I had to change my list a little for my Graphic Novel section because the only copy of Runaways: Pride and Joy was stolen from the library last year and I didn't want to pay for one book. But a friend of mine gave me another option. The Young Avengers. And thankfully my library had volumes 1, 2 and Civil War which includes the Runaways.
I have Vol. 1 five stars, Vol. 2. four stars, and Civil War three stars because though it involved the Runaways, the story was hard to follow and the artwork bugged me.
I really enjoyed vol. 1 and 2 because it incorporated the original Marvel characters and then also brought in a scrappy group of new characters who are pretty awesome. You have Hawkeye, Patriot, Wiccan, Hulkling, and Speed. The story is a pretty basic plotline where the Avengers had disabanded and in their wake these young heroes show up to pick up the slack, which makes both the Avengers and their parents angry.
Marvel has gotten a fair amount of backlash over the fact that they had no gay superheroes until about the last 1980's as far as I can tell. Then they slowly started to integrate them in, but still got backlash for not being as awesome at creating gay characters as DC (that's what I've read, I'm still a little behind on that research) and only recently has there been a new gay superhero who has had his own comic, but I don't really know what's going on with him either. What I did discover was that a lot of comic readers didn't like the inclusion of Teddy (Hulkling) and Billy (Wiccan-his name used to be Asguardian but when people found out about him being gay there was the worry of them making fun of his name and he changed it to Wiccan). Many readers were okay with them being gay, but didn't like the fact that their relationship seemed "transparent".
I liked their story, despite what other people said. That may have been because I don't know much about any other character relationships or how things work in the Marvel universe, but I liked them. I thought it was nice that they were already in a relationship when the story started and that yes, they were gay, but there were bigger picture issues to deal with including Patriot's drug problem, Hulkling's paternity, the fact that Wiccan and his brother (who later joined as Speed) were part of a bigger conspiracy.
The stories were great and I liked the art (except in one section where they looked way too young and shiny. It was a weird art style) but all in all I thought that it was great. I loved the part in the series when the boys are about to tell Billy's parents they're superheroes and trip over their words instead the parents basically misinterpret what they're trying to say and instead hug them, telling them "Oh! We already knew you two were in a relationship, we were just waiting for you to tell us. Welcome to the family Teddy!" It was cute and sweet and I didn't think it was strained at all. I'm still waiting to get my hands on Children's Crusade so maybe something happens in there that made people mad, but as far as I could tell I liked the fact that the boys were gay and in a relationship.
I didn't like the Young Avenger's crossover with Runaways though. The Runaways series is a lot darker than the Young Avengers and it has a weird art style that I didn't really like. But it's a big more diverse in the fact that one of their characters is transgender (not by choice but whatever) and the fact that that character's girlfriend stayed with him/her after the change even though she wasn't considered lesbian to begin with. It basically showed that attraction and love can span even the greatest of changes. But I just wasn't moved by it. I spent the majority of this comic going "okay... and I still have no idea what's going on, can the Young Avengers just come back already?"
In the end I thought the Young Avengers was a great comic, I loved Billy and Teddy, and the female characters, though typically built like female comic book women, didn't bug me as much as they usually do.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
There Are No Words for Proxy by Alex London
Through this list of books I've somehow managed to find books that I either love to death or books that I hate with a fiery passion (I'm looking at you Almost Perfect). Proxy falls into the first category.
This book was designed to be just like any other YA novel with a character who was nothing special, an orphan, basically take a dystopian trope and Proxy fits it. But that's what makes this book so awesome. Proxy is basically a regular YA novel that just happens to have a gay protagonist. He's basically the equivalent of Tris or Katniss but gay and black, which is even better. There's even a ton of Jewish aspects to the story, including the part that Syd, the Proxy, is carrying something called Yovel, a virus meant to bring on the Jubilee--the forgiving of all debts.
I loved everything about this book. The first three chapters were hard to understand, but they set up the tone of the world and from there everything just fell into place. It was fast paced, the characters of Syd and Knox were beautiful. Syd was in a crappy place in life but instead of moping around he was sassy and sarcastic but willing to help those in need. When he was hurt because his Patron, Knox, did something stupid he refused to let them see him cry. He had a great inner strength. Knox is the typical bad boy who made stupid decisions and even got a girl "killed". What I loved about him was that he may have seemed like a straight jock, he later revealed himself to be of the "anything goes" mindset meaning that he was more than willing to flirt and kiss Syd as he was willing to flirt and kiss Marie. It made him interesting and while he was fairly superficial at the beginning, he really did grow over a short 76 hour or so period into someone that I grew to love.
The side characters were a little bland though. Marie was nice but didn't have much of a personality other than being a Causegirl who wanted to bring on the Jubilee. Egan, Syd's friend, had some good points, but he really wasn't all that interesting. He existed just to move Syd and Knox from one place to another and then get killed. The villains were very reminiscent of the Erudite leader from the Divergent Trilogy and honestly the story seemed to move very fast at the end, but it all came together very nicely and left space for the second book which is coming out this year and it left me desperate to find out what the hell happened to Knox.
