The Full Spectrum for Nonfiction Monday

Levithan, David, and Billy Merrell, eds. The Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing About Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and Other Identities. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/1022264]

Awards:
Lambda Literary Award (Children's/Young Adult, 2006)
ALA Rainbow List (Young Adult Nonfiction, 2008)

Booktalk:

"This book would have been very different if it had been compiled fifteen years ago, when I [David Levithan] was in high school It would have been different ten years ago, or even five years ago. I have faith that in five years, times will have changed enough to alter our snapshot here. And in ten years. And in fifteen years. This is a remarkable time to be young and queer in America. There is progress, and there is backlash. There is love, and there is hate. There is hope, and there is despair. Things are changing fast, and they're not changing fast enough. ... But change is going to come. Maybe in five years. Maybe in ten. Maybe longer. Maybe sooner.

One way to effect change is to share truths. To tell our stories. To make our hears and minds heard."

Notes to the Reader

So David Levithan and Billy Merrell began collecting pieces written by queer youth under the age of 23. All the pieces are non-fiction (with some name changes). All of them represent the author's unique perspective on the queer youth experience. Together the submissions create a vast array of colors and light, The Full Spectrum.

Review:
The pieces in this anthology tackle a myriad of topics: coming out, religion, first love, unaccepting parents/peers, religion, supportive parents/peers, the Boy Scouts, the military, religion(!); in a variety of settings: high school, New Your City, college, junior high, Egypt. They are written by young people who fall under the umbrella term "queer," but identify as gay, bi, trans, lesbian, gender-variant, and more. Some of the pieces are positive and affirming, some speak of overcoming unbearable hardship and hate, some end as hopeless as they began. All of them are important and valid, just like the young people who wrote them.

As a collection, The Full Spectrum is ambitious. It strives to present a multitude of experiences and identities, and it does. The mix of guys and girls, trans or not, is great. The mix of topics is also expansive, and given how much religion is mentioned, the mix of opinions on it is also widely variant. Also the mix of poetry, prose, letters, and diary entries was great. I never felt bogged down in too much angsty poetry or journal writing; all was in balance. This mix of writing styles will, hopefully, make this book accessible and attractive to readers of all stripes.

My main problem was with the editing. Some of these pieces are beautiful bits of polished writing.* Some of them are not. I imagine this has a lot to do with the state they were in when they were submitted. Many of these pieces were written by young people about the most traumatic periods of their lives! Everything is in their writing and everything is raw. Everything. It is completely understandable that some of them lack polish. These pieces could have used the guidance of a good editor, and it is a shame that they didn't get it. That said, these stories are compelling, each and every one. If I, an almost-30-year-old, engaged, queer woman had such a strong reaction to this book, I cannot even begin to imagine how much solace and revelation this book could provide for someone still going through the experiences described there in. I saw myself in these stories. I saw my friends. Everyone deserves to be able to see themselves in stories like these too (even kids in New Jersey).


Book source: I bought it at a signing with some of the contributors when it first came out.
Full disclosure: One of my favorite people in the world has a poem in this book (it's awesome). There is also a piece by one of my least favorite people (not so great). Not only do these two biased opinions cancel each other out, but I also skipped both pieces when re-reading The Full Spectrum for this review.


*Jovencio d la Paz, I have the HUGEST literary crush on you. Please decide to spend the rest of your life writing stories so heartbreakingly beautiful that they make me cry!

Amiri & Odette

Myers, Walter Dean. Amiri & Odette: A Love Story. Illustrations by Javaka Steptoe. New York: Scholastic Press, 2009. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/6906772]

Booktalk:

I asked myself if there were modern dangers to young people similar to magic spells of folklore. The answer, of course, was a resounding yes, and I began to craft a modern, urban retelling of the Swan Lake ballet.

from "How I Came to Write This Poem"

(unpaged)

Amiri is the basketball playing "prince" of the Swan Lake Projects, destined to fall in love with Odette, a woman "cursed" and owned by her dealer, Big Red.

Review:
I can't unknow the story of Swan Lake, so I am not a good judge of how clear that story in in Amiri & Odette to the non-balletomane. I can, however, say that there are a lot of little touches that hark back to the ballet in beautiful ways, such as Odile's (who is never actually named in the book) black mask at Amiri's party, but nifty connections to the ballet are not the strongest part of this telling. What Myers does fantastically is really make this a story that isn't about princes and magic; he makes it real. The curse is drug addiction and the evil wizard, a dealer. This makes the cause and effect of Amiri's profession of love for Odile a bit nonsensical (Odette's addiction and debt to Big Red will not magically go away if Amiri loves her and only her, nor will she be trapped in that life with no possible means of escape if Amiri doesn't love her), but it also leaves room for non-magical consequences. There is no but-the-spell-said moment that makes Amiri's mistake irreparable. Just because the deal is broken, doesn't mean that the curse is everlasting or that Odette is doomed. Myers' telling makes way for a change in the ending.

The artwork in Amiri & Odette is fabulous. It is dark and gritty and portends doom in a way that dozens of classical white tutus never could.* The artist's note says that the collages that make up the illustrations were painted on slabs on asphalt. They are large and hardcore; each a complete work of art on its own. The texture of the asphalt shows through and Chinese food menus, feathers, pieces of jewelry and other street flotsam are used throughout. The feathers surrounding Odette as she tells Amiri about her entrapment make her look like both an angel and a beast, much like the swan-woman Prince Siegfried is initially afraid of in the original story, even if all the audience sees is a ballerina in white. Or a girl watching a basketball game.


There have been countless stagings of Swan Lake, and all but the most traditional performances (the ones that dance four full acts) are showing some kind of adaptation for the modern audience. I can't embed the videos here, but I can give you links to a few versions of Swan Lake:
Classic Odette Variation by Svetlana Zakharova (2:43)
Classic Odile Variation by Svetlana Zakharova (2:40)
Matthew Bourne's staging of the pas de deux between Odette and Prince Siegfried (5:58)
Parody of the "Baby Swans" pas de quatre by Ballet Trockadero (1:37)


Book source: Philly Free Library

*Romantic white tutus (the long ones), on the other hand, suggest doom quite nicely. In the midst of this trend of YA paranormal romances, where is the modern day adaptation of Giselle?!?