Engaging Perspectives: The Young Adult Reader: Writings about Writing

Sue Christian Parsons, Ph.D.

Spring 2019: Writings about Writing

Anne Lamott (1994) tells us, Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.

We hope that our students will be drawn in, intrigued, challenged, and buoyed, by what they read. We hope, too, that they claim their own voices through writing so they may challenge and add interest and hope to the world around them. Too often, writers in our classrooms view writing as pedantic and obligatory rather than passionate and rife with possibilities. Each of the books in this collection brings the reader into writing. Some are works of fiction while others take us into the minds and/or lives of some of our most influential writers, making the craft accessible and the reading of their works even more intriguing and inviting.

It is important to reconsider the common perception that we teach books. If we try to do so, we often miss teaching the learner. We teach readers, not books. Learners need to choose books that speak to them, those in which they recognize or, in the best of books, come to know themselves better. Learners also need to choose what they write—ideally, as Mem Fox (xxxx) reminds us, those things about which they “ache with caring.” They must learn to recognize and speak their own truth, manipulate words to evoke responses, influence their surroundings, and discover new possibilities. Again, we don’t teach forms, but rather teach possible forms, how to use them, and what might happen as a result. We explore with them powerful writing and invite them to use the writers as mentors. The beauty of these books is that they take the reader beyond examining craft to envision the possibilities of the “writerly life.” In them, we see writing as transformative and writers as transformers.

The books reviewed here explore writing and writers. Some are works of fiction richly imbued with the author’s experiences and passions. Others are told by or about the writers, inviting us behind the familiar work to see the writer and thus understand familiar texts in new ways.

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Fictional writers, expertly crafted by real onesThe Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (2018, Harper Teen)

Xiomara is tall, strong, and built with, as her Mami says, ‘a little too much body for such a young girl,’ she has a habit of answering taunts with her fists. For all she is seen—by leering men on the street in her Harlem neighborhood, through what feels like constant surveillance from her mother, under the watchful eyes of her priest and her parents’ friends— Xiomara feels completely unheard. Xiomara wrestles with her religious doubt and with her own burgeoning romantic urges, clashing—often intensely--with her mother who sees both a sin and threat. Xiomara pours her worries and frustrations, hopes and passions, into her journal, writing poetry as if her life depends on it. When she is invited to join a slam poetry club at school, Xiomara beings to find her way out of her thoughts into her voice.

The Great American Whatever by Tim Federle (2016, Simon & Schuster)

Quinn has always been a storyteller. He and his sister Annabelle used to spend hours hatching ideas for the great movies he will write and she will direct. But now Annabelle is gone—killed in a car wreck in front of his school the day before Christmas break—his Dad gone years before—walked away—and his mother is trying to eat away her grief and anger. Now Quinn goes to therapy instead of school and spends hours on end of “me time” in his room with laundry piling up and mildew taking over the shower. With his therapist urging him “toward optimism” and his best friend tugging him out of hibernation, Quinn steps out and, suddenly, into the possibility of a relationship with a guy he meets at a party. Bolstered by this unexpected burst of hope, Quinn starts to believe again that the screenplay that is his own life actually has a chance of ending happily and to write himself toward that possibility. Federle lets Quinn narrate his own story in first person prose punctuated by screen plays, the author’s gift for deft characterization giving the backbone to this hilarious and heart-wrenching story of grief, redemption, and the power of the writing our own stories.

Inside the Lives of Well-Known Writers

Zora Neale Hurston was known for her swagger and style, a confidence instilled during her early years growing during the late 1800s and early 20 th century in Eatonville, FL, a thriving all-Black township. The exuberant confidence she developed as a child had to see her through difficult years after her mother’s death when Zora was only thirteen and then as an adult, an anthropologist and writer who was a vibrant actor in the Harlem Renaissance.

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Zora and Me by Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon (2010, Candlewick Press)

Zora and Me is a fictionalized biography focusing on Zora’s early years as told through the eyes of her (fictional) best friend Carrie. When the peace of the small town is rocked by a murder, young Zora, already a vibrant storyteller and fascinated by folktales, spins a tale about a man who transforms to an alligator to kill. The truth about the death, though, brings to bear the hard truth about segregation and racial hatred in the world just beyond Eatonville. Zora and Me is entertaining and riveting, but also honest and thought-provoking. Zora and Me pulls the reader along willingly as an engaging mystery, but doesn’t avoid the ugly facts of the context either. Extensive back matter offers more information about Zora’s life and historical significance, including a variety of resources for further exploration.

