2021 EDIT: Content warning for 'Speak': rape, sexual assault, self-harm, light xenophobia, an ableist slur on one page.
A fantastic YA milestone to read in a day. 'Speak' will never stop being relevant, and powerful. 'Speak' and other books like it must be taught in schools.
Read my original review, plus my review of the graphic novel, for more. Also, if you haven't already, see the Kristen Stewart film, by any legal means.
And Melinda, I hope you got to speak to your parents about what happened. If they don't listen, if they're not sympathetic and supportive, well, obviously they don't deserve you.
Final Score: 4/5
Original Review:
Slight spoilers ahead.
One of the earliest literary examples of combating rape culture, way back in 1999.
Ahhh 1999. Remember a time when not everybody had a mobile phone, or a computer, and the internet was just growing its baby teeth? No Twitter and Facebook. I don't want to sound like one of those pretentious, out-of-touch "kids these days" old fogies (though I do find myself thinking, "Wow I feel old", nowadays), but in some ways, being a teen in the nineties could be considered, if not more simple, then at least less stressful. Cyberbullying, online abuse and harassment, and revenge porn didn't quite exist yet, and widespread cultural hate wasn't so easy to generate via the internet.
'Speak', no matter the generation, is still relevant, and it still - ahem - speaks to so many teenage girls. It is about the silent struggles of Melinda Sordino, a high school freshman, as she survives being a pariah among her peers for calling the police at a house party in the summer. She can't tell the reason for why she did so, for who would believe her?
Her friends since preschool no longer want anything to do with her, an incompetent teacher or two unfairly pick on her, and everybody just plain hates her. Except for a few people, although one turns out to be a whiny traitor who never really liked her to begin with, and there is always that one nice, encouraging teacher and the single outcast nerd in these high school stories, aren't there?
All the while Melinda makes snide, snarky remarks in her narration regarding the hostile environment of high school ("This is how terrorists get started, this harmless kind of fun."), and the lies the teachers spout out about always being there for the students, and wanting to listen and help them. This makes the book strangely, darkly funny, and it adds to its fast pace and simple, addictive prose.
We all have a bit of Melinda in our brains and hearts. Like I would think: what was ever the point of being popular in high school, anyway? It's fake and superficial socialism that'll be over in a few years. It's a battleground to prepare for the metaphorical war zone of adult life, in my philosophical opinion.
Melinda soon finds solace in an old janitor's closet where she shuts herself off when she needs to. There she hangs up her art class pieces (she wonders if she will be an artist if she grows up; not when, IF she grows up; the carefully chosen words in this novel are subtle and effective), as well as a poster of Maya Angelou, that she can sometimes communicate all her honesty to, withholding nothing. How I related to that; all those times I spent in a girls' toilet cubicle in school, isolated, alone, just wishing the world would include me and have the heart to listen to me.
Melinda is a victim suffering from PTSD and depression, and hides it with cynicism she keeps only to herself. She bites her lips until they are crusty sores, and she does try not to be bitter when others are bitter and petty to her. To be that young; to go through such a devastating trauma and not be able to speak about it, it is a travesty. Teenagers need to be supported, not treated like immediate failures in a terrible, classist system that sees mental illness and abusive home lives as inconveniences rather than serious issues to be approached with care.
Melinda's parents are certainly no help. They are too busy arguing, keeping up the pretence of a happy marriage, and cornering her about her grades. But otherwise they are completely preoccupied with themselves, never noticing or caring about their daughter's pain. They think her refusal to speak and EVEN CUTTING HERSELF are for attention. Yet another horrible cliché in YA, old before that category was named. Very rarely do I come across teen books with supportive parents who make their kids - teenage girls especially - feel loved and worth existing. Parenting is hard, but so is being female at any age and decade in history.
So that is 'Speak', the famous, essential YA novel. Not much of a plot as merely a sequence of events, but it is how life works. The tree symbolism is effective, too, if a little on-the-nose. The novel reminded me that school is awful - best years of my life, my arse - but also that in all the darkness, the atrocities, little spots of light always find their way to you.
Silence isn't golden anymore; things change first when we speak up about them. Converse, start dialogue going, then act.
'Speak' was a banned book. Of course it was.
'Speak' is a first step.
Final Score: 4/5
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