All in all I loved this book. I loved the futuristic aspect, I loved the fact that this book has the potential to appeal to both male and female readers, I loved the fact that Syd was gay and that his sexuality wasn't part of the story. He just happened to be a gay kid who was bound for greatness. I loved the fact that this story had Jewish elements because that seems to be something you don't see in YA novels. If there's anything remotely religious in the teen novel it tends to be something like Catholicism but even then it's really not there.
This book is filled with so many things to reach a diverse group of readers who may have otherwise felt alienated from the YA genre. I hope to see more books coming out like this one. Also, it's published by Philomel books, which is an imprint of Penguin Books. In the end I give this book a full five stars and I've already preordered the next book, Guardian, out May 29th.
This book was designed to be just like any other YA novel with a character who was nothing special, an orphan, basically take a dystopian trope and Proxy fits it. But that's what makes this book so awesome. Proxy is basically a regular YA novel that just happens to have a gay protagonist. He's basically the equivalent of Tris or Katniss but gay and black, which is even better. There's even a ton of Jewish aspects to the story, including the part that Syd, the Proxy, is carrying something called Yovel, a virus meant to bring on the Jubilee--the forgiving of all debts.
I loved everything about this book. The first three chapters were hard to understand, but they set up the tone of the world and from there everything just fell into place. It was fast paced, the characters of Syd and Knox were beautiful. Syd was in a crappy place in life but instead of moping around he was sassy and sarcastic but willing to help those in need. When he was hurt because his Patron, Knox, did something stupid he refused to let them see him cry. He had a great inner strength. Knox is the typical bad boy who made stupid decisions and even got a girl "killed". What I loved about him was that he may have seemed like a straight jock, he later revealed himself to be of the "anything goes" mindset meaning that he was more than willing to flirt and kiss Syd as he was willing to flirt and kiss Marie. It made him interesting and while he was fairly superficial at the beginning, he really did grow over a short 76 hour or so period into someone that I grew to love.
The side characters were a little bland though. Marie was nice but didn't have much of a personality other than being a Causegirl who wanted to bring on the Jubilee. Egan, Syd's friend, had some good points, but he really wasn't all that interesting. He existed just to move Syd and Knox from one place to another and then get killed. The villains were very reminiscent of the Erudite leader from the Divergent Trilogy and honestly the story seemed to move very fast at the end, but it all came together very nicely and left space for the second book which is coming out this year and it left me desperate to find out what the hell happened to Knox.
All in all I loved this book. I loved the futuristic aspect, I loved the fact that this book has the potential to appeal to both male and female readers, I loved the fact that Syd was gay and that his sexuality wasn't part of the story. He just happened to be a gay kid who was bound for greatness. I loved the fact that this story had Jewish elements because that seems to be something you don't see in YA novels. If there's anything remotely religious in the teen novel it tends to be something like Catholicism but even then it's really not there.
This book is filled with so many things to reach a diverse group of readers who may have otherwise felt alienated from the YA genre. I hope to see more books coming out like this one. Also, it's published by Philomel books, which is an imprint of Penguin Books. In the end I give this book a full five stars and I've already preordered the next book, Guardian, out May 29th.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Why Would Someone Do This to Sage?: Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher
"No one likes a martyr. You're a self centered ass-hole, but this wasn't your fault.
Everything between the beginning and the ending of this book was complete and total insanity and so freaking problematic. Also, it kinda crushed my soul. Seeing Sage say the phrase "I tried and I failed" killed me like no other. It was hard to deal with the last few chapters of this damn book and I really wanted to put it in the freezer (F.R.I.E.N.D.S style).
I'm going to start off with my rating and go from there. I'm giving this book two ratings actually. One is for the story overall and the other is for what kind of message it's sending.For characters and story I'm giving this book 2.5 stars out of 5. For the message I give this book 5 out of 5 stars.
I didn't rate this as 2.5 stars because it was a horrible book. The writing was really good and the character development was pretty awesome once you realize that Katcher was writing Logan as an asshole and that's not how he sees everyone. The fact that he had other characters in the book that could grasp the situation and explain in the way pro trans* advocates would, shows that he knows what he was talking about.
I'm rating the book this way because it tore at my soul, I hated Logan, Sage's actions often pissed me off, and I just desperately wanted it to end. Doesn't mean it's not realistic though. I appreciate it, I just did not like it. I'm never going to read it again and I won't stop someone from reading it either. I just really disliked it, but not enough to give it three or more stars.
I talked to a friend who heard him talk at an ALA conference about this book. He wrote it for a 'gotcha' effect. Brian Katcher, a straight author, wrote Almost Perfect with the intent of making it a love story that would draw in straight readers (and hopefully open minded readers) of a story about a boy falling in love with a quirky new girl named Sage and then hit them with BAM! Sage is a boy! The publishers ruined that though, by spoiling the secret of the front cover, which ruined the effect and made this from a love story into a story about a straight boy dealing with love towards a trans* girl.
I really don't want to get bogged down talking about the intricacies of the book. The story is pretty straightforward and honestly everything goes to shit when Sage tells Logan. Since the story is told from Logan's perspective so we get a lot of his angsting, working through intense homophobia, listening to his narcissistic ramblings, and screaming at his ambivalent actions. He's really not a likeable character except during the first three chapters and a few scenes afterwards.
