Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Anderson, L. H. (1999). Speak. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.

Melinda Sordino enters the ninth grade “clanless,” without a group of friends to define her identity.  Her former friends shun her, and when she does draw the notice of teachers or other students, it’s the wrong kind of attention.  She withdraws into her own haunting thoughts, burying her pain in long silences and a year-long art assignment that will push her to deal with the tumultuous memories that plague her.

Despite the fact that it was written over a decade ago, the subject matter of Speak could have been inspired by much more recent headlines:  a teenage girl, drunk at a party, a victim of sexual assault at the hands of a popular athlete.  The only difference in Melinda’s story and the real-life tragedies that have made news in the past few years is that there’s no social media to testify to what happens to her.  Her rape is a closely guarded secret—one that she manages to compartmentalize and keep even from herself much of the time, yet she is still criminalized by peers who don’t know the whole story.  Melinda is left to deal with the emotional fallout of her ordeal on her own.          

Although Melinda stops communicating with her parents, teachers, and classmates, her first person narration of the story is highly descriptive, full of evocative imagery and perceptive observation of the people and events around her.  Her thoughts and judgments of others are sometimes biting in their sarcasm, but this trait lends an authentic teenage voice to the narration.  The realism, raw emotion, and feelings of powerlessness that Melinda expresses will likely find a ready audience with teenagers who can often feel marginalized and silenced due to parents, teachers, and peers who do not understand or provide support to their inner struggles.

Throughout the novel, Melinda must endure encounters with her attacker who goes to her school, and while he seems to taunt her through these interactions, it’s somewhat unclear whether this is Melinda’s perception or what’s actually happening between them.  A final confrontation near the end of the book brings them face to face once again and seems to reveal her adversary as a person who displays every confidence that he will continue to get away with his abusive treatment of girls.  While it is easy to sympathize and relate to Melinda, even for people who have not experienced a similar trauma, the antagonist and his actions seem almost too horrible to be believed.  Perhaps his character is just as realistic as the others in the story, but the way he maneuvers himself into his final scene with Melinda seems just a little far-fetched.

The difficult subject matter have made this novel the target of challenges and attempted censorship, but the realistic portrayal of the cruelties of high school and adolescence along with the ultimately hopeful message provide ample cause to keep this book on library shelves and easily accessible to teen readers.