Speak by Laurie Anderson

  Anderson, L. H.  (1999). Speak.  NY:  Penguin. When Melinda Sordino begins her freshman year of high school in New York, she has a heavy secret weighing on her. Over the summer, Melinda attends a party and ends up calling the police. Because of this, her friends begin to socially reject her except for Heather, who tries to get Melinda involved in her plans to gain popularity. However, Melinda is not interested in being popular. She spends a lot of her time at school hiding in a janitorial closet to avoid her teachers and past friends. Melinda's only happiness is when she is in art class painting a tree. However, Melinda continues to run into a senior named Andy, who she calls It, at school which forces her to face what happened to her at the party. She is forced to relive the details when he begins to antagonize her. She begins to skip school and isolate herself. When her parents and counselors try to get her to open up about her academics, she refuses to speak to them and stops speaking altogether. After months of self-harm, Melinda finally faces the fact thatthat Andy raped her. This helps her to slowly start to recover from the trauma and Melinda begins to starts new hobbies and gains confidence. She even begins to work on a vibrant new tree for her art class. When Andy finds her in the janitor's closet, she defends herself and gains respect from other girls that Andy has assaulted. At the end of her school year, she finishes her tree and opens up to her art teacher about what happened to her.

Speak is a novel that can be relatable to high school students. Having a person close to me go through an experience such as this in high school, resulted in many connections with the book. Unfortunately sexual assault is all to common especially in high school, and Melinda can be looked up to by young girls for the fact that she came forward and ultimately faced her rapist which resulted in her healing. This is a good message to girls or women that have had a similar experience.

Anderson, L. H.  (1999). Speak.  NY:  Penguin (you may read the GN version) or you may read Shout! (2019).



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