When Sage reveals herself to him, he threatens to punch her, then works through his anger. Then he ostrocizes her, and then is like 'okay, we can be friends' then he gets jealous when he sees her with other guys and has sex with her, and then when his sister sees her penis (she hasn't gone through the full transition) he freaks out and tells her to leave him alone because he doesn't want to be a fag. And then she gets beaten up and he rushed to her aid and freaks out when she admits that she's going to give up being a girl because it's not worth it and he freaks out again saying that she can't give it up, it's who she is! His character development is mind-boggling and kind of intricate but I still hate him, even though he went on this big life change of acceptance he's still douche-y. For the majority of the book he acts like everything is happening to him, like the universe is out to get him and cause him heartache.
Sage herself is an interesting character. She's tough and strong personality wise, but very willing to be pushed around emotionally by douche-y mcdoucherson, AKA; Logan. She really is female, she feels like she was born in the wrong skin and does her best to embody her gender, even after the first guy she's ever liked hates her for her genitals. It's only when she's physically beaten for them that she decides to give up. It's not worth the hatred and pain to even try anymore and she is institutionalized and tells Logan that she's just going to be a man. And considering the fact that she almost killed herself when she wanted to be a woman and her father told her he wished she'd never been born (and only uses masculine pronouns with her) you know that there's a very large chance that she might try to kill herself again. I'm glad that she tells Logan and the reader that she won't change, but that she wouldn't be with Logan or wait for him. I'm also glad that Logan finally pulled his head out of his ass to realize that not everything was about him and that he shouldn't put his happiness on other people.
Sage and Logan are perfect examples of hatred, trans*phobia, and what society can do to people, how it can shape, build, and even destroy the strongest willed of people. That's why this book hurt the most, because it displayed some of the highest forms of pain that can be delivered to a person, just because they decide to go against the norm. That's why I gave the message 5 stars. It's a tough story told from an unconventional point of view. Usually these stories are told from the point of view of characters who are already marginally open minded, so having it told from a stereotypical American jock p.o.v. made that all the more intense and poignant. This is not a happy book, but it's definitely a book filled with a very strong message and deserves the Stonewall award that it won. But I'm never reading it again if I don't have to.
Everything between the beginning and the ending of this book was complete and total insanity and so freaking problematic. Also, it kinda crushed my soul. Seeing Sage say the phrase "I tried and I failed" killed me like no other. It was hard to deal with the last few chapters of this damn book and I really wanted to put it in the freezer (F.R.I.E.N.D.S style).
I'm going to start off with my rating and go from there. I'm giving this book two ratings actually. One is for the story overall and the other is for what kind of message it's sending.For characters and story I'm giving this book 2.5 stars out of 5. For the message I give this book 5 out of 5 stars.
I didn't rate this as 2.5 stars because it was a horrible book. The writing was really good and the character development was pretty awesome once you realize that Katcher was writing Logan as an asshole and that's not how he sees everyone. The fact that he had other characters in the book that could grasp the situation and explain in the way pro trans* advocates would, shows that he knows what he was talking about.
I'm rating the book this way because it tore at my soul, I hated Logan, Sage's actions often pissed me off, and I just desperately wanted it to end. Doesn't mean it's not realistic though. I appreciate it, I just did not like it. I'm never going to read it again and I won't stop someone from reading it either. I just really disliked it, but not enough to give it three or more stars.
I talked to a friend who heard him talk at an ALA conference about this book. He wrote it for a 'gotcha' effect. Brian Katcher, a straight author, wrote Almost Perfect with the intent of making it a love story that would draw in straight readers (and hopefully open minded readers) of a story about a boy falling in love with a quirky new girl named Sage and then hit them with BAM! Sage is a boy! The publishers ruined that though, by spoiling the secret of the front cover, which ruined the effect and made this from a love story into a story about a straight boy dealing with love towards a trans* girl.
I really don't want to get bogged down talking about the intricacies of the book. The story is pretty straightforward and honestly everything goes to shit when Sage tells Logan. Since the story is told from Logan's perspective so we get a lot of his angsting, working through intense homophobia, listening to his narcissistic ramblings, and screaming at his ambivalent actions. He's really not a likeable character except during the first three chapters and a few scenes afterwards.
When Sage reveals herself to him, he threatens to punch her, then works through his anger. Then he ostrocizes her, and then is like 'okay, we can be friends' then he gets jealous when he sees her with other guys and has sex with her, and then when his sister sees her penis (she hasn't gone through the full transition) he freaks out and tells her to leave him alone because he doesn't want to be a fag. And then she gets beaten up and he rushed to her aid and freaks out when she admits that she's going to give up being a girl because it's not worth it and he freaks out again saying that she can't give it up, it's who she is! His character development is mind-boggling and kind of intricate but I still hate him, even though he went on this big life change of acceptance he's still douche-y. For the majority of the book he acts like everything is happening to him, like the universe is out to get him and cause him heartache.