Zora! The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Dennis Brindell Fradin and Judith Bloom Fradin

Zora! The Life of Zora Neale Hurston is a comprehensive biography that develops her character and chronicles her careers, including a strong focus on her passion for writing and struggles getting recognition or pay for her efforts. Particularly engaging are the glimpses into the creative community of the Harlem Renaissance, including Zora’s ill-fated friendship with Langston Hughes, that offer “leap off” points for exploring the work of other writers of that time and place. Zora died poor, her reputation as a writer faded but, as the final chapter details, her works were saved first from a fire and then from obscurity as her works were rediscovered by a new generation of teachers and writers. Fradin infuses the narrative with photographs and Zora’s own words, and provides a detailed time line of Zora’s life, samples from her collected tales, source notes and a bibliography.

Mary’s Monster by Lita Judge (2018, Roaring Brook Press)In the introduction to this evocative biography, author Lita Judge writes:

The novel, Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, written by Mary Shelley and published in 1818, is one of the most famous and enduring works of the Romantic era. Nearly everyone has some knowledge of this book, but few know that its author was a pregnant teenage runaway rejected by her family and spurned by society.

Crafted in luscious, haunting free verse embedded in dark, affecting artwork, Judge’s biography of Shelley is enthralling and dense with feeling. Readers who may have given the romantic poets a passing glance only in assignments may well embrace the revolutionary power of that period in history and the force of writers as innovators and change agents. The universalities of Mary’s struggles—her struggle to be heard and find her own way,

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her intense yearning to be loved, the intense pain of rejection and jealously and the urge to create—should resound with young reader today. This is a beautiful, haunting, and significant piece.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson (2014, Nancy Paulson Books)

Woodson, one of the most prolific and influential writers today, details her life growing up in Ohio, South Carolina, and then New York during the 1960’s and 70’s--and into herself as a writer. Lovingly crafted free verse vignettes take the reader from place to place and moment to moment, introducing us to Woodson’s people and sharing her aches, yearnings, loves, and triumphs, and giving an important inside look at a separated society straining for better. Vivid, often achingly intimate, Woodson’s memoirs are also encouraging: Despite shifts and changes, family love remained a constant and a girl who struggled in school, recognizes and holds to her own special brilliance and becomes a great writer.

A Song for Gwendolyn Brooks by Alice Faye Duncan (2019, Sterling Children’s Books)

In A Song for Gwendolyn Brooks, author Alice Faye Duncan celebrates her own writing hero in this biography in verse that focuses as much on the story of writing—of inspiration, revision, and the hope of sending a work out into the world—as it does on the writer. Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win the Pulitzer prize. That she was a writer was clear from the time she was a very young girl, her gift and her budding belief in herself protected and nurtured by her parents. Employing the form of a paean, an ancient celebratory poem, Duncan starts each section with, “Sing a song for Gwendolyn Brooks,” telling a little more of Brooks’s story with each turn, stepping steadily through the story of her life and development as a writer up to the moment she claimed the Pulitzer prize to the joy of her loving family. The last two verses in the final refrain of this song speaks to the importance of nurturing young writers, Henry celebrates Gwen./Junior too./They shower her with noisy kisses./ Gwendolyn’s parents cry tears of joy./They praise her shine./They saw it first./Mr. Brooks and Mrs. Brooks/Planted love and watered it./Gwendolyn believed./She found her light.

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Poem for Peter: The Story of Ezra Jack Keats and the Creation of the Snowy Day by Andrea Davis Pinkney (2016, Penguin Young Readers Group.)

Teen readers my well remember reading the iconic picture book, The Snowy Day, but they and the adults who read it to them in the first place are unlikely to know the social significance of that beautiful, simple little book. As she unfurls Keats’s life story and hones in on the creation of this ground breaking book—the first mainstream published children’s book to feature an African American child—she reveals how a writer’s life influences his choices and how the power of that writing influences others. Pinkey presents a bit of a master class as well, blending genres to create a moving, almost magical ode to creation, courage, and persistence.

Suzii Parsons believes that books truly matter in the lives of young people. She is the Jacques Munroe Professor of Reading and Literacy at Oklahoma State University. You can contact Dr. Parsons at sue.parsons@okstate.edu.

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