Looking for Alaska – John Green

Miles goes off to boarding school in Alabama looking for the Great Perhaps: adventure, meaning, real friends. He finds the usual assortment of oddballs, including Alaska: hot, confident, exceedingly smart, emotionally scarred, she’s an amazing friend one minute and a selfish bitch the next.

For the first half of the book, sections are labeled “___ days before,” (and in the second half, “___ days after,”) such that we know that Something Bad is going to happen in the general vicinity of Christmas or New Years. Before: booze, cigarettes, pranks, and the study of precalc and religion. After: booze, cigarettes, pranks, and the study of precalc and religion. Also after: trying to figure out what happened, trying to make sense of it, trying to explain it.

It’s not the type of book I usually read, but it came highly recommended , and it’s worth it. Much of the time, when I read books that really throw me into a teenage boy’s head, I feel that I just don’t get it. Excellent books that I enjoy and get a lot out of, but there’s a disconnect. This was just as much in a teenage boy’s head, but it still made sense. A lot of that’s the excellent writing and characterization. I think it’s also partly because so much of Miles’s experience that year involves Alaska; because a girl is so central to everything that’s going on, even the boys’ interactions with each other, it’s grounded in something I do (somewhat) understand.

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Looking for Alaska ~ John Green

 

Empress of the World – Sara Ryan

Teenage girls falling for each other at a summer program for academically gifted high schoolers. Need I say more?

Well, yes.

Empress of the World has two key factors which make it stand out from the general mass of teenage queer books: the main character and her love interest are bi, and there relationship has issues which are not related to their queerness. Now, we absolutely need books about lesbians, and we need books where issues of sexual orientation cause tension in romantic relationships. And we need books about straight people. Of course! But there are very few bi chicks in fiction – and as a bi chick in nonfiction, I really appreciate the representation.

The relationship in Empress of the World is delightfully realistic. They’re so sweet, they like each other so much, and they are awkward and they miscommunicate and they generally act like teenagers figuring things out as they go along. Their missteps make sense and are well-portrayed, so they never become jokes or embarrassment.

It’s a snapshot of a summer: one girl’s experience of a relationship. And it’s a lovely book.

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Empress of the World ~ Sara Ryan

 

Skim – by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki

Skim – so named because she’s not – is a goth Wiccan at a preppy, all-girls private school. The ex-boyfriend of a classmate kills himself, and suddenly the school is talking about death and suicide all the time, which makes it extra-fun to be the resident goth. And it’s always extra-fun to be queer and have a crush on a teacher.

It’s well-written and the art is good. It did not trigger a rant about graphic novels that don’t use the form, so that’s a definite plus. The territory covered is not particularly unique, though it’s dealt with well; the melodrama of high school is all there, but it’s understated enough that the book isn’t melodramatic. I appreciated the situationalism; you can see how Skim’s friendships occur because these people were thrown together, as many high school friendships happen. I really wish it was more fleshed out; Skim’s pudginess, her status as one of two Asian Americans in her school, are barely touched on at all, and even her sexuality and spirituality are only superficially covered. I was enjoying it, I was intrigued, I wanted to know more— and then it just ended. Abruptly. As this review is about to do.

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Skim ~ Mariko Tamaki ~ Jillian Tamaki

 

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks – E. Lockhart

Frankie wants in. Now a sophomore at the elite New England boarding school whence her sister and father graduated, now dating one of the most popular guys in the senior class, she’s sick of her dad’s dropped hints about the secret society at the school and she doesn’t like her boyfriend dropping her every thirty seconds when his best friend, another alpha-male senior, calls. She’s started noticing all the little thing people say or do that lessen women, put us in our place, degrade us, etc. She’s starting to get interested in civil disobedience.

She wants in, and all it implies: she wants her boyfriend to recognize her worth, her intelligence. To not be just adorable. To be on equal standing with his best friend. To be delible¹ to her boyfriend as his friends, not someone who ceases to exist when he isn’t around.

Frankie’s an excellent, full-fledged character, intelligent, gutsy, and ambitious. The book – which won a Printz honor when I was 30 pages in – is quite well written. It does make the reader extra-conscious of the little things people say and do which keep girls and young women on a more juvenile social level than their contemporaries – you can’t walk on you’re own but a boy can, everyone’s glad you have a nice boy to take care of you, your legitimate concerns are dismissed as your being sensitive, your arguments are dismissed as your being adorable. It’s infuriating, and it’s everywhere – not just in the book.

Of course, when a book’s gotten me primed to notice the subtle manifestations of sexism, I’m not particularly inclined to ignore them – even when they show up in that very book.

