Literature for Adolescents

Below is a podcast for my second book review: John Boyne’s “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.” Enjoy!

            When I first sat down to read Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese, I was not sure what to expect. I had read my share of graphic novels before, and from just coming off reading Art Spiegelman’s Maus, I was not sure I wanted to read another heavy, Printz award-winning story. After the first panel alone, I knew that I was going to enjoy Yang’s story. Whether it was because of how colorful it was, how well drawn it was, or Yang’s excellent sense of timing, I began to get very involved in the story. Granted, the novel reads very quickly, but I did not set the book down once from beginning to end, not even to use the bathroom or get a drink of water. So I decided to read it again, and it was on this second read that I realized just how good this book can for many different ages.

            The story begins with the tale of the Monkey King. From what little I know about the Monkey King in my long-term memory from high school and college, it is a Chinese folktale and possibly even religious story. Regardless of what it once was, Yang decides to make it his own. The Monkey King is a stubborn character, set in his ways and wanting to very much be a god. This is the beginning of the ever-present theme that runs throughout the novel: changing who you are. I truly enjoyed the Monkey King story for two main reasons. First of all, I thought it was incredibly funny. Yang draws the perfect comedic expressions for the Monkey King and for the gods that he defeats, and his timing from panel to panel (showing facial expressions change, going from placidity to intense action, etc.) is perfect to convey the intentional humor. The Monkey King takes himself so seriously that we as readers see his flaws and are able to laugh at – and eventually with – him at all he does. The second reason I enjoyed it is because of its Western themes, and how it approaches Christianity and the melding of the two cultures, East and West. This theme becomes very important as we see in the other stories, and it was handled in a way that did not interrupt the story at all or become too preachy.

            Jin Wang’s story continues that theme of constantly wanting to change. He is embarrassed to be a Chinese-American, and he wants to blend in and be as American as he can be. He tells an older lady that he wants to be a Transformer, a symbol Yang uses to show one of his themes throughout the story. Wei Chen is new to the school, too, and at first Jin is nervous to befriend him because of his association with being Chinese – with being different. Eventually the two become good friends, and Jin’s true colors show at this early moment in the story. He is a very kind person and when he stops worrying about his identity, this person comes out. This is also true when he starts dating the white girl from his school. Granted he gets a boost of confidence from his hairstyle, but when he stops thinking about how he’s different, he has all the confidence in the world. It is not until he is reminded of being the “wrong crowd” for his new girlfriend that his confidence leaves and he again is forced to focus on his identity. Because of this identity, and because he cannot embrace it, he opts to change.

            This leads into the story of Danny, and primarily the story of Chin-Kee (or “Chinky,” which is sufficiently racist). Because Jin (now Danny) has changed, Chin-Kee is a harsh reminder of his former identity. However, Chin-Kee is the most extreme and racist stereotype of a Chinese person perhaps ever written, and this noticeably bothers Danny. Yang decides to use these stereotypes to point out the ridiculousness of stereotypes – how they clearly are not the case for Chinese or Chinese-Americans. This entire storyline is presented as though it were a sitcom: opening shots of the building in which the next scene takes place, a constant laugh-track, and even a title card for the story. This helps to show the reader that these things are from a make-believe world. Yang uses a number of opportunities to display stereotypes and to show how silly they are by comparison to the reality of these situations.

            The overall format of the story works very well to show Yang’s ultimate message. Three seemingly different stories are all actually connected in the end, which can be a symbol of race in this country. And while it can be applied to say that, yes, you seem different from that person standing over there but you are really just the same, it applies even more so to the different identities we struggle with as individuals. For Jin, he is a Chinese-American that completely wants to suffocate his Chinese heritage. He wants to become Westernized and when he does so (as Danny), his Chinese heritage bites him back for it in the form of Chin-Kee. As the story of the Monkey King shows us morally, we are most at peace with our own identities  when we can embrace all the different sides that make us who we are. The Monkey King is an Eastern icon who travels west to and adopts Western ideals. He is a blend of the two cultures, and Jin can be most at peace when he accepts both halves of being Chinese-American.

