What I'm reading
Celebrating the inspiration of other writers
Read 3.17-3.22.19
Laurie Halse (rhymes with faults/assaults/haults) Anderson is done with Speak though it lives on-- that simple call, that wonder of story in millions and millions of us who have read one of my most choked-up SHOUT moments—the electrician on movie set whispering in the humid dark of Ohio gym as his hands reached for rolls of gaffing tape for some scene to come: "I am Melinda...a lot of us... are like he-- it happened to us too" (196-197). 1 in 6 boys have been sexually assaulted, halted, faulted themselves, their stars-- how much this time now is for shouting: All of us. The way I did at 19 walking with girlheart back to dorm on midnight street, predator preying, running straight for us I SHOUTED and RAN TOWARD him, my most ferocious moment yet: "WHAT THE *&(% O YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?" SHOUTED, ran toward danger to knock it off its track meet crazy with crazy after I'd already known crazy. In SHOUT Laurie makes intimate knowledge the splinters of home fracture of family that still offerec a tangy bright broken beauty-- Father with war chest in head/heart later the labels to lay over memories but for a long time the wonder of daughter, the mystery of father Mother who shouldered her own heavy weights mouth marbled by hurting husband path littered with want. How family forms us and undoes us folds and forges us upon broken mirrors and sometimes frees us-- to Denmark and wide world bridge-building, barn-raising the tongue learning how to press new sounds into bright understanding And of course-- in the early pages, the locomotive rumbling the thudding dread of when IT will arrive and wrench handlebars of narrative into shame-soaked sorry into rage-rabid reckoning into dark night and open road and car collision The wonder of wondrous writing—image heavy how me—luck-drenched girl whose #MeToo moments were never really worth mention-- but me-- how I become Melinda, become Laurie become Alice become Roxane become Dorothy become Christine become Amanda become Sandra become Alli become Maya become countless unnamed, unspoken boys, girls, two-spirits become us through the wide world of page of reread of details of feel and ache empathy and awful us, arisen to SHOUT the shame out
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