Yep, Lockhart slips up, damn her.

Passage A, straight from Frankie’s mouth:

Once you say women are one way, and men are another, and say that’s how it is in other species so that’s how it is in people, then even if it’s somewhat true—even if it’s quite a good amount true—you’re setting yourself up to make all kinds of assumptions that actually really suck. Like, women tend to cooperate with each other and therefore don’t have enough competitive drive to run major companies or lead army squadrons.²

She’s on a good track, though I’m on the “in all things moderation (including moderation)” side here – it’s not that we can’t draw conclusions about tendencies, it’s that we need to respect and recognize variations and let people find ways to use their traits to find success in their own ways.

But that’s actually not the point I’m trying to make. I want to show you Passage B:

If she were not a strategist, Frankie would have reacted like most girls do in the same situation: with tears, with anger, with pouting and sulking and petulant responses like “What is it that’s so much more important than hanging out with me, huh?”³

What? What? For one thing, she ranted a hundred pages earlier about people doing exactly what she’s doing now. For another thing… no. Just no. We do not all react to a boyfriend (or girlfriend) canceling a date at the last minute with tears, with anger, etc. Some women do; some men do. We react as individuals, not as monolith gendered blocks.

That’s not all:

It just seems so funny to dress up your boobs. Like when no one is going to see them. Or even if someone is. It seems so undignified to deck out your private bits in flashy bits of lace you’d never where outside of your clothes in a million years.

And then she thought: Boobs.

Boobs are just inherently undignified.⁴

Let’s go through this one offensive passage at a time, shall we?

Yes, it might seem funny to dress up one’s boobs, but that doesn’t make it bad. Wearing sexy bras, or pretty bras, or brightly-colored silly bras, can have an effect on a woman’s day: it can make her feel sexy, or pretty, or fun, or confident, or all of the above. Even if no one is going to see them. Especially if no one is going to see them.

Underclothes and outerclothes have different purposes; it’s okay to have a bra you wouldn’t wear on the outside, or a scratchy sweater you wouldn’t wear right against your skin. And some of us find excuses to wear corsetry in public, and there’s nothing wrong with that, either.

Moving on…

Very few things are inherently undignified; dignity is in how something is used or treated. Boobs in ill-fitting, ugly, or unflattering clothing can be undignified, certainly, though some women can pull it off; it’s in the confidence. Boobs in flattering lingerie or clothing can be dignified, certainly, though some women can’t pull it off; it’s in the confidence. Naked boobs? It’s all in the confidence. Boobs are inherently boobs. That’s about it.

I greatly enjoyed reading The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, and it has many good things to say. The more I think about it, however, the more pissed I become at the undermining of its overall feminist message. If you’re going to stereotype women, assume that we’re all desperate for men (“On what planet would a girl in her position refuse to go to a golf course party with Matthew Livingston?”⁵ Mine.), and insult our bodies, don’t try to pass it off as a feminist treatise.

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¹ The opposite of indelible. Also known as the neglected positive, or so The Disreputable History tells me.
² Page 162
³ Page 277
⁴ Pages 227-228
⁵ Page 70

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The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
E. Lockhart’s Blog

 

Debbie Harry Sings in French – Meagan Brothers

Johnny’s mostly punk, with some goth folded in for good measure (and eyeliner). He’s also an alcoholic at seventeen. After a very bad night at the club followed by a very bad morning in the hospital, he gets shipped off to rehab and then to his uncle in South Carolina.

I picked this one up because I’m a sucker for YA books with queer themes, and Johnny doesn’t just think Debbie Harry (lead singer of the 80s rock band Blondie) is hot and a great singer, he kind of wants to be her. He wants to be beautiful and confident, just like her. Like Boy2Girl, Debbie Harry Sings in French looks at teenage confusion and angst over gender and identity issues without trying to force it too much into neatly defined boxes – or at least, that’s what the publicist who wrote the book blurb wants us to think. While Boy2Girl does raise some interesting questions about gender stereotypes, Debbie Harry Sings in French is actually much more about identity in general, and about how we try to understand people. Johnny dresses up as Debbie Harry not because she’s a woman, but because she’s a symbol of beauty, confidence, and strength. If he’d heard David Bowie for the first time at the crucial moment in rehab, he’d've been wearing tight pleather pants and oddly-colored hair instead of a dress and a blond wig, and it would have filled exactly the same role. Well, it might have confused his family less. And it might be about adjectives other than “beauty” and “strength,” though I suppose that’s a matter of opinion. But the effect on Johnny would have been much the same. We take our liberation where we can get it.

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Debbie Harry Sings in French