The young adult novel Girlfriend in a Coma follows six people as they grow from naive high-schoolers to weathered adults, losing one in a coma but getting her back 17 years later. This book deals with both real life and the supernatural, making it captivating for fans of both genres. But this book also has many aspects that require maturity to understand, such as alcoholism, drugs, teenage pregnancies, and sex. There are many reasons supporting the possible questioning of this book, and vice versa.
As soon as you start reading Girlfriend in a Coma, you are faced with teenagers have intimate sexual relations upon a ski slope. Next, they attend a "house-wrecker" party with drugs and alcohol, but one of the main characters doesn't have anything--Karen is starving herself, taking pills upon pills to make herself thin for her trip to Hawaii. Fast forward until after Karen's in her coma, and you find her ex-boyfriend an alcoholic and her best friends overdosing on drugs. And then you find out that Karen's pregnant from that night on the ski slope. She has the baby in her vegetative state, and she gets pregnant at 16. Karen's a grandmother at 34. All of these situations seem as though they were taken out of 10 different young adult book and rolled into one, making an overwhelming novel filled with all of the things parents want to protect their children from. This is why Girlfriend in a Coma seems like a candidate for challenging.
On the other hand, the issues mentioned in the book are not glorified at all, even explaining the harsh reality of overdosing on heroin with the characters nearly dying side by side. At the end of the book, each person is granted a wish by an old, deceased friend (don't ask... it's a long story). The two friends struggling with drugs are both cleared of their addictions, and they are obviously ecstatic and newly in love with the world. When one character asks the other in wonder if she feels like getting high again, and she responds "'No... I like being inside my own skin again.'" This shows that the book is sending the message that drug use is dangerous and changes you, which is a good message to be sending to teens when they will be introduced to drugs for the first time. Therefore, the way the author writes about some of these issues in a degrading manner almost makes up for mentioning them, and even more.
Overall, I am still undecided about the appropriateness of Girlfriend in a Coma, but I know for certain that it teaches valuable (yet strange) lessons to teens.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood {non fiction}
Sherman Alexie's "Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood" essay is in response to Meghan Cox Gurdon's article "Darkness Too Visible", about the sudden increase of dark, horrifying young adult literature. Gurdon attacked these new books, calling them "lurid", "gruesome, and "stomach-clenching", arguing that the topics in YA books are just too dark for teens to handle. Alexie's essay was the exact opposite. He argues that these books are what gives teens comfort, pointing out that teens deal with the exact same issues authors write about in their books. Alexie is both an author of YA fiction and a victim of some of the issues that are mentioned, so he has a good idea of what teens go through. He says, "I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers... I write to give them weapons... I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed."
Alexie wanted me to feel that YA books are powerful enough to change a person's life, and he of all people should know. At the same time, he wanted me to disregard Gurdon's opinion, saying he "laughed at her condescension." One way he makes readers feel that Gurdon's statements are false is by saying that her article was simply "complaints" about contemporary teen literature, which makes it seem like her argument was not well supported and was just a few sentences from a snobby, whiny, unknowledgeable woman. One way Alexie tries to make readers understand the power of YA books on teens is by using structure, where he has bits of narrative about a certain teenager mixed in with his idea about teens in general and stories from his own life. This is very effective because it makes Alexie seem like one of the teens, so you trust him to know what he's talking about when he says that YA books are comforting to teens. In one paragraph, Alexie says, "There are millions of teens who read because they are sad and lonely and enraged... They read because they believe, despite the callow protestations of certain adults, that books--especially the dark and dangerous ones--will save them." He then follows this with two paragraphs about himself, about why he read when he was younger, and they are very similar.
Sherman Alexie did an amazing job of convincing me that YA books are important to teens and society in general, the darker the better. I learned that teens who read books about the issues they are dealing with gives them comfort and "weapons", which help them "fight their monsters". I felt like I was reading an essay by a teen, the people most affected by these discussions, but with the literary skills and years of Alexie.
Alexie wanted me to feel that YA books are powerful enough to change a person's life, and he of all people should know. At the same time, he wanted me to disregard Gurdon's opinion, saying he "laughed at her condescension." One way he makes readers feel that Gurdon's statements are false is by saying that her article was simply "complaints" about contemporary teen literature, which makes it seem like her argument was not well supported and was just a few sentences from a snobby, whiny, unknowledgeable woman. One way Alexie tries to make readers understand the power of YA books on teens is by using structure, where he has bits of narrative about a certain teenager mixed in with his idea about teens in general and stories from his own life. This is very effective because it makes Alexie seem like one of the teens, so you trust him to know what he's talking about when he says that YA books are comforting to teens. In one paragraph, Alexie says, "There are millions of teens who read because they are sad and lonely and enraged... They read because they believe, despite the callow protestations of certain adults, that books--especially the dark and dangerous ones--will save them." He then follows this with two paragraphs about himself, about why he read when he was younger, and they are very similar.