Sage herself is an interesting character. She's tough and strong personality wise, but very willing to be pushed around emotionally by douche-y mcdoucherson, AKA; Logan. She really is female, she feels like she was born in the wrong skin and does her best to embody her gender, even after the first guy she's ever liked hates her for her genitals. It's only when she's physically beaten for them that she decides to give up. It's not worth the hatred and pain to even try anymore and she is institutionalized and tells Logan that she's just going to be a man. And considering the fact that she almost killed herself when she wanted to be a woman and her father told her he wished she'd never been born (and only uses masculine pronouns with her) you know that there's a very large chance that she might try to kill herself again. I'm glad that she tells Logan and the reader that she won't change, but that she wouldn't be with Logan or wait for him. I'm also glad that Logan finally pulled his head out of his ass to realize that not everything was about him and that he shouldn't put his happiness on other people.
Sage and Logan are perfect examples of hatred, trans*phobia, and what society can do to people, how it can shape, build, and even destroy the strongest willed of people. That's why this book hurt the most, because it displayed some of the highest forms of pain that can be delivered to a person, just because they decide to go against the norm. That's why I gave the message 5 stars. It's a tough story told from an unconventional point of view. Usually these stories are told from the point of view of characters who are already marginally open minded, so having it told from a stereotypical American jock p.o.v. made that all the more intense and poignant. This is not a happy book, but it's definitely a book filled with a very strong message and deserves the Stonewall award that it won. But I'm never reading it again if I don't have to.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
A Plane Full of Beauty Queens Crashes on a Deserted Island. Aaaannd.....Go!: Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
What is it with me and excessively long post titles? Oh well, they're fun.
Also, I'm skipping around a little with my next couple books. I just had access to this book and I wanted to start it. Especially after I found out that David Levithan was her editor.
So, let me start off with: I really liked this book. It was fun. Every single aspect of this book was as sarcastic as possible (sometimes the sarcasm was a little too much, but usually the end result was totally worth it) and formatted in a pretty entertaining way. I listed to part of it on audiobook and found out it was read by the author who was so in tune with her characters that she knew exactly how she wanted them to sound.
The premise itself was pretty straight forward. A plane carrying 50 girls crashes on its way to have the girls film promotional stuff for the "Miss Teen Dream" Beauty Pageant. But something happens and they go down, leaving only twelve survivors. The story is basically Miss Congeniality meets Lost meets Kim Jung Il and Sara Palin.
The essential idea is that the girls are part of a scandal to take down MoMo ChaCha--a dictator--through corporate espionage by using the girls as press when "the dictator" or people that work for the Corporation (the all seeing Big Brother type business that produces all aspects of low culture including beauty products and reality TV). The Sara Palin character, LadyBird Hope, is hoping to use the takedown of MoMo (and the "tragic" death of the girls as a way of gaining power and taking the presidency. So, as you can tell, this entire book is a giant commentary (complete with footnotes) about the corruption of politics and big businesses and how all these things are in bed together. Also it's about girls screwing the patriarchy through girl power, coming into their own, and accepting one another for who they are while empowering other girls to do the same.
But I don't want to focus on the politics. Instead I want to focus on the girls.
The role call goes as such: "Of the fifty states, only twelve girl representatives were accounted for, including Miss California, Shanti Singh; Miss Michigan, Jennifer Huberman; and Miss Rhode Island, Petra West, who, ironically, was the biggest girl in the pageant at nearly six feet. Some girls argued over whether the death of Miss Massachusetts --- favored by bookies to win the whole thing --- meant that the competition would never feel entirely fair."
There's also Adina (New Jersey) who entered the competition to write about it. She calls herself the Che Guevara of Beauty Pageants. Mary Lou from Montana who's rather sweet and considers herself a wild girl if not contained (think sexually active werewolf... without all the extra hair), Sosi from Illinois, Nicole from California, and Miss Texas; Taylor. Taylor is the quintessential beauty queen character from Texas stereotype. She's into guns and very much adheres to the idea of a non-feminist doctrine and basically lives by the Miss Teen Dream manual.
I found four girls in this group the most interesting, and relevant to my studies: Sosie, Jennifer, Petra, and Taylor.
Jennifer and Sosie are pretty straight forward. Sosie is deaf and spends a lot of the book speaking loudly while Jennifer is a juvie kid who was put into this program because the Corporation thought it would be good to have a reformed bad girl. Jennifer seems to initially be the stereotypical "butch" lesbian with the fact that she's rather masculine in her actions and words and she's obsessed with comic books. She forms an attraction to Sosie immediately and they become inseparable. Their side story consists of Sosie wondering if she actually likes Jennifer or if she's just in this because she wants to be Jennifer's best friend. The inclusion of their story was very important, at least to me... even if I couldn't deal with how much the author yelled when she did Sosie's voice. The fact that Jennifer showed a very healthy mix of masculine and feminine attributes (she was the first to offer the option of 'Girl Con' to empower women in all forms of their life) and an openness in her sexuality, even when the Corporation was trying to shut her down is a strong statement that gay female characters can have good story line and remain strong in their sexuality without beating the reader over the head with it.
