For today's Cybil nominee Nonfiction Monday Roundup, I give you books about teens, by teens. Teens telling their own stories to other teens, some more successfully than others.
I Can't Keep My Own Secrets is a collection of six-word memoirs from real teens. The cover says "famous and obscure" but only 5 pages out of 182 (16 memoirs) are by famous teens. The rest are "obscure." There's bound to be someone every reader will recognize in this book, as well as someone with a completely different experience, as the range is so wide. Some of these teens are what we would define as "regular," some aren't. There are celibates and teen moms, academic superstars and dropouts, teens from happy homes and sad ones. The memoirs are silly, they're deep, they're flippant, they capture something bigger, they made me laugh, they made me cry, they made me so glad I'm no longer that age, and they made me miss high school. The book manages to really capture the range of American experience, the range of the teen experience, and all the while being a read that teens will love.
Some of the ones that caught my eye as I was reading:
Would be a slut, given a chance.
Lost my virginity, it was fantastic.
I need out of Ohio. Bad.
Family night is secretly my favorite.
We are banned from Wal-Mart forever.
We're the family you gossip about.
Model and sci-fi geek. Gotta problem?!
Started forgetting about life before Katrina.
Holden caught me in the rye.
Afraid I'm crazy, Bell Jar style.
I don't rock. Guitar Hero lies.
Too many colors, hair now brittle.
Virgin is not a dirty word.
And, my favorite one, and the one that I most relate to, even as an adult:
I fulfilled my awkwardness quota today.
Book Provided by... my local library
Blaze Ginsburg is a highly functioning autistic teenager. In his autobiography, he's structured his life as if it were a multiple series of television shows. Some series have multiple seasons, some are holiday specials, and some are mini-series. The chronology can be a bit confusing, as the series often overlap in time. "My Freshman Year of High School 1" runs from September-December 2002, with the second season running from January-June 2003. Meanwhile, we have the Thanksgiving Special 2002 and then the series "Blaze, Courtney, and Amber" which overlaps and runs from December 2002-June 2003. The setting of life events as TV episodes, while an interesting idea, really separates the readers from the action, giving us a very brief glimpse at this guy's day-to-day life. I wanted more depth. The book was too much style and not enough substance for my tastes. While it was interesting to see why he reacts in the ways he reacts, you know he's not the most reliable of narrators and there are things going on around him that he's missing.
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2 Comments on I fulfilled my awkwardness quota today., last added: 12/10/2009
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sounds like you missed it big time on the emily smucker book. that last qoute was one of enlightenment. it basically says she realized that no matter what happens God does give the power to handle it. and that he had given her the power to do so without her realizing it.
I think that you may be right as to how Emily feels by the end of the book, but the quotation is NOT one of enlightenment. When she says that, she does not feel that "He had given her the power to do so without her realizing it." Which is really obvious if you read everything she says before and after the paragraph I quoted (it's 2 pages long, so I can't quote it all here.)
I really admire how deep Emily's faith is, even when she's struggling, wondering why these things are happening to her. And the frankness with which she describes her frustration was really moving, especially because she never lost her faith.