My Novel

Assuming I would ever be able to finish a novel I started to write, my Young Adult novel would be about a young girl and her struggle to find herself and understand relationships with men. It would be like Alexie's in that I feel that my story could be understood better in diary form. I think after reading Alexie's novel, I would like to add illustrations or even pictures from the mile marks of my story and my life.
I have grown up from the many wrong relationships I was in before and I hope I found what I believe to be the right one now. I know that my story of entering into a serious relationship in 6th grade and having it last until the beginning of my 9th grade. I then took advantage of a large public school coming from nine years at a private school, and went guy crazy. I overlapped relationships, experienced the pressures of fitting in, and was faced with rape in my school building. My parents, though I hated them then for doing it, played an instrumental role in removing me from that school, uplifting our family and moving to a new town with a smaller public school with less controversy. At that school I somehow found the one guy who brought me more trouble. I was stuck in a five and a half year relationship that surrounded my life with mental, physical, and emotional abuse. I was too immature and too rebellious to listen to those around me and see that that relationship would ruin my life. I struggled with having a long distance relationship that had no trust, relied on sex to recover from the distance, then a pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage but made me see his true colors. My story would cover the rollercoaster of aftermath that I was left to sort through after he called off our engagement while he was in Rome, online. I feel that my story of choices, of abandonment, suffering, physical battles I inflicted upon myself, but of speaking out and getting help after I moved to a new school.
No adolescent should have to endure what I had to, alone, nor should any teen feel that they can get away with bad choices because they are immature and adolescents. The decisions I made in my last relationship have come to haunt the rest of my life, and the new relationship I am in now. Because I chose to ignore those around me, I made a decision that could determine the rest of my life; if I can live a healthy life, if I can have kids, and if I can ever trust a man in that way again.

Charlotte Temple 21st Century

The plot of the modern Charlotte Temple would start with Charlotte's parents disappearing and so she was sent to a orphanage in Ohio. Charlotte was the outcast because she was thin and lanky for a young girl and came in refusing to accept that her parents did not want her. She makes a friend Rachel who she confides in and as they grow up they aspire to be models and escape the orphanage. One night after a large fight among the girls of the orphanage Charlotte runs away to Chicago to starting acting and hopefully modeling. On the bus she meets Montraville who tells her that he can make her a successful model if she sticks with him. Charlotte falls for Montraville and his charming ways. Charlotte is used by Montraville in Chicago where her talents grow though she is unhappy in her life of strangers. He and La Rue tricked Charlotte into going to Paris to promote her and her modeling. This is where they strand her and she finds out that she is pregnant. Walking alone at night, Charlotte is attacked and beaten. The police find her and save her baby but Charlotte dies. Her parents had been looking for her and went to Paris to get their granddaughter.
The settings would be in Ohio first, then she runs away to Chicago, then she is taken to Paris.
The Modernized Charlotte Temple would have all the same characters just differently placed in the story and in her life.

Part Time Indian

“I’m terrified of falling. No matter how old I get, I think I’m always going to be afraid of falling” (Alexie 220). I do not know why this quote stuck out to me in the end of the book, but I felt like this summarized Junior and how no matter how brave he was to be different, he would always be that little kid afraid of failing. Stepping away from the known may cause you harm, and your home life may still be bad, but there is always positives. I loved this book, I was instantly drawn in by the animated cartoon drawings that showed a deeper meaning than the words of Junior. I enjoyed the book and the realness that it created of his situation. I felt for him when his dog died, when Rowdy tried to punch him, when his sister died, the family friend, then his grandmother. It was a lot for an adolescent to handle, and certainly even harder on top of going to a new school filled with people who did not understand you, and living with a community that did not accept you for your need to change. But I saw the positive growth in Junior in his courage and in the friends he made and why he kept them. Though it was sad that Rowdy and Junior drifted when he went to a new school I think it helped Junior see that sometimes old friends fade because they were there for a reason and when that time is up so is that bond. I really felt that this novel spoke out about the positive attributes in an adolescent. They are resilient and stubborn. Junior wanted something and pushed by one positive role model, he changed his life. Junior was able to use his stubbornness as an adolescent ignorant of all the bad things to push him to keep going and try harder. I admire him for coming from what he did on the reservation, and being able to be wiser than his age to see his future different than the norm.

Huck Finn

I have read Huck Finn several times throughout my learning in English. Each time I read this book I discover more about Huck and understand what drives him to adventure down the Mississippi River. Huck Finn is really the quintessential adolescent. Mark Twain displays adolescence through Huck’s character extremely well, so well that this book can be used generations later and still be applicable. Though Huck is bold, adventurous, and strong headed, he still remains naïve about the stereotypes and restrictions of the world. Huck has Jim as his main role model and the main contributor to his development throughout the novel. Huck considered Jim a friend, even a brother and that quality shows the resilience of adolescents, because they are able to see past the differences of people and value their input and reliability. Twain makes Huck a strong character, but still malleable so that readers were able to see how crucial Jim was to Huck’s learning and understanding how the world really was. Jim was a black slave striving for freedom and equality, Huck was a young adolescent that wanted freedom to do what made him happy and live without bonds to a society influence. He was able to see the bad in the cons that they encountered and in the towns that wanted to sell Jim. Both of these characters needed each other to learn how to live and appreciate the world, though it was flawed. They created within each other resistance to pressure and courage to do what was right. Huck was able to learn from a person that was not bound by society’s rules and therefore he grew in the book to be more confident in what made a person a good person.