Petra. Dear Petra. I don't think I've ever found a character so very endearing. Petra (SPOILERS) was a boy. A boy in a Corporation boy band. She was kicked out of the band after it was discovered his inner self was more feminine than masculine. She was offered to have her transition surgery costs paid off if she joined the Miss Teen Dream Pageant, got into the top ten, and then revealed herself afterwards as a pointed message about gender and sexuality roles in these overly feminine pageants. She has the best personality of all the girls, being very down to earth and sure in her femininity and thankfully, like all the girls, she gets a happy ending. When a boat full of hot pirates (another Corporation reality show) lands on the island she immediately wins over the slightly lecherous captain and is surprised when he's incredibly accepting of her gender. The entire reason Petra was created was to lend a voice to trans* people in literature. Usually trans* characters face massive amounts of opposition in literature so the presence of Petra was to show a very strong trans* character in a position where she was able to find love in another person who saw and accepted her as she was. Her story was wonderful and I appreciated the fact that Libba Bray created her and made her very real.
Finally I want to discuss Taylor. Out of all the characters she had the biggest change, being the fact that when they arrived on the island she insisted they keep up their show regiment because they had an obligation as women to give a great show. She honestly seems like a feminist's nightmare, but when Petra's true self is reveled her response is to quote the Miss Teen Dream handbook and state that it doesn't have a clear "no" about trans* people so Petra could stay because she obviously wants to be a girl and she should be allowed that right, since be a woman is awesome. She doesn't seem to take offense at Petra's gender or even Jennifer and Sosie's relationship and instead shows that even the most overly fanatical people can be accepting--even though Taylor's reasons were a little over the top. But I still loved her. Especially after she went insane and took to living in the woods and killing Corporation workers to protect the girls and the integrity of the Miss Teen Dream name while taking their weapons and hiding them under her mud and stick statue called Miss Miss.
Tl;dr: the end idea is that each female character represented a stereotype of women in media and how they're treated. Putting them on an island created a more female power situation rather than a Lord of the Flies situation. Though a lot of stuff is shoved into this book, the real story in this book is the story each girl carries with her and what she stands for. I gave this book a 4.5 out of 5 basically because sometimes the sarcasm got to be a bit much and I couldn't stand the MoMo ChaCha and LadyBird storyline... though it was worth it to listen to her voice read in the best Sara Palin accent... next to Tina Fay's.
Also, I'm skipping around a little with my next couple books. I just had access to this book and I wanted to start it. Especially after I found out that David Levithan was her editor.
So, let me start off with: I really liked this book. It was fun. Every single aspect of this book was as sarcastic as possible (sometimes the sarcasm was a little too much, but usually the end result was totally worth it) and formatted in a pretty entertaining way. I listed to part of it on audiobook and found out it was read by the author who was so in tune with her characters that she knew exactly how she wanted them to sound.
The premise itself was pretty straight forward. A plane carrying 50 girls crashes on its way to have the girls film promotional stuff for the "Miss Teen Dream" Beauty Pageant. But something happens and they go down, leaving only twelve survivors. The story is basically Miss Congeniality meets Lost meets Kim Jung Il and Sara Palin.
The essential idea is that the girls are part of a scandal to take down MoMo ChaCha--a dictator--through corporate espionage by using the girls as press when "the dictator" or people that work for the Corporation (the all seeing Big Brother type business that produces all aspects of low culture including beauty products and reality TV). The Sara Palin character, LadyBird Hope, is hoping to use the takedown of MoMo (and the "tragic" death of the girls as a way of gaining power and taking the presidency. So, as you can tell, this entire book is a giant commentary (complete with footnotes) about the corruption of politics and big businesses and how all these things are in bed together. Also it's about girls screwing the patriarchy through girl power, coming into their own, and accepting one another for who they are while empowering other girls to do the same.
But I don't want to focus on the politics. Instead I want to focus on the girls.
The role call goes as such: "Of the fifty states, only twelve girl representatives were accounted for, including Miss California, Shanti Singh; Miss Michigan, Jennifer Huberman; and Miss Rhode Island, Petra West, who, ironically, was the biggest girl in the pageant at nearly six feet. Some girls argued over whether the death of Miss Massachusetts --- favored by bookies to win the whole thing --- meant that the competition would never feel entirely fair."
There's also Adina (New Jersey) who entered the competition to write about it. She calls herself the Che Guevara of Beauty Pageants. Mary Lou from Montana who's rather sweet and considers herself a wild girl if not contained (think sexually active werewolf... without all the extra hair), Sosi from Illinois, Nicole from California, and Miss Texas; Taylor. Taylor is the quintessential beauty queen character from Texas stereotype. She's into guns and very much adheres to the idea of a non-feminist doctrine and basically lives by the Miss Teen Dream manual.
I found four girls in this group the most interesting, and relevant to my studies: Sosie, Jennifer, Petra, and Taylor.