            In the end, it is not about transforming between one or the other. It is about finding the middle ground that encompasses all the different elements of who you are. To Yang, that is the ideal identity.

            I was in first grade when I received my first ever comic book. My mom knew that I was a big fan of the TV show “X-Men” on Saturday mornings, and while she more than likely assumed the comic book she found was based on the show, she still thought it would be a nice present for me when I was home sick from school for three days with strep throat. I absolutely loved it and became hooked on these stories. I loved the stories, the drawings, the fantastical elements; I had favorite characters and I knew for certain what my special power would be if I had one. Around later middle school, though, I began to outgrow the comic books. I purchased them less and less, and I could not understand my friends that continued to read them. I thought they were childish. I soon realized after being handed a copy of Watchmen, however, that there is a storytelling capability that other genres cannot approach. There is a soap opera quality to those serial comics, and to those succinct stories, actual novels such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus, there is a rich world of deeper themes explored in a more “adult” story.

Because of its medium, Maus is a perfect vehicle to deliver the heavy material of a memoir dealing with the Holocaust. If this exact same story had been told using actual humans, it would have been less memorable, and probably less critically acclaimed. Even though the story is moving, it would have felt like simply another story about the Holocaust. I felt that the portrayal of the Jews as mice made me more sympathetic towards them. I have never had a phobia or distaste for mice; my general conception of them is that they are innocent, frail creatures. I believe Spiegelman intended this with his characters while simultaneously referencing that Hitler considered the Jews to be “vermin.” Perhaps Spiegelman knew that the Holocaust was a heavily discussed part of world history, even back in 1973, and knew that no matter how heartrending his story was, people were becoming slightly numb, or used to survivor tales.

Along with making the reader more sympathetic towards the characters, the “innocent” illustrations allow some more adult themes to be approach. The clearest example of this is on page 108 when the cat Nazi smashes the 3-year-old mouse Jew against a brick wall to stop him from crying. This was perhaps the most brutal panel of the entire novel, and it caused me to gasp out loud, but it was still toned down a bit because it was a cartoon cat and mouse. Had this been a human child smashed against the wall, then not only would it evoke an even stronger reaction, but it could possibly even get the book banned in some parts of the country. Another scene is on page 83 when the Jewish mice are hung in the city square. Had they been humans, the scene would possibly have been too graphic to print in some areas.

With a graphic novel, the discussion of the art is just as important as the text in the story. Telling the story with mice and cats makes it a vehicle for some deeper and darker material, and the quality of Spiegelman’s art also adds to the tone of the novel. The sketches for each page are very rough (so much so, in fact, that I deliberately call them sketches instead of drawings). The mice all look the same, the cats all look the same, the pigs all look the same; it is through these raw images that the story comes to the reader, and they are appropriate for the story they are conveying. It was not a pretty time, and Jews survived by living clandestine lives. The illustrations are very dark and show very well how many of the actions taken by the Jews were under the cloak of night. The dark tone shows that theirs was a life of hiding.

By contrast, the scenes between Art and his father, Vladek, typically feature a lot of white space. Theirs is a tenuous relationship, sure, but by contrast, it does not carry the same gravitas as Vladek’s personal narrative. I tried to picture what this novel would be like without the father and son element and decided that it would have failed as a groundbreaking work – it would have been one more survivor’s tale told to the masses. Because of this relationship, and because of the unspoken relationship that fell apart between Art and his mother, the tone of the overall novel becomes much more serious, and we realize that this is a very REAL story. We understand that this is not just a book about mice, but that these events happened to real people and real families. When we think back to page 108, we have to remember that even though it was a cat killing a mouse, it was actually an adult soldier smashing a toddler against a wall to stop him from crying. The human drama between characters reminds us this was all true.

