasp) Sisters Red have also been removed.

A couple of us at the office read and re-read Sisters Red, Tender Morsels and Living Dead Girl this weekend.We've decided to remove these books from the list -- Sisters Red because of the victim-blaming scene that was discussed earlier in this post, Tender Morsels because of the way that the book validates (by failing to critique or discuss) characters who use rape as an act of vengeance, and Living Dead Girl because of its triggering nature. - Ashley McAllister

Cue internet freak-out.

Bitch totally has the right to use whatever criteria they wish when making up their personal list - but their reasoning here for changing that list is discomforting. Let's break it down:

• Tender Morsels: character uses rape as vengeance and isn't critiqued/discussed. If you have to have your hand held through Tender Morsels to realize that rape is Bad, you're not mature enough to be reading this book. This is a difficult, gut wrenching book to read. I didn't love it, I felt it dragged, but I never really had a problem with the violence (aside from generally feeling uncomfortable, which I felt was the point), because it's pretty damn obvious that this was all BAD. As commenters at Bitch have pointed out, Tender Morsels is about realizing that you can't hide from the pain and dangers of the world - a very feminist message, as most feminist literature is based on the idea that women need to share their stories, even the hard and painful ones, in order to break the silence around "shameful" things, LIKE RAPE.
• Living Dead Girl: triggering. Really? We're dropping a book because it may be triggering? Triggering (something that can give a survivor of violence - the sort that often leads to PTSD - terrifying flashbacks) is totally real and a legitimate concern in the feminist community. But to remove a book just because it is triggering is the opposite of the goals of feminist literature discussed above. Living Dead Girl is another terrifying and discomforting book, and could certainly be a trigger for survivors of abuse. But what about the survivors who find solace in knowing that they aren't the only ones who have suffered and survived? And Living Dead Girl is far from the only potentially triggering title on the list - Scott Westerfeld points out in the comments that he has actually received letters from cutters who found Pretties to be triggering.
• Sisters Red: victim blaming. The Book Smugglers critiqued Sisters Red because of one passage where Scarlett and Silas are dismissive towards young women who are dressed perfectly to attract the attention of the killer werewolves. Yes, it is classic victim blaming. Scarlett, however, is also a troubled young woman with anger issues, and Silas...well, I never totally dug him anyway. Is it a problematic passage? Absolutely. But it clearly wasn't so problematic that it negated the feminist qualities for the people who recommended the title to Bitch and for those readers who chose to ultimately put it on the list. If you re-read the book knowing there's a problem, of course it's going to stick out with out-sized importance. I'm afraid that distracted the re-readers from the other excellent qualities of the book.

I think a lot of us became interested in feminism because we recognize the world isn't a fun loving and happy place - especially for women and other oppressed peoples. We search in vain for feminist literature that not only reflects the realities of the world, but reaffirms that we're right to fight back and offers examples of young women and men who do so - whether it's Frankie orchestrating epic pranks to illustrate institutional sexism or Katsa fighting prejudice against her abilities and her gender to show she can save the day as well as (or better than) any man. Removing a few titles because they illustrate some of the darkness of the world in a way that makes some people uncomfortable is pretty much the antithesis of feminism. Make a note about which titles are potentially triggering, but editing the list this way is insulting to everyone invovled.

What Have I Missed? Review: A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

Recommended by: Bob

A Northern Light is one of the books that inspired me to start this challenge. Bob had recommended it to me ages and ages ago, but I never got around to it because I wanted to keep up with all of the new titles coming out. When I started seeing people rave about Jennifer Donnelly's Revolution I knew her name sounded familiar...all because A Northern Light was still in the back of my mind as a book I needed to read! So I decided this needed to be the first book I challenged myself to - and that my reward for getting this challenge under way would be getting to read Revolution next!