Jennifer and Sosie are pretty straight forward. Sosie is deaf and spends a lot of the book speaking loudly while Jennifer is a juvie kid who was put into this program because the Corporation thought it would be good to have a reformed bad girl. Jennifer seems to initially be the stereotypical "butch" lesbian with the fact that she's rather masculine in her actions and words and she's obsessed with comic books. She forms an attraction to Sosie immediately and they become inseparable. Their side story consists of Sosie wondering if she actually likes Jennifer or if she's just in this because she wants to be Jennifer's best friend. The inclusion of their story was very important, at least to me... even if I couldn't deal with how much the author yelled when she did Sosie's voice. The fact that Jennifer showed a very healthy mix of masculine and feminine attributes (she was the first to offer the option of 'Girl Con' to empower women in all forms of their life) and an openness in her sexuality, even when the Corporation was trying to shut her down is a strong statement that gay female characters can have good story line and remain strong in their sexuality without beating the reader over the head with it.
Petra. Dear Petra. I don't think I've ever found a character so very endearing. Petra (SPOILERS) was a boy. A boy in a Corporation boy band. She was kicked out of the band after it was discovered his inner self was more feminine than masculine. She was offered to have her transition surgery costs paid off if she joined the Miss Teen Dream Pageant, got into the top ten, and then revealed herself afterwards as a pointed message about gender and sexuality roles in these overly feminine pageants. She has the best personality of all the girls, being very down to earth and sure in her femininity and thankfully, like all the girls, she gets a happy ending. When a boat full of hot pirates (another Corporation reality show) lands on the island she immediately wins over the slightly lecherous captain and is surprised when he's incredibly accepting of her gender. The entire reason Petra was created was to lend a voice to trans* people in literature. Usually trans* characters face massive amounts of opposition in literature so the presence of Petra was to show a very strong trans* character in a position where she was able to find love in another person who saw and accepted her as she was. Her story was wonderful and I appreciated the fact that Libba Bray created her and made her very real.
Finally I want to discuss Taylor. Out of all the characters she had the biggest change, being the fact that when they arrived on the island she insisted they keep up their show regiment because they had an obligation as women to give a great show. She honestly seems like a feminist's nightmare, but when Petra's true self is reveled her response is to quote the Miss Teen Dream handbook and state that it doesn't have a clear "no" about trans* people so Petra could stay because she obviously wants to be a girl and she should be allowed that right, since be a woman is awesome. She doesn't seem to take offense at Petra's gender or even Jennifer and Sosie's relationship and instead shows that even the most overly fanatical people can be accepting--even though Taylor's reasons were a little over the top. But I still loved her. Especially after she went insane and took to living in the woods and killing Corporation workers to protect the girls and the integrity of the Miss Teen Dream name while taking their weapons and hiding them under her mud and stick statue called Miss Miss.
Tl;dr: the end idea is that each female character represented a stereotype of women in media and how they're treated. Putting them on an island created a more female power situation rather than a Lord of the Flies situation. Though a lot of stuff is shoved into this book, the real story in this book is the story each girl carries with her and what she stands for. I gave this book a 4.5 out of 5 basically because sometimes the sarcasm got to be a bit much and I couldn't stand the MoMo ChaCha and LadyBird storyline... though it was worth it to listen to her voice read in the best Sara Palin accent... next to Tina Fay's.
Monday, February 17, 2014
Premises, Premises: Boy Meets Boy, by David Levithan.
I'm going to preface this post with a small note about how desperately I wanted to like this book. I love David Levithan ever since I read Everyday. I thought, sweet! Boy Meets Boy. It feels like a cute Valentines Day book and knowing Levithan's style of writing it won't be heavy handed or anything like that. And it really wasn't, but then again, it kinda was with how overly utopiotic it felt.
So, thinking of it that way, Boy Meets Boy was a bit of a let down.
Putting aside my love for David Levithan... it was still a little bit of a let down.
I've noticed that Levithan is a fan of premises. Most can be summed up in a sentence or two. Everyday: 'A' wakes up every morning in the body of a different person until 'A' falls in love with the Manic Pixie Dream girl trope. Will Grayson, Will Grayson: Two boys with the same name meet and it all leads to the world's most amazing musical. He's a friend of Libba Bray and was the inspiration for her story "Beauty Queens" which I'll cover later on in my readings. But in an interview she said one day he turned to her and said, "A plane full of beauty queens crashes on an island. Aaand.... go."
Boy Meets Boy is definitely one of his pet premise stories set up as a love story that takes place in a utopian society where almost everyone is accepted for who they are. Everything in this book is basically a unicorn tail. All rainbows and sparkles. The quarterback is a drag queen named Infinite Darlene and she's also homecoming queen. Vegetarians overtook the McDonalds and turned it into a Veggie D's. Homosexuality is almost completely accepted by the entire population (by everyone except the religious nuts). The list goes on.
Paul is the narrator of the story who is openly out (ever since his second grade teacher made the note that he was 'DEFINITELY GAY. and had a 'WONDERFUL SENSE OF SELF'). He meets Noah in a quirky way and they immediately fall into infatuation before Paul's ex-bf Kyle shows up and tries to win him back. It's basically a rom com.
It took me forever to figure out what was wrong with it, and then it finally hit me: It's a fan fiction.
Boy Meets Boy is basically David Levithan's version of fan fiction. It has a quick romantic build up between the two main characters, a wrench in the form of another boy, quirky outside characters that don't seem to completely fit, and a random song that filled up a few pages. So, in the end it's either a fan fiction or it's a John Hughes film. I honestly can't decide.