The story ended abruptly, and even though I knew going into it that this was the first of two parts, I was still caught off guard. There was no “Fin” or “To Be Continued,” there was just the end of the page. Going along with this, there were a number of loose ends that were never tied up, such as their climactic arrival at Auschwitz and then nothing. These are not bad thing by any means, they just have me eager to read the next installment. Because as dark and serious as this story was, I was unable to put it down and was consistently intrigued by the story itself, wondering how Vladek was going to survive next. I am excited to conclude this story.

My parents were divorced when I was five years old, and I grew up with my sister and my mother. My grandmother was my babysitter. Apart from visiting my dad every other weekend and my stepfather entering my life around 4^th grade, there was not much male influence at home. Maybe this was it, or maybe it was the fact that my sister came before me so there were many girly things around the house, but there were a couple occasions in which I would put on my sister’s old tutu, don my grandmother’s wig, and dance around the living room in front of my mom. This stopped rather quickly as I begin to focus my creative efforts more on Lego’s and 3-D puzzles, but my mother made sure to capture it on film. In my senior yearbook, my parents submitted that picture for all to see with the caption: “Peter – who knew?? Love, Mom and David.” There was a laugh and chuckle, and it was no big thing – all a big “joke.” After reading Julie Anne Peters’ Luna, however, I realized that such a “joke” is actually a serious issue. Moreover, though I might have been a six-year-old boy who tried to emulate his sister once or twice, Liam is a boy who wants to be his sister. Peters’ story is not only beautifully written and full of varying emotions, it is also an extremely important novel for people to read.

To begin with, Peters’ writing style is very smooth, and her descriptions are easy to visualize. The narrator, Regan, is a believable 16-year-old girl. I have been an angst-filled teenager before, and Peters demonstrates that she either was, too, or at least knew enough of them to give an accurate portrayal. She dresses in gray, dull colors and feels like she is invisible to the rest of the world. She is smart, and much of the humor in the book comes from her dry, tongue-in-cheek commentary of everything around her. Perhaps her most poignant commentary comes as she is waiting for her date, Chris, to change his shirt: “I knew now what my life was about: Waiting for guys to change their clothes” (Peters 157). Through Regan’s narration and storytelling, Peters’ story becomes realistic and puts its heavy themes in a familiar light for her readers.

Though the main theme of Luna could arguably be what it means to have an identity and how we choose to act on that idea of self-identity, another important aspect of the novel is the focus on relationships. In this story, relationships are established and then questioned. They are turned upside down and then broken apart. And in the end they are re-established, left severed, or are still ambiguous to the reader. Some of the relationships bothered me to no end. Throughout the entire story, I knew something was strange about Regan and Liam’s mother. I assumed that she knew about Luna, or at least suspected that Liam simply had some weird fetish. (Proof of this was in her phone conversation with Elise and the fact that she immediately would retreat any time an issue came up between Liam and his father.) When I realized along with Regan that not only did her mother know about Liam, but she actively avoided this life-changing situation, I had complete disdain for her. I also had the same feeling towards the well-meaning father and the neighbors for whom Regan babysat. Peters does an excellent job of creating this distaste in the reader’s mouth as they begin to realize just how out of place Liam is, and how impossible it is for Luna to come out of hiding with such a hostile environment. Peters’ relationships provide the background and reasoning for Luna’s ultimate departure.

I firmly believed that there would be a hate crime by the end of this novel. Peters creates levels of tension in this novel that illuminate the tenuous vulnerability and precariousness of Liam’s situation: the scene in which Regan sneaks out of her job, the constant fear of being “found out” by the parents or anyone else, etc. I felt that all of this tension would bottle up and explode in an act of violence. I am glad that it did not, but I do wonder if the book tied up a little bit too nicely for all of the conflicts that entered into it. I can acknowledge that the relationships left severed or ambiguous are necessary for the story’s realism. I also understand that ending the novel on a tone of hopefulness leaves a good memory in many readers’ minds. However, Peters’ writing to this point is so well written to cause suspense that the ending comes off a bit too tidy.