Sherman Alexie did an amazing job of convincing me that YA books are important to teens and society in general, the darker the better. I learned that teens who read books about the issues they are dealing with gives them comfort and "weapons", which help them "fight their monsters". I felt like I was reading an essay by a teen, the people most affected by these discussions, but with the literary skills and years of Alexie.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Faithful Elephants
The story Faithful Elephants by Yukio Tsuchiya takes place in Japan, in the Ueno Zoo. The story of three elephants during World War II is told to the author by a zoo employee in front of the elephant's tombstone. The elephants, Tonky, Wanly, and John, were ordered to be killed along with all of the other large and dangerous animals at the zoo, to ensure that the city would be safe if the animals ever got loose after bombs were dropped.
The plot and actions of the characters contribute to one of the overall themes that history is made up of good and bad decisions, with some overlaps and some so gray that you can't really tell. The most important example is the main conflict in the story, the decision to kill the elephants. I was shocked and horrified, like most people, at the inhumane way they were to carry it out. But then I realized that the reason to do so seemed valid, for both the elephants and the residents of the city. It would be safer for the people and less confusing, stressful and terrifying for the elephants.
The actions of the zookeeper that broke down and fed Tonky and Wanly was also an example of good and bad meshed together. In the story, it said that he was "sobbing, and clung to their thin legs. 'Eat your food! Please drink. Drink your water!'". At the time the trainer seemed like a saint and the hero of the story, but then you realized that the elephants still had to die, and all he did was give them hope and a few more long, painful days.
The setting details in Faithful Elephants are also symbolic of the theme. In the story, the cherry blossoms are blooming in the zoo, their petals "falling in the soft breeze and sparkling in the sun". This idea of things falling is repeated throughout the story, like when the employee telling the story says the "bombs were dropped on Tokyo everyday and night, like falling rain". In this sentence, both bombs and rain fall, but they are also quite different. Bombs would definitely be classified in the "bad" category, but what about rain? Rain often dampens the mood in a story and makes things gray and depressing, but it is also what keeps us alive. By saying this sentence, the employee is taking two contrasting ideas, life and death, and saying that their not so different after all.
Another example of this is when the author describes the scene at the end of the story, saying that "the cherry blossoms fell on the grave, like snowflakes". Cherry blossoms seem "good", but when the fall, it means the flowers are reaching the end of their peak, almost dead. Snow is cold and deadly, but it is also eerily and silently beautiful. This is an example of when the "good" and the "bad" come together to create something you can't exactly classify.
This is how history, and life in general, is made up -- out of events that have both positive and negative aspects, and you can't always tell which. The elephants died, and we won't ever know if it was in vain.
The plot and actions of the characters contribute to one of the overall themes that history is made up of good and bad decisions, with some overlaps and some so gray that you can't really tell. The most important example is the main conflict in the story, the decision to kill the elephants. I was shocked and horrified, like most people, at the inhumane way they were to carry it out. But then I realized that the reason to do so seemed valid, for both the elephants and the residents of the city. It would be safer for the people and less confusing, stressful and terrifying for the elephants.
The actions of the zookeeper that broke down and fed Tonky and Wanly was also an example of good and bad meshed together. In the story, it said that he was "sobbing, and clung to their thin legs. 'Eat your food! Please drink. Drink your water!'". At the time the trainer seemed like a saint and the hero of the story, but then you realized that the elephants still had to die, and all he did was give them hope and a few more long, painful days.
The setting details in Faithful Elephants are also symbolic of the theme. In the story, the cherry blossoms are blooming in the zoo, their petals "falling in the soft breeze and sparkling in the sun". This idea of things falling is repeated throughout the story, like when the employee telling the story says the "bombs were dropped on Tokyo everyday and night, like falling rain". In this sentence, both bombs and rain fall, but they are also quite different. Bombs would definitely be classified in the "bad" category, but what about rain? Rain often dampens the mood in a story and makes things gray and depressing, but it is also what keeps us alive. By saying this sentence, the employee is taking two contrasting ideas, life and death, and saying that their not so different after all.
Another example of this is when the author describes the scene at the end of the story, saying that "the cherry blossoms fell on the grave, like snowflakes". Cherry blossoms seem "good", but when the fall, it means the flowers are reaching the end of their peak, almost dead. Snow is cold and deadly, but it is also eerily and silently beautiful. This is an example of when the "good" and the "bad" come together to create something you can't exactly classify.
This is how history, and life in general, is made up -- out of events that have both positive and negative aspects, and you can't always tell which. The elephants died, and we won't ever know if it was in vain.
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