Reviews with content warning for Cursing - Speak

I started off hating this book. And I do mean hating, I think at one point I even called the main character a passionless dull main character with questionable opinions. I was so ready to hate this book, not that I had wanted to, I had originally been excited for this book because someone who has very similar reading taste to mine absolutely raves about it and when I saw my teacher assigned it for summer reading I was thrilled. The first couple of chapters felt robotic, and the opening line was a bit of a cringe worthy sentence. But I actually grew to really love this book as it went on, though it was nothing I had thought it would be when I first heard about it, it was still a really great book nonetheless and I will be one of those annoying people who do nothing but rave and recommend this book to everyone they meet.

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emotional inspiring

5.0

Melinda is starting her freshman year of high school. She hates her skirt, her parents are caught up in their own stuff, her teachers are a mixed bag, her longtime friends have stopped talking to her and a new face at school who might be a new friend is a girl who never shuts up. But that’s OK because Melinda isn’t saying much anyway, not since she became an outcast for calling the cops during a summer party she attended. Her depressed and strange behaviour and garb doesn’t help her fit in anywhere either. Even though Melinda has a very good reason for all of it. But, the explanation, her voice are things that she couldn’t get out for 911 then and are still very hard to use right now.

With millions of copies in print, translated to over 20 languages, scores of awards, also being taught in classrooms with proven positive influence in the lives of young people and speaking to adults as well, Speak was one of the most challenged and banned books of the 2000s. Gallingly Speak further continues to face controversy on grounds of such content as underage drinking, profanity, family dysfunction, bullying, depression, self-harm and being sexually explicit (flashbacks to rape which are not very detailed) with detractors going so far to call it child porn. By 2010 Laurie Halse Anderson also became one of the most frequently challenged authors for her YA “resilience lit” which has tackled many adversities facing young people and showcasing characters finding true mettle and a path forward. Perhaps it’s all an admirable distinction for an author that references Maya Angelou having books banned, a treasured writer whose work likewise is often a source of controversy.

Correspondingly, since its publication the novel has proved compelling material for adaptations reaching new audiences. 2004 saw a live-action movie toured to film festivals arriving on cable TV a year later with Kristen Stewart as Melinda. At only 13 from her pre-Twilight days it is worth seeing. After some years in 2018 also adapted into Speak: The Graphic Novel with art by Eisner Award-winning artist Emily Carroll whose illustrations vividly tell the story in a powerful and new way.

And to commemorate the 20th anniversary a new 2019 edition with Anderson and others adding extra material. The novel is a landmark in the discussion of sexual assault. Even though silence is damaging when you can’t or aren’t ready yet seeing and hearing just a simple word like “speak” can feel burdensome too. Inside the story gets right to that heart though and how silence can be overcome. Frankly Speak is a personal book for both its author and for likely many who read it. Anderson has said it took her some 25 years before she said anything, the story about 10% of her experience and just in March of 2019 released the poetic memoir Shout tying into MeToo.

Though really the story of Speak is about more than just sexual assault. Its world, its school, its characters, the feelings are more widely familiar as well and like the best of fiction, it allows a space for young and older readers to consciously look and find truth, understanding, empathy and if the case may be also their voice and start healing.

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