I stated at the beginning that I feel this is an important novel. It will elicit a number of feelings and it is hard to tell how a class of students, for example, would react to this book. Will they laugh? Giggle? Feel uncomfortable? Completely understand the layers of character and engage in meaningful discussion? The latter will work if the teacher guides the students well, but regardless of how perfectly read or taught this story is, it is necessary to read. This book is sympathetic and telling of a different set of “beliefs” and orientation. We read multicultural literature for different religions, races, and sexuality. Luna provides yet another important social issue of which we should be aware and accepting.

            It was an early Saturday morning as I opened up to the “contents” page of Walter Dean Myers memoir, Bad Boy. I looked through the titles of the different chapters, and then turned the book over to read the back cover (something that I rarely do). As I did so, I found myself asking questions before I even started reading. Was this going to be like all the other angst-driven memoirs I had read? What were the themes that were going to be explored? Given that Myers was a kid during the Harlem Renaissance, would that era of American culture actually be explored? (I hoped it would since I am a big fan of that era’s culture.) I decided that with all these questions, I would set the book down and write a pre-response journal to the memoir. I will be very curious to see where my predictions end up when this story sits finished on my nightstand.

            As a 25-year-old white male that has lived his entire life in the Midwest, my experience with multicultural memoirs sometimes leaves me feeling like I have led an uninteresting life. Though I know this is not true, I do know that a memoir such as Myers’ will undoubtedly leave me feeling as though my childhood is nowhere near as rich as his was. I am also going to assume that I did not go through the hardships he went through, I had a better education than he did, and my “troubles,” by comparison to his, probably went down as roughly as a glass of chocolate milk.

            Looking at the table of contents and the names of the different chapters, I am also thinking that the best way I will describe his style would be poignant. Based on these chapter names, what I know of Myers’ writing style, and of my prior knowledge of memoirs, I think that we will run the gamut of emotions with Myers, from dark despair to tongue-in-cheek humor. Also based on these chapter names, it seems to be of the typical chronological format. Many newer memoirs try to post-modernize the memoir and break it into different pieces, though this one I am assuming will not. I picture this book to be a reflection of different stories from Myers’ childhood, and that the “cast of characters” will go in and out of each different story in a narrative fashion. Judging by the back cover, I also am predicting that Myers’ love for literature is either a long-time coming, or started being nurtured at an early age due to being raised during the Harlem Renaissance.

            Overall, I am looking forward to reading Myers’ memoir. Predicting what will happen can be fun and put me in the mood to read, but the ultimate payoff will be seeing how Myers uses his unique writing style with his own personal story to create what I hope to be an engaging memoir.

            Every time that I sit down and read a multicultural novel, or, in this case, a memoir of someone with a multicultural background, I get a funny taste in my mouth. It is not bitter and it is not sour. However, neither is it salty nor sweet. It is almost as if there is a ball of dough on my tongue and I am feeling it around the inside of my mouth, poking and prodding it and trying to see if I get a taste from it. Now and then I will think that I have found a sweet spot, only to have to disappear behind a lump of flavorless dough. I want to like this taste in my mouth, and I know that perhaps it is the tastiest thing in the world; maybe it is my mouth that is the problem. Regardless, there is a disconnect, regardless of how good the story is that I am trying to taste. Francisco Jiménez’s The Circuit is one such story. I feel as though I am an observer, reading and appreciating a well told story, but ultimately feeling the gap between the storyteller’s experience and my own.

            Perhaps it is Jiménez’s intention the entire time that the readers see and feel the gap between his experience and their own. Perhaps he knows that the younger readers of the 21^st century will not understand what it was like for a migrant child and a migrant worker family. However, it is quite clear by his narrative structure and detailed situations that Jiménez wants to evoke certain emotions in his readers. For example, at the end of the short story “The Circuit,” our heartstrings are pulled this way and that and ultimately snipped when we realize that Panchito, who is finally settling in and finding his place, has the pull up his roots and keep moving on. To his credit, Jiménez does allow us to connect with the main character (the narrator) by showing everything through his eyes. With this technique we have no choice but to feel what the narrator feels, and to react in the way the narrator reacts. By implementing this narrative technique, Jiménez creates a strong character-reader relationship.