Betsey Brown

I really enjoyed this novel and the detailed depictions of the 1950s before the large leap into the Civil Rights Acts that created so much ciaos and anger in the United States. I felt like I was there right in front of the house as soon as the book started. I had that mental picture throughout the whole book, and that really made me appreciate Shange’s style of writing for this story.
I really connected to Betsey as she struggled to understand herself in a growing and changing world that did not yet accept her. Betsey did not only experience societal pressure to belong but also in her family. Her family both large and opinionated put a lot of pressure on her. That alone is hard on an adolescent girl who is trying to make her mark and understand how to fall in line but not be forgotten. I felt for her as she struggled to be comfortable in the white school. No girl should have to feel that they only reason they need to study is to not stand out for being stupid among the white girls.
Another thing that struck me the about this novel was the constant belief in hope, in the need for hope to get through life. Throughout the novel almost every person clings to some kind of hope for their lives. When Betsey runs away Greer and Jane desperately hope for her safe return soon. Aida hopes that Jane will return to their household to reclaim the order that she dwelled happily in. Betsey hopes that she can be accepted, the white people will understand her, Eugene will love her, and that she can find who she really is and where she fits. Regina hopes that Roscoe will come back and bring their new family together. These characters experience so much change and struggle but each one tries to hope for the best, hope for realization of equality and presence.

Rough Draft for Speak

Intro, Hook, Thesis:
Every adult can remember something about their adolescent or teenage years. Whether it was a best friend, a goal, a bully, or an event that change who that person would become in the future. Adolescent girls face incredible pressures from society to fit in, be beautiful, and sophisticated. This pressure at this critical age can sometimes make this growing time even more difficult and confusing. “Her eyes meet mine for a second, “I hate you,” she mouths silently. She turns her back to me and laughs with her friends. I bite my lip. I am not going to think about it. It was ugly, but it’s over, and I am not going to think about it” (Anderson, 5). In the young adult book, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, touches on some of the life changing affects of rape on a adolescent girl named Melinda.
Rape not only affects the young girl physically but sometimes she must endure ridicule from her peers because of the psychological effects of this act of violence.
Point One: Physical Pain
Explore your idea further. Ask critical questions.
“In my head, my voice is a clear as a bell: “No I don’t want to!” But I can’t spit it out….Wham! shirt up, shorts down, and ground smells wet and dark and No!- I am not here…he smells like beer and mean and he hurts me he hurts me and gets up” (Anderson, 135).
“I open up a paper clip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt was a cry for help, then what was this? A whimper, a peep? I draw little windowcracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting” (Anderson, 87).
Reflect on your own adolescent experience, and see how it fits with your idea
My high school boyfriend used to say that cutting myself was my pathetic cry for attention, because I was too afraid to go through with suicide. He used to say that all the time about all the girls who he saw slashed up.
It may have been stupid, but it was definitely a cry for some kind of help with the things I was dealing with on the inside as a young teen.
Melinda felt as though she had no where else to turn, and turning to the popular forms of getting attention such as “running away”, cutting, and wishing for death turned out to be just as useless as keeping in the pain.
Point Two: Psychological Pain
Explore your idea further. Ask critical questions.
Melinda feels guilty for not saying anything when she sees Andy Evans (IT, her rapist) dating girls her age, and then her friend Rachel. “I need to do something about Rachel, something for her…Rachel will hate me (she already hates me.) She won’t listen (I have to try.) I groan and rip out a piece of notebook paper and write her a note, a left-handed note so she won’t know its from me” (Anderson, 152).
“I know my head isn’t screwed on straight…I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else… even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me” (Anderson, 51).

Reflect on your own adolescent experience, and see how it fits with your idea
Being subjected to emotional and physical abuse in a relationship effects your mental thinking and support for yourself. Being an adolescent and not knowing what is good and bad in a relationship or really how to stop it can be even more taxing on your mental strength. Melinda fought with herself and inanimate objects to decide on how to deal with her pain, with her struggle in school and with her old friends. Sometimes finding things that you can control is your best way to feel like you can do something in your life. After that dangerous relationship finally needed in college, I am still in therapy to help me cope with feelings of myself, feeling about him and how I can learn to trust again. Melinda was not lucky enough to have a family that saw her falling apart like I did. Though at the end of the novel she discovers her own strength and talks about her pain, readers do not know if she gets help for re working her thoughts inside.
Point Three: Isolation and Bullying From Peers
Explore your idea further. Ask critical questions.
“…IT creeps up. Little flecks of metal slice through my veins. IT whispers to me. “Freshmeat.” That’s what IT whispers. IT found me again. I thought I could ignore IT. There are four hundred other freshman in here, two hundred female…but he whispers to me” (Anderson, 86).
“Heather: “you don’t like anything. You are the most depressed person I have ever met, and excuse me for saying this, but you are no fun to be around and I think you need professional help” (Anderson, 105).
Reflect on your own adolescent experience, and see how it fits with your idea
Girls in adolescence are brutal to each other. There is low self-esteem floating about everywhere. The men do not help this as they rank the girls sexually and discover alcohol and their seemingly flawless charm. Peers will turn on the people who are different than the norm. Melinda was different and isolated because she called the police at a popular party, and now she was depressed and a loner. Her peers turned on her, her friends isolated her, and her rapist targeted his prey to try and make her okay with his act.
Conclusion, Brief Summary, Food for thought:

Essay idea (Re-post)

I was really interested in how adults interact with teenagers, and why sometimes this is so hostile. How do the ne wave of teenagers affect the pressure of older women to look younger? How does that competition affect the young women of today?
I liked your topic title of:
Teenagers as You 2.0: Your replacement has arrived.
Your topic title of :
Every adult is the successful murderer of a teenager
was also an interesting way of discussing the pressure of adults on teenagers.