In 1906, in a small farming community and summer tourist town, Mattie Gokey dreams of going to New York City to study writing, to share her stories of everyday life with the rest of the world. But realistically, Mattie knows she's never going to leave North Woods. Her mother has recently died, leaving Mattie and her three sisters alone with their father, who can barely bring in enough money to keep food on the table through the winter. Even if she could get a scholarship to cover her tuition, where would she get the money for lodging, clothes and books? And then there's the fact that handsome Royal Loomis has come courting, and Mattie is feeling a surprising impulse to stay at home and settle down.

Taking a summer job at a big tourist hotel to help out her family and put away a little savings for herself, Mattie is implored one day by guest Grace Brown to burn a bundle of letters. Mattie takes the letters, but keeps them hidden, just in case Grace ever asks for them back. Until Grace's drowned body is pulled from the lake, the apparent victim of a boating accident. The young man she was traveling with is nowhere to be found. Mattie begins reading the letters, hoping for a clue as to who Grace was, and maybe for a little guidance from beyond the grave for who Mattie should be.

Donnelly weaves lots of complicated themes into what is on the surface a basic coming of age story with a bit of mystery. Classism is big, ranging from the rich tourists coming in to land that's been settled by poor farmers, to the poor farmers looking down on those who are even poorer. Sexism is the other big one, and all the myriad ways it rears its ugly head. There's the expected views that women shouldn't be educated, but also ideas about what is appropriate for women to be writing about and how to handle sexual harassment. Mattie's best friend is African-American, and she gives us a first hand look at the ugly realities of racism in a Northern state 40 years after the end of th Civil War. Want more? There's also wonderful questions about decency and obscenity, both in people's actions and in literature through the books Mattie's beloved teacher surreptitiously loans her.

My one irritant in this book is the use of Mattie's dictionary word of the day. On the one hand, it's a fun trope and is used well to indicate when a particular chapter is set (the story goes back and forth between the discovery of Grace's body and the months leading up to Mattie taking the position at the hotel). On the other hand, the bit began to wear thin about halfway through the novel as Mattie often would struggle with how the word did or didn't fit how her day was going. I felt that the idea was well established enough at that point that it could have been left to the reader to figure out how a word did or didn't fit thematically, and only have Mattie mention it when it was an important comment on the story.

Huge thanks to Bob for recommending this to me! Next on my list? Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, winner of the Printz in 2005 and recommended by Rachel!

Book List: Feminist YA Novels

"Feminism is a whole state of being. It’s having lenses on your eyes, your ears, all your senses all the time. You’re not a feminist just when you’re doing activism work, you’re a feminist all the time. You’re a feminist when you’re watching a movie, where you decide to go out, the way you make your economic choices. All the smallest details and the biggest details." - Farah Salka, coordinator for Nasawiya, a feminist group in Lebanon

If you've been reading my blog for any appreciable amount of time, you know by now that I am a huge feminist. Feminism informs pretty much everything I do, which includes what books I read and how I read them.

The ALA has released the Amelia Bloomer Project list since 2002, highlighting the panel's choices for feminist titles for readers from birth through 18. I find it to be an extremely helpful list, and follow their nominations blog religiously. But for a while I've been wanting to put together my own list, that highlights both my favorite explicitly feminist books, as well as books that may exemplify feminist ideas while not feeling like a traditionally feminist book. By putting this list together, I hope to illustrate that feminism doesn't have just one meaning or purpose, and is in fact a movement and ideal that should be supported by all human beings.

In order to make it onto this list, a book must fit four criteria: 1) must be a young adult novel 2) I have to have read it 3) Must have at least one feminist element 4) I have to like it enough to recommend to others! This isn't an exhaustive list, but I am always taking new suggestions - let me know if you think there's anything I missed!

Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982
Feminist points: lesbian romance, discrimination based on sexual-orientation
After Liza and Annie cross paths at a museum, the girls find themselves to be inseparable. But their feelings go far beyond friendship, and blossom into a tender romance they feel they have to hide from their friends and family in New York City in the early 1980s. A ground breaking book that holds up extremely well almost 30 years after publication, a subplot about a lesbian teacher being fired due to her sexual orientation doesn't feel so much like historical fiction even today.