            I am still left, however, with a feeling of disconnect. I am not from a background similar to Jiménez’s. To put it slightly negatively, I had everything handed to me growing up. Except for a parental divorce when I was still very young, I had a normal, middle white-America life. Perhaps most importantly, I lived in the same house my entire life. I went to the same school district and had the same group of people around me every single year that I was in school. Looking at it now, perhaps this was what Jiménez hoped for as his ideal reader. If I were to juxtapose my situation with his, the differences would be night and day. I did not have to deal with speaking a different language. I did not have to pull up anchor every school year. I did not have to sleep in a bed with six other people or pee into a coffee tin in the middle of the night. In this regard, Jiménez has made me appreciate both his situation and my own. I can recognize that, but I still feel like I am looking at his story through a window from outside.

            Maybe the separation I feel from the narrative is partly due to not knowing until the end of the novel that this was not Jiménez’s own story. It is semi-autobiographical, so there are stories that are based on true ones, or at least were inspired by real accounts, but the narrator is not Jiménez. I felt that way throughout the story, but I chalked that up to the poetic license an author takes when writing a memoir. I think I would have read the stories differently if I had known that what was occurring in each was actually fictitious (for some of them). For example, I was not only surprised by the immigration officers at the end of “Moving Still,” I was thrown off and confused by them. I did not think that Jiménez had ever been deported before in what I had read, so I felt disjointed by these last lines of the book.

            In the end, I kept waiting for the next story to have a happy conclusion. I do not remember ever getting one. If there was a short story in this collection that ended on a high note, I cannot remember it over all of the endings that left me feeling melancholy. I should stress that I did enjoy these stories and thought they were very well-written; Jiménez is a gifted storyteller. The only issue was that I felt as though I was simply a passerby, glancing in at Jiménez’s stories without needing to get heavily involved.

            I was staying at my father’s house one weekend in high school when we were hit by an enormous, overnight snow and ice storm. When I awoke the next morning, absolutely everything was covered in a sheet of ice: the barn, the silo, the bare branches of trees, the pampas grass that turned gold in the winter, the gravel on the driveway that pushed through the snow, and even every single needle of the gigantic blue spruce on the hillside. I wrote in my journal that it looked like an alien landscape and that we were no longer on this planet. Memories of writing that piece in my journal came flooding back to me as I read Jennifer Armstrong’s Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World. As the explorers in our story trudge across ice floes and battle harsh arctic winds, they deal with an environment that is unlike anything else on our planet. Indeed it feels alien in nature, but at the heart is something very familiar: a story about brethren, survival, and the endurance of man.

            It is difficult to write about non-fiction when my mind is immediately ready to snap to a discussion of character and plot reveal, but Armstrong makes this transition extremely easy. Her writing style is universal in that readers of all ages can understand and engage with the text. Though I almost wished I did not know if the men all survived the trek (though they must have for me to be reading first-hand accounts of their ordeal), I still found myself enthralled by the men’s story. Stories of survival are always intriguing, particularly when they are true, and Armstrong captures and relays all the important moments to us as readers.

            One thing that pulled me in was the vivid description that Armstrong gives to the surroundings and setting of this tale. We can smell the musk and tobacco on these testosterone-laden men, and we can hear and feel the creeks in the wood of the enormous ship, the Endurance. Though I have only ever seen these pictures in museums and books, and only read about such journeys, I still felt able to perfectly visualize the whalers and smell the rotting blubber of their port. These images are vital to carrying a reader through a non-fiction text because it is very possible to get bored or confused by nothing but facts. Readers, particularly adolescent readers, need that vivid detail, even more than the accompanying pictures can provide (though the chosen pictures for this book fit very well and enhanced the narrative).

