Boy meets Fantasy

By -

    


While I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and its inclusivity, I struggle to see how it truly brings awareness. Obviously it is great to see this big beautiful world where everyone is so accepting of LGBTQ relationships and things like transgender football players, but that is unfortunately just not the world we live in. I do believe that we are entering a world that is more accepting of the LGBTQ community, but we are far from a world that does not even bat an eye at two boys being in a relationship. I think that the storyline really lacks true interest and is completely riding on the fact that it is about a homosexual relationship. While I understand the reasoning behind this, in my opinion, if this novel was about a heterosexual relationship with the same plot, it would be quite possibly the most boring story ever. I think this novel could have brought more awareness and thrived more if it showed the actual lives that LGBTQ people live and what they really go through at school. 

    On the flip side, I can kind of see where Levithan was coming from with his idea. I feel like showing the normality of homosexual relationship in this novel makes people aware of how easy it is to just be accepting of these people. We often are guilty of acting as if homosexual relationships are a huge deal, but really they are just living their lives and dating people just like anyone else and that's how it should be viewed as. I feel like showing the drama that goes in the relationships in the novel kind of helps back up the normalcy of LGBTQ people because it is showing us that they are no different than us in that sense.  I do truly hope that one day this kind of world isn't just something that we see through rose-colored glasses and actually becomes reality.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Growing Pains - The Symbolism of the Tree in Speak

By -
I have felt the paralyzing pain of internal disease. The kind of trauma that causes your mouth to curl in and swallow you whole. I, like so many other women, are walking the halls in Melinda’s shoes in “Speak.” I thought Laurie Anderson did a phenomenal job of twisting all of the tribulations a high school girl goes through, into the tree that Melinda is. Whether we’re as strong as an oak or weak as a bush, we have all gone through the disease that strikes Melinda from the inside out. Melinda is like a half-dead tree. Some parts of her strive to blossom and create beauty. Other parts are broken and diseased. Like a dead tree, Melinda needs to save herself and “cut off the damage, [so it] is possible for the tree to grow again” (187). The symbolism of a tree is significant in “Speak.” Trees reflect her growing process. In the beginning, Melinda is a sick and lifeless tree. Her view is negative and dark. She’s so far past repair, bursts of sunlight do her no good. Sunlight would be pe
Read more

How Starr Goes from Acting to Embracing in The Hate U Give

By -
In The Hate U Give, Starr Carter is caught between two worlds. She lives in a predominantly black neighborhood, but her father sends her and her brothers to a private school where she is surrounded by white people. She talks about acting differently depending on what group she is around, which can create some identity problems. She says on page 11, "Funny how it works with white kids though. It's dope to be black until it's hard to be black." When at Williamson, she sees white kids that think it's cool to engage in black culture, but she knows they don't understand what she goes through in her Garden Heights community. She witnessed her friend Natasha's death when she was 10 years old, and she sees gang activity in her community all the time. When she is among her black friends, like at the party, they tease her for hanging out with the white kids. This reminds me of a Drake song where he says, "I used to get teased for being black, and now I'm
Read more

Speak and the Symbolism of Nature

By Anonymous -
   Laurie Halse Anderson's,  Speak , dives into the murky, muddy waters of adolescent rape culture. When the book was published in 1999, rape was not a comfortable topic to discuss with adults, let alone teenagers. Anderson writes about Melinda Sordino and her freshman high school experience which is turning out to be rather negative. Soriano stands as a thriving young role model for struggling teenage girls all over the world. Although she isn't an outstanding student or have plenty of friends to juggle, through Melinda, other young women can see that it's completely normal and okay to struggle in high school not only academically, but socially and emotionally. One of my favorite parts of the novel isn't a super obvious quality. Throughout the novel, Melinda's attitude changes and grows with the coming of spring and through nature and art, she learns to move past her troubling end of summer experience and once again find the importance of her voice.    Melinda st
Read more