It's interesting to actually study this book though. In my pop culture class we've been discussing the four romantic comedy sub-plots and honestly this showed all the ear marks of a redemption and a pursuit plot. Which is interesting because that would mean that Noah is the one being pursued while Paul is the one who needs to be redeemed, turning this into a hetero-normative romcom played out as an LGBT love story. Which, if you think about it is kind of smart on Levithan's part, since he always hides a message about equality and love in his books.
In the end I really don't know how I feel about it. I can tell that Levithan was trying to create a book for gay readers that would be just like any other "straight book" but something about it felt off. Like he was trying too hard to create some form of utopia for his readers that felt a little too forced. I did like Paul and his love with Noah was cute and everything about the entire book was cute. Everyone was happy and cute. Overall I'm going to give this a 3.5 for a rating just because it felt weirdly forced and not quite... right. It's hard to explain what I'm not satisfied with it other than it just wasn't... enough...
So, thinking of it that way, Boy Meets Boy was a bit of a let down.
Putting aside my love for David Levithan... it was still a little bit of a let down.
I've noticed that Levithan is a fan of premises. Most can be summed up in a sentence or two. Everyday: 'A' wakes up every morning in the body of a different person until 'A' falls in love with the Manic Pixie Dream girl trope. Will Grayson, Will Grayson: Two boys with the same name meet and it all leads to the world's most amazing musical. He's a friend of Libba Bray and was the inspiration for her story "Beauty Queens" which I'll cover later on in my readings. But in an interview she said one day he turned to her and said, "A plane full of beauty queens crashes on an island. Aaand.... go."
Boy Meets Boy is definitely one of his pet premise stories set up as a love story that takes place in a utopian society where almost everyone is accepted for who they are. Everything in this book is basically a unicorn tail. All rainbows and sparkles. The quarterback is a drag queen named Infinite Darlene and she's also homecoming queen. Vegetarians overtook the McDonalds and turned it into a Veggie D's. Homosexuality is almost completely accepted by the entire population (by everyone except the religious nuts). The list goes on.
Paul is the narrator of the story who is openly out (ever since his second grade teacher made the note that he was 'DEFINITELY GAY. and had a 'WONDERFUL SENSE OF SELF'). He meets Noah in a quirky way and they immediately fall into infatuation before Paul's ex-bf Kyle shows up and tries to win him back. It's basically a rom com.
It took me forever to figure out what was wrong with it, and then it finally hit me: It's a fan fiction.
Boy Meets Boy is basically David Levithan's version of fan fiction. It has a quick romantic build up between the two main characters, a wrench in the form of another boy, quirky outside characters that don't seem to completely fit, and a random song that filled up a few pages. So, in the end it's either a fan fiction or it's a John Hughes film. I honestly can't decide.
It's interesting to actually study this book though. In my pop culture class we've been discussing the four romantic comedy sub-plots and honestly this showed all the ear marks of a redemption and a pursuit plot. Which is interesting because that would mean that Noah is the one being pursued while Paul is the one who needs to be redeemed, turning this into a hetero-normative romcom played out as an LGBT love story. Which, if you think about it is kind of smart on Levithan's part, since he always hides a message about equality and love in his books.
In the end I really don't know how I feel about it. I can tell that Levithan was trying to create a book for gay readers that would be just like any other "straight book" but something about it felt off. Like he was trying too hard to create some form of utopia for his readers that felt a little too forced. I did like Paul and his love with Noah was cute and everything about the entire book was cute. Everyone was happy and cute. Overall I'm going to give this a 3.5 for a rating just because it felt weirdly forced and not quite... right. It's hard to explain what I'm not satisfied with it other than it just wasn't... enough...
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Catcher in the Rye.
So evidently, I am a blog slacker, but I promise I have been doing some major reading. In fact, I found this fabulous book at the library which analyzes the adolescent woman in literature. It is so helpful for my thesis/idea for this class. It's got a fair amount of psychoanalysis in it, and basically I am in love with it.
I am not however, in love with The Catcher in the Rye. I know it's a classic read for high school kids, but I just can't like it. The only thing I did enjoy was Holden's sarcasm. It felt like a rip off of Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise. Also, it was not particularly helpful in discovering how adolescent women view their bodies. It was helpful in how men view them, as sexual objects, which we already knew. Nonetheless, I wanted to see how Jane felt about her body and how she dealt with her sexuality and body image. She attempts to tap into her sexuality with Holden, such as when she puts her hand on the back of his neck, but she is almost completely closed off when it comes to their relationship, which probably stems from the implied sexual abuse at the hands of her booze headed step father.
The way Phoebe travels back and forth between acting like a little kid and grown-up is remiscent of Holden himself. It's almost as though Phoebe's a younger version of himself; no wonder he wants to protect her so badly.
What is up with the butt-pinching? When Holden sneaks into Phoebe's room, he reaches out and gives her a "pinch on the behind. It was sticking way out in the breeze … She has hardly any behind" When he talks about other women's behinds he always calls them "butts" or "asses." And he spends a lot of time admiring Sally Hayes's cute little ass even if he thinks she's phony for twitching it around in front of him. So, when he pinches Phoebe's behind, is it sexual? Or is he just reassuring himself that she is still innocent?