Ashes of Roses by Mary Jane Auch. Laurel Leaf, 2002
Feminist points: young woman on her own, women entering workforce, worker's rights
16 year old Rose Nolan immigrates from Ireland to New York City in 1911. Beset by obstacles from the moment she steps off the boat with her family, Rose and her sister end up in the big city on their own, renting a room from a labor organizer, whose daughter arranges for Rose to work with her at the famous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.

Brooklyn Nine by Alan Gratz. Penguin young readers, 2009
Feminist points: women in sports, education of women
Nine short stories tell the story of nine generations of one family and their connections to baseball, from 1845-2002. Two stories look at women and the game: in 1926, Frankie is a genius when it comes to numbers and loves baseball statistics, but has already decided she won't be going to college because of her gender. In 1945, Kat travels from New York City to the midwest to play for the Grand Rapids Chicks in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League

Crossing Stones by Helen Frost. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009
Feminist points: US suffrage movement
A novel in verse following 18 year old Muriel Jorgensen, and her family's neighbors the Normans. When Frank Norman - who Muriel is beginning to think of as more than a friend - and Muriel's brother enlist to fight in World War I, Muriel and Frank's sister, Emma, are left to help keep up the home front. When Muriel isn't contemplating the war, she is fascinated by the rapidly-growing suffrage movement, which her aunt is protesting for even as the US goes to war.


The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. Hyperion, 2008
Feminist points: Self-identified feminist protagonist, institutional sexism, expression and conceptions of femininity
At 14, Frankie Landau-Banks is a mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school. When she comes back for her sophomore year, she's morphed over the summer into a girl with a chip on the shoulder of her knock-out body. Frustrated by her boyfriend's participation in an all-male secret society, Frankie plans epic pranks to show who has the real brains, and hopefully open the minds of her classmates.

Empress of the World and Rules for Hearts by Sara Ryan Puffin, 2001 and Viking Juvenile, 2007.
Feminist points: strong female friendships, lesbian and bisexual romance
In Empress, Nicola Lancaster is attending a summer camp for gifted students in order to further her dreams of becoming in archeologist. On the first day she meets the beautiful Battle Hall Davies, and finds herself instantly smitten. Nic wrestles with her conceptions of love and dating and her own identity while learning the important lesson that "words don't always work." Rules for Hearts picks up Battle's story the summer before she goes to college. She and Nic have broken up on amicable terms, and Battle is now spending the summer living in a co-op house with a Shakespeare theatre company and falling for her roommate Meryl.

Every Little Thing in the World by Nina de Gramont. Atheneum, 2010
Feminist points: abortion, sexual orientation, gendered stereotypes
When 16 year old Sydney discovers she's pregnant, the only person she can tell is her best friend, Natalia, who takes Sydney to a party to confront the father. When the party is busted by the cops, Natalia and Sydney's parents send the girls on a six week camping trip into the Canadian wilderness - and Sydney never has a chance to tell her parents about the pregnancy, or the fact that she's pretty sure she wants an abortion. She spends the trip trying to hide her pregnancy from her fellow campers, and dealing with Natalia's evolving opinions on how the pregnancy should be handled.

Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John. Dial, 2010
Feminist points: women in entertainment, strong female friendships, disability
When Piper sees the school's latest rock band giving an impromptu concert on the school's front steps, she's drawn to their charisma and spunk - though not their music. Severely deaf, Piper hears only with hearing aids and has never been able to make out much music. So everyone is skeptical when Piper steps up to manage the band. Determined to prove her worth as a manager, and earn extra money for college after her parents raided her college fund to pay for a cochlear implant for her baby sister, Piper must meld the various flavors of Dumb - the diva lead singer, the talentless eye-candy, the surly bassist, the silent guitarist, and musical prodigy drummer - into one coherent sound.

Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith. Speak, 2009
Feminist points: racism, women in traditionally male jobs, women in the military.
Ida Mae Jones wants, more than anything else, to be a pilot like her father. But as an African-American woman in Louisiana in the 1940s, she knows her chances are slim to none. Until she sees an ad for female pilots to join the newly formed Women Airforce Service Pilots to support the US's efforts in WWII. Outside of her hometown, no one will know the girl with a tan is actually a light skinned African-American - or so Ida hopes as she finds herself stationed in Texas, a dangerous place for a woman in her position if she were ever discovered.

Graceling and Fire by Kristin Cashore. Harcourt Children's, 2008 and Dial, 2009.
Feminist points: choices of children and marriage, sexual harassment, menstruation, generally bad-ass female protagonists
In many ways, Katsa and Fire are two sides of the same coin, facing many similar problems and reacting in different ways. In Graceling, Katsa is "graced" with almost supernatural killing abilities, making her a useful assassin for her uncle the king. Katsa, however, prefers to use her fighting skills to help those who her abusive uncle would hurt. Teaming up with Po, another Graceling with fighting skills to match Katsa's own, it is up to the pair to defeat a tyrant. Fire is a prequel to Graceling and set in a different part of the world, "where monsters come out of the sea and air, and armies burst out of holes in the mountains, and the people are different from anyone we’ve ever known." Fire is half-monster herself, gifting her with psychic abilities as well as cursing her with being devastatingly attractive to both men and monsters who will do anything to have or destroy her. It is a tumultuous time in the Dells as various factions are plotting to overthrow the king. As battlelines are drawn, Fire is drawn into the fight.

Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey. Little, Brown and Company, 2010.
Feminist points: critiques of mythology, sexual orientation (asexual), multicultural cast
Set at a boarding school in New Zealand, Ellie's life revolves around her best friend Kevin, her crush on Markk, and choreographing fight scenes for a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Until a woman in the play sets her eyes on Kevin, and Ellie worries about her influence on her best friend. Soon Ellie finds herself drawn into the world of Maori mythology - myths that, it turns out, are dangerously real, as the patupaiarehe seek to destroy as many human lives as possible in order to gain their own immortality.

Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis. Knopf, 2009
Feminist points: racism and sexism in the military, women in the military, female family bonding
Octavia and Talitha are mortified when they learn they're going on a summer roadtrip with their eccentric grandmother, Mare. The girl's can't see past her unconventional name, looks and car - until Mare spends the drive telling them about her service in WWII with the African-American battalion of the Women's Army Corps, lying about her age in order to escape life in the deep South and spending the war in Europe.

The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2010
Feminist points: date rape, victim blaming
When Alex wakes up in bed with a guy she barely knows, she quietly starts to panic. As flashes of memory break through her hangover, she realizes a terrible truth: she was date raped. Her elite boarding school, however, seems to be of the opinion that its students can and will do no wrong, so Alex has two choices: keep the incident to herself and avoid the cafeteria where the guy and his buddies snicker about her, or go to The Mockingbirds, the secretive student group, set up to bring justice to Themis Academy students wronged by their peers.

A Northern Light  by Jennifer Donnelly. Harcourt, 2003
Feminist points: sexism, classism, racism, education of women, appropriate roles for women
It's 1906 in northern New York and Mattie Gokey's dream is to leave the hardscrabble life on her father's small farm to study writing and live in New York City. But after her mother's death and her brother running away, extra money and hands are what her father needs most. When Mattie convinces him she should take a job at a hotel on the lake, he grudgingly accepts. Mattie continues to dream big, but also recognizes the stability that marrying the handsome Royal would bring. Just as she thinks she might be content somewhere other than the city, hotel guest Grace Brown's drowned body is recovered from the lake. In the face of a life cut tragically short, Mattie must reevaluate her own decisions.