            Perhaps the greatest imagery was that of Antarctica, or rather the ice floes surrounding Antarctica. Through the description of the “knee-high slush,” or the heaving of the ocean beneath the ice, I was able to feel Antarctica at my finger tips, and put life to something I have never known much about. I have seen pictures and seen Hollywood depictions of such a desolate place, but to hear about the details of groaning ice and moving floes makes it feel real and not as alien as I previously interpreted it.

            Most importantly to this story, though, was the survival and hope that resonated throughout. Even though we know as readers that all of the men survive this journey, there is still page-turning suspense to find out just exactly HOW they managed to survive, and what they had to sacrifice along the way in order to maintain their safety and their sanity. At one point, Armstrong describes a scene in which the captain, Shackleton, maintains order and avoids a potential mutiny among his men. The mental fortitude to survive such a horribly long endeavor shows character among the men. Character, it turns out, was also something the men did NOT lack. From the burly and masculine leader of Shackleton, to the witty and multi-talented Hurley, each man played a role in helping the crew survive, and they also kept my interest piqued as the story moved along.

            Armstrong’s telling of this story is nothing short of engrossing. Clearly, a story like this does not need any sprucing up to make it unique and interesting, but Armstrong, through character description and setting a visual scene, shows the strength and courage of a group of men that can simply be described as inspiring.

Shan, Darren. (2000). Cirque du freak: A living nightmare. New York: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-60510-6.

“‘Listen to me,’ Mr. Tall said. ‘I gave fair warning. I said this show could be dangerous. This is not a nice, safe circus where nothing goes wrong. Mistakes can and do happen… That’s why this show is banned. Most of the time, things go smoothly and nobody gets hurt. But we cannot guarantee your safety’” (63).

Teenaged Darren and his best friend Steve sit in a dark and decrepit theater at midnight and witness a freak show unlike any they have ever seen, and the man in front of them repeating his warning has just finished sowing a woman’s hand back onto her wrist after a werewolf tore it off with his fangs. Darren looks to Steve and they both give a smile and a nod of approval for their decision to come to the Cirque du Freak on its one night in their quiet, suburban town.

Against the advice of their school teacher, and behind the backs of their parents, Darren and Steve had decided to spend their allowance on the last two tickets available to the traveling freak show. In recounting this “true story,” Darren tells us, his audience, that it feels almost like his destiny to attend the freak show; that something is pulling him to it. As Darren and Steve sit in the dark of the freak show and watch the fantastical horrors unfold before them, Darren observes a change in Steve’s demeanor. Steve is not the greatest student in the world, and he is a loose cannon, but he is a good friend, and would never do anything to hurt Darren. After the show, however, Steve tells Darren to go on ahead because he left something in the auditorium. Untrusting of Steve at this point, Darren sneakily follows him back into the theater and witnesses his best friend talking to one of the freaks – a vampire – and asking the freak to make him a vampire, too.

From this point on, Darren’s journeys cannot avoid dealing with the dark and macabre. The vampire at the freak show follows him home, his best friend is not trustworthy and sulks around school, his family cannot understand what is wrong with him, and worst of all he has to make a life-altering decision that one way or the other will lead to the death of someone very close to him. As he comes to grips with the life-changing decisions he must make in the end, Darren begins to realize what is important to him in his life, and wishes he did not have to make a decision upon which so many heavy things were hung.

As the reader, we experience everything though Darren’s eyes. Shan chooses to make himself the main character in this twisted story of vampires, poisonous spiders, and werewolves. And as the readers of Darren’s words, we, too, for better or worse, get to experience the world through the eyes of a juvenile, adolescent boy. Adolescent male readers in turn will relate to his musings and quips, and will be pleased to know that this quick read ends on a cliffhanger, begging the reader to pick up the next story in the continually growing series.

Ultimately, the story jockeys for position among popular storytelling for those younger adolescents that love a quick and easy story. If young adult literature is akin to a hearty, healthy sandwich that is packed in your lunchbox next to your juice and cookies, then A Living Nightmare makes an easy to swallow bologna-on-white.

            Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion begins with a scene in which a doctor is trying to make a clone. A clone of what, we cannot be entirely sure, though we know it is important and that the man fears for his life should he not be successful in making one. This opening scene ends with the doctor successfully harvesting cells, growing them in a cow, and preparing himself to administer some sort of drug that will render the baby “unintelligent.” Suddenly he is stopped and when he does not administer the shot, when he realizes that this clone will grow up to have feelings and understanding of the world around him, he simply thinks to himself “Have I done you a favor? Will you thank me for it later?” In this single thought, the story of Matteo Alacrán is roughly summed up; we as readers must consistently return to this question, and gauge for ourselves the kind of life that Matt leads. This novel explores many societal issues and commentary, but most importantly it creates a character having to rise up above everyone’s expectations.

            If I had to pick one word to describe or sum up Farmer’s novel, it would be “individualism.” Farmer has no secrets about this being a major theme throughout her story. When Matt and the orphaned boys are working at the plankton farms, the Keepers tell them stories to teach them that individualism is bad. In the story of the five-legged horse, the keeper says that “the fifth leg – which we’ll call individualism” must be cut off in order for the horse to function properly. In these orphan work farms they are supposed to work as a whole, no questions ask. This is slightly better than the eejits in Opium, who also suffer from no individualism, but more against their will than the orphan boys. The oasis is also the quintessential literary symbol for individualism: it is tucked away from everything else, no one knows about it, and it is Matt’s daily chance at escaping the Alacrán estate.

            The irony presented here, of course, is that Matt is a clone. If there was ever a less individualistic being, the world has yet to see it. Twins may look alike, but they are unique in their DNA. Matt is a replication of another person, and the ninth one at that. It is absolutely horrible and disgusting that most humans treat clones as beasts, less than dogs, but even more grotesque is the notion that they do not deserve to live. If Matt is an ironic walking symbol of individualism, Farmer makes her point that this is a society in which such liberties are frowned upon if you are not in a powerful position. Under El Patrón, no one is free to be themselves – they are all simply his possessions.

            We are forced to think back to the doctor’s words, then, when considering Matt’s role: “Have I done you a favor?” Is it better for Matt to live and be treated as less than a beast than for him to be completely unaware of his existence? Farmer presents us with a contradiction: Ignorance of a constricting situation can be freeing, yet being alive in such a situation can create and stir hope.

            Farmer makes it extremely easy to empathize with Matt. We see him grow from six years old to fourteen years old, and Farmer’s characterization is seamless. Even though he is a clone, we still see his human emotions and his human biological development. We grow with him as readers, and we see that he is beginning to outgrow this constricting box of anti-individualism that holds him in. We are with him every step of the way in the love story that proves to be heartfelt by novel’s end. We grow with him and we understand why Celia would commit such an act in order to save Matt. It is not simply because it is the right and just thing to do, but rather it is because she cares for him as a person, and as her son. Even though it was love that made her act as she did, though, it cannot go unnoticed that individualism must be attained. Celia made a sacrifice for Matt, just as Tam Lin made a sacrifice for all of the eejits. Self-sacrifice was vital to breaking the bonds of fascism and classism that plagued both sides of the border in this novel.

            Ultimately, the theme of love and family and self-identity shine through. As readers, we empathize with Matt in his feelings for María, and we recognize the horribleness of the Alacrán family. The family prevented anyone from feeling individual (indeed, how could they when body parts of other people were being used in their OWN body). There was nothing individual about the family, but a nurturing family and a welcoming love is vital for someone to get a sense of who they are and where they belong.

            In the end, Farmer leaves us with Matt sitting in the oasis, in his own private location, speaking to himself and to the family that helped make him who he is. He is not a clone, but an individual who will be capable of many things.

