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Using Young Adult Novels to Make Sense of #MeToo

Laurie Halse Anderson, the author of “Speak,” a 1999 novel about a teenage girl traumatized by rape, did not initially see her book as a piece of activism.

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Julia Jacobs
, New York Times

Laurie Halse Anderson, the author of “Speak,” a 1999 novel about a teenage girl traumatized by rape, did not initially see her book as a piece of activism.

After it was published, Anderson visited schools to discuss the story and its main character, Melinda, a freshman who struggles to verbalize her pain after she is raped by an upperclassman at her first high school party.

Early on, Anderson spoke about the book as a piece of literature rather than a lesson on rape culture. But then the students started asking questions, like, “Did this happen to you?”

It had. She had been 13 when she was raped. She had not spoken about it for 25 years, until she wrote the book. She told them about it.

“So many heads in the audience would nod,” Anderson, now 56, said. “I realized that there are so many teens carrying burdens and scars.”

The book became a fixture in school libraries and English classrooms across the country, and it set something of a precedent for the industry. In the nearly 20 years since its debut, novels for young adults have explored issues of sexual violence like never before.

As the country continues to respond to the #MeToo movement, teachers and librarians are turning to fiction to help teenagers understand emotional trauma and make sense of this cultural reckoning.

Kami Garcia, an author and former teacher from Annapolis, Maryland, wrote a novel called “Broken Beautiful Hearts,” which tells a story about relationship violence that parallels her own experience as a teenager. Garcia, 46, said that when she was 17, she broke up with her boyfriend over his use of steroids and, in response, he pushed her through a screen door. For two years after that, he stalked her, she said.

In Garcia’s novel, released this year, the 17-year-old protagonist, Peyton Rios, is pushed down the stairs by her ex-boyfriend. But the difference is that the fictional character tells her mother about the abuse. Garcia said she didn’t tell any adults.

“I wanted to rewrite history and do all the things I wish I would have done,” she said.

On visits to schools to discuss the book, Garcia asked students to raise their hands if they knew someone who had experienced dating violence or had been sexually harassed or assaulted. At most schools, nearly every girl in the audience raised her hand, Garcia said.

Novels can provide a safe place to explore ideas about consent and speaking out after abuse because young readers can inhabit the experience of a fictional character rather than face their own trauma head-on, said Amy Reed, an author from Asheville, North Carolina.

Reed’s book, “The Nowhere Girls,” tells a story of three teenagers avenging a classmate’s gang rape. The teenage characters in the book, published last year, have a nuanced understanding of consent and its gray areas.

“Silence does not mean ‘yes,' ” Reed, 38, writes. “ 'No’ can be thought and felt but never said. It can be screamed silently on the inside.”

Reed said discussion about these subtleties were absent in her young adult years. “I wanted to write the conversations I wasn’t having but so desperately needed.”

In her ninth-grade English classroom in Austin, Texas, Lorena German uses a 2014 novel, “Gabi, a Girl in Pieces,” to address sexual assault, while also exploring issues of sexual orientation, body image and cultural heritage. The book by Isabel Quintero is about a Mexican-American teenage girl whose best friend is raped and then gets pregnant.

German, 34, said she considers it irresponsible for educators to ignore issues of sexual violence. “Teaching this stuff is scary for adults because I think that teachers think they have to have all the answers,” German said. “That’s not the case.”

“We’re supposed to guide and facilitate the learning process,” she said. “When teachers are vulnerable and honest with students, only good can come of it.” Librarians across the country have also made it part of their mission to make sure young readers have access to books about sexual violence.

At Oak Lawn Public Library in Illinois, Izabel Gronski, 31, a librarian for the young adult section, compiled an online list with a #MeToo theme. She also tucked a display in a spot on the second floor where young readers could browse privately. She included information about the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, or Rainn.

Emma Fernout, a librarian for Johnson County Library in northeastern Kansas, created a similar list, writing that the books were meant to provide young readers with “perspective and solidarity.” Fernout, 22, said that she sees herself as an intermediary between the adult and adolescent worlds.

Teenagers often have a particularly difficult time telling people they’ve been victimized, she said, because they assume adults won’t believe them or their peers will ostracize them. “You’re in this bubble of high school that you can’t get out of,” she said. “And if you say something, you’re risking your entire world.”

Victor Malo-Juvera, an associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, said that when he taught “Speak” to high schoolers in Miami, at least one student would open up to him each year about a personal experience with sexual violence.

The first year he taught the novel, a teenage boy approached him with his story. In the years that followed, he brought a guidance counselor into class to make sure students had support if needed.

Although “Speak” was written in the ‘90s, long before the phrase “rape culture” became well-known, the text remains a staple of high school curriculums.

In Princeton, Wisconsin, a rural town of 1,200, Nicholas Sina, 28, teaches the novel to 10th graders. Many of his students have never talked openly about sexual violence before, he said, and the lessons can sometimes get uncomfortable.

Sina said several parents in the conservative town have objected to the book, arguing that sexual content — especially the violent kind — is not appropriate. (This is not a new reaction: In 2010, a college professor in Missouri called the novel “soft-pornography” that “glorifies drinking, cursing, and premarital sex.”)

Sina, who grew up in Princeton, said he explains to parents that it is vital that students discuss sexual violence before moving away to college, where they will be more likely to encounter it.

“What happens when she moves out of your house?” he said. “She needs to know this is a reality.” Anderson, the novel’s author, said books can offer teenagers the language to understand an unfamiliar issue. In her conversations with thousands of teenage readers, she said, it was clear that many had previously lacked the language to understand what happened to Melinda, her main character — or even what happened in their own lives.

“So many kids have come to me and said, ‘I didn’t realize what he did to me,’ ” she said.

Anderson is set to release a poetry memoir, called “Shout,” about her own rape.

“It finally dawned on me that adults have a responsibility to be honest with kids about what they are facing every day,” she said.

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