Rampant and Ascendant by Diana Peterfreund. HarperTeen 2009 and 2010.
Feminist points: women working together, strong female friendships, female family bonding, women warriors, historical roles for women
Unicorns aren't all sparkles and rainbows. They are, in fact, vicious killers who can only be stopped by highly trained female virgin warriors. Unfortunately, it's been 150 years since any woman has trained to fight unicorns, so when unicorn attacks begin out of nowhere, a group of eligible young women are hastily assembled in a former Roman convent. Astrid Llewellyn is the descendant of one of the most successful unicorn hunters ever, but spends most of Rampant resisting what others are trying to force upon her as her birthright. A young woman of science, Astrid wants to study the unicorns and empirically test the most effective fighting techniques, but is brushed off by the convents sponsors because she is wanted for her fighting skills and nothing else. In Ascendant, Astrid has mastered her fighting technique, but still wants to apply scientific principles to the unicorns, especially as her best friend's abilities are mysteriously weakening. When given the chance to work with Gordian pharmaceuticals in the French countryside, Astrid leaps at the chance to help her fellow hunters, and possibly even the world if she can help them discover the means to make the much-sought-after Remedy.

Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2010.
Feminist points: work/life balance, sexuality, sisterhood, women warriors
Scarlett March has one purpose in her life: to hunt Fenris, the werewolves that killed her grandmother and took Scarlett's eye while she was protecting her little sister, Rosie. Rosie has never stopped feeling like she owes Scarlett her life, so for years she has aided in the Fenris hunt, even though she's not sure hunting is what she wants to do with the rest of her life. As local Fenris activity is on the rise, and Scarlett's former hunting partner Silas returns to help, the sisters both know they have to be on the top of their game.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. Puffin, 1999.
Feminist points: rape
It's the beginning of Melinda's freshman year of high school, and she has stopped talking. Not that many people notice - ever since she called the cops while at a party over the summer, everyone at school ignores her. Melinda knows what has silenced her - but questions whether she'll ever have the strength to confront him and recover her voice.

Uglies trilogy by Scott Westerfeld. Simon Pulse, 2005 and 2006.
Feminist points: female friendship, beauty standards, peer pressure
In a future where plastic surgery is mandated for all citizens at 16 in order to match the standards of the Pretty Committee, Tally Youngblood is just counting the days until she turns 16 and can join her best friend Paris as a Pretty. Until she meets Shay, a rebel who would rather not be turned Pretty, and is so committed that the day before her birthday she runs away to live in the woods with a bunch of outcasts Tally isn't even sure exist. Instead of being called in for her surgery, Tally meets with the terrifying Dr. Cable, who orders Tally to follow Shay into the wilderness and bring her and her fellow heretics back to civilization. Tally and Shay's relationship continues to evolve over the trilogy, as they first have to talk themselves out of acting Pretty, before being drafted into Dr. Cable's terrifying Special Circumstances.

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson. Viking Juvenile, 2009.
Feminist points: Eating disorders, body image
Lia and Cassie were best friends, encouraging each other on their never-ending quest to be thin. But now that Cassie is dead, Lia can only rely on the little voice in the back of her head encouraging her to remain in control, and to keep losing weight.

The Wonder of Charlie Anne by Kimberly Newton Fusco. Knopf, 2010.
Feminist points: sexism, racism, appropriate roles for women
With the Depression looming large, Charlie Anne is devastated when her father must go north to build roads, leaving Charlie Anne and her siblings alone with their cousin Mirabel, who seems determined to become their new mother. In between non-stop chores and scoldings to behave more lady-like, Charlie Anne is fascinated by the new wife her neighbor has brought home. Rosalyn wears bright red pants while the other women wear threadbare homespun dresses. She's also brought with her a young African-American girl, Phoebe, who has lost her mother, just like Charlie Anne. The two girls forge a friendship, in spite of the rudeness and outright hatred of their community.

Last updated: 1/23/11