            After I rushed to finish the last forty pages of M.T. Anderson’s Feed, I immediately threw the book across the room at the far wall. I refused to make eye contact with any of the posters or photographs in my room as I sat propped up in my bed, silently fuming. After a few minutes of heavy breathing and scowling, I stood up, walked over to the far wall, picked up the book and dusted it off, then set it in its proper place on my bookshelf. Then I took a step back, looked at my vast collection of literature, and felt glad to have Feed sitting on my shelf. Perhaps that is the most frustrating thing about Anderson’s novel: I want to loathe it and highly recommend it simultaneously. That says something about an author, though I am still working out exactly what that is. Anderson has written a novel that can fascinate and bewilder you, make you want to fall in love, and yes, even throw the story far away from you so you do not have to deal with it again.

            Now that I have your attention, let me clear some things up about this novel. I absolutely loved the story. And I absolutely hated Titus, the main character. I strongly believe that this is Anderson’s intention the entire time, to create a character that we simply do not like by the end of the book. Yes, she wants us to blame it on the feed, and not on the character, but Titus is not a victim. He is not an anti-hero. He is simply a foolish teenager that immaturely handles a situation by novel’s end. In a setting where even the president stutters and forgets common political words such as “treaty” or “pact,” and where Titus’s father says “dude” far too often for a grown man, we should accept that a person can make dumb decisions. Because of the fascination with the feed, humanity is steadily getting dumber and out of touch with one another. Anderson portrays a remarkable irony when she has Titus claim that everyone is smarter because of how quickly they can look up particular references. Anderson wants us to understand that such access to facts does not demonstrate intelligence. The ultimate display of non-intelligence, then, is how Titus handles the situation with Violet as the books final act plays out.

            From a literary standpoint, Anderson vividly plays out the feed. By splicing the chapters with snippets of the feed, and showing that the feed has its fingers in EVERYTHING, the book is filled with noise. Add to this that Titus’s narration is almost akin to running commentary without a breath or pause for silence, and the book almost never lets up on its noise level; there is constantly something happening. In the second part of the book entitled “Eden,” Anderson juxtaposes the noise of the feed with its absence. In doing so, she presents an almost heavenly silence to the story. There are no snippets of feed, and Titus’s narration slows down, describing things around him more colorfully, and taking his time to talk to Violet and get to know her. Then, in a frantic introduction back to the feed, the characters almost go through a rebirth when the feed is restored. Titus says it is coming down like rain, and we as readers can feel the noise come showering back in. We are in Eden no more.

            Hidden beneath the surface of this novel was a running theme of imperfection. Whether or not it was Anderson’s intention, there is a constant feeling of belittlement and flaw. People are still naturally born, but they come from test tubes and the parents can decide how perfect they look. People are beautiful, well-to-do, and privileged on many levels. Yet there is a boredom that is ever-present. People do not speak with metaphors (according to Violet) and there is no creativity any longer. To most people, the feed is masking these imperfections, but to Violet, the feed only highlights everything that has gone wrong in society, exploiting its downfalls.

            Linked to this imperfection is the feeling of numbness, the ultimate feeling that I believe Anderson wants us to come away with. People are numb to emotions outside of chatrooms. People are seemingly numb to pain, as the bizarre ritual of creating lesions on your body demonstrates. And more than anything else, the reason that I wanted to make Titus eat a meat-fist sandwich, was our narrator’s numbness to Violet’s situation. A girl who has the potential to change his life is treated like an afterthought. They are sitting in a beautiful hotel room looking out at gorgeous mountains, about to have an amazingly romantic moment, and Titus cannot must up any energy whatsoever. This scene, and the scenes that played out afterwards made me livid, and I understood why Anderson wanted me to feel this way. If Titus cannot feel alive and see what is in front of him, then we must shoulder the burden.

            This novel is beautiful, aggravating, socially relevant, frustrating, and wonderful. By filling the novel with noise and painting her main character in such an interesting shade of colors, Anderson creates a story that has the potential to be timeless, and the frightening possibility of being telling.