So basically, book that are written with a male protagonist, are seemingly going to have a male POV towards women, and I'm not going to learn much about how they feel about themselves, because I am learning how the male characters view them. Which, now that I think about it, makes sense, but it's a tiny bit irritating. Added to the fact this book and I are not going to be headed to bed together any time soon.
I am not however, in love with The Catcher in the Rye. I know it's a classic read for high school kids, but I just can't like it. The only thing I did enjoy was Holden's sarcasm. It felt like a rip off of Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise. Also, it was not particularly helpful in discovering how adolescent women view their bodies. It was helpful in how men view them, as sexual objects, which we already knew. Nonetheless, I wanted to see how Jane felt about her body and how she dealt with her sexuality and body image. She attempts to tap into her sexuality with Holden, such as when she puts her hand on the back of his neck, but she is almost completely closed off when it comes to their relationship, which probably stems from the implied sexual abuse at the hands of her booze headed step father.
The way Phoebe travels back and forth between acting like a little kid and grown-up is remiscent of Holden himself. It's almost as though Phoebe's a younger version of himself; no wonder he wants to protect her so badly.
What is up with the butt-pinching? When Holden sneaks into Phoebe's room, he reaches out and gives her a "pinch on the behind. It was sticking way out in the breeze … She has hardly any behind" When he talks about other women's behinds he always calls them "butts" or "asses." And he spends a lot of time admiring Sally Hayes's cute little ass even if he thinks she's phony for twitching it around in front of him. So, when he pinches Phoebe's behind, is it sexual? Or is he just reassuring himself that she is still innocent?
So basically, book that are written with a male protagonist, are seemingly going to have a male POV towards women, and I'm not going to learn much about how they feel about themselves, because I am learning how the male characters view them. Which, now that I think about it, makes sense, but it's a tiny bit irritating. Added to the fact this book and I are not going to be headed to bed together any time soon.
Monday, February 10, 2014
The YA Genre: Themes and Tropes
It's been fun reading your posts about all the books you are reading. It seems like love--or at least the promise of love--is paramount to everything all three of you have read. It makes sense since love and relationships are central preoccupations for most teen readers.
Beyond love, though, what themes and tropes are common throughout these books? I've been immersed in my own reading (recall that my focus is on popular YA published since 2005). Here are the commonalities I've discovered so far:
- First-person narrators--A first-person narrator does personalize a story; however, it also limits the viewpoint so much. I suppose the narrator's myopic view of the world nicely replicates how readers feel. We're all narrating our own stories, obsessing about the details, and limited to the information we have in front of us.
- Love triangles--Oh, lord, the love triangles! It's hard to feel sorry for main characters who have to choose between two equally perfect males.
- Good girls and bad girls--The delineation is uncomfortably clear. It's that age-old stereotype: Good girls are worthy protagonists; bad girls have oral sex.
- Girls who are seemingly ordinary but are actually very special--I think that's a common fantasy for teen readers--that no one as yet recognized just how special they are. Fear of being average or ordinary is a huge trope that runs throughout many of these books.
- Parents who are clueless or neglectful--Getting rid of the parents (either by physically removing them or by making them too stupid or preoccupied to be good parents) allows teen characters to find their own way, just as readers are metaphorically separating themselves from their own parents.
YA definitely has a limited formula, but there's not much that separates it from adult fiction. What is it that makes a YA book YA? One obvious answer is where it's shelved in the library or bookstore. But if someone mysteriously unshelved all the YA and removed the labels, would we still be able to identify it? What would be our clues? Do we need the larger genre to understand the work these narratives are doing?
Beyond love, though, what themes and tropes are common throughout these books? I've been immersed in my own reading (recall that my focus is on popular YA published since 2005). Here are the commonalities I've discovered so far:
- First-person narrators--A first-person narrator does personalize a story; however, it also limits the viewpoint so much. I suppose the narrator's myopic view of the world nicely replicates how readers feel. We're all narrating our own stories, obsessing about the details, and limited to the information we have in front of us.
- Love triangles--Oh, lord, the love triangles! It's hard to feel sorry for main characters who have to choose between two equally perfect males.
- Good girls and bad girls--The delineation is uncomfortably clear. It's that age-old stereotype: Good girls are worthy protagonists; bad girls have oral sex.
- Girls who are seemingly ordinary but are actually very special--I think that's a common fantasy for teen readers--that no one as yet recognized just how special they are. Fear of being average or ordinary is a huge trope that runs throughout many of these books.
- Parents who are clueless or neglectful--Getting rid of the parents (either by physically removing them or by making them too stupid or preoccupied to be good parents) allows teen characters to find their own way, just as readers are metaphorically separating themselves from their own parents.
YA definitely has a limited formula, but there's not much that separates it from adult fiction. What is it that makes a YA book YA? One obvious answer is where it's shelved in the library or bookstore. But if someone mysteriously unshelved all the YA and removed the labels, would we still be able to identify it? What would be our clues? Do we need the larger genre to understand the work these narratives are doing?
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