Bay City Gallery Walk - 04/01/2010

I'll be reading some of my poems tomorrow evening, April 1, 2010, sometime between 5 and 8 p.m. at Ward Studio, 904 N. Water Street in downtown Bay City, Michigan.

I would love to see you there. :-)

The case for children's/YA lit

Every now and then I wander up to the fourth floor of SVSU's library, where the children's/YA books are kept. I do this whenever I'm especially stressed out. (Ahem--like when Cardinal Sins is due to press within a week...)

Anyway, not only is that part of the library so quiet I can hear myself breathe, but for some reason or another, looking through the books I read when I was younger never fails to make me feel entirely at peace with myself.

Nothing irritates me more than people who disregard children's/YA lit just because they no longer fall within the age range of its targeted audience. I'm an avid reader as an adult because I fell in love with reading when I was a kid. So even now, I go back and read books targeted toward elementary/middle school-aged readers.

My all-time favorite YA author is Han Nolan, who won a National Book Award in 1997 for her novel _Dancing on the Edge_. I read that book when I was twelve years old and loved it. The protagonist was so well-developed that I actually found myself sharing her mindset. For that reason, I was as caught off-guard as she was by the things that happened to her. Psychological mindfuck, for the win--something that can only be pulled off by one hell of a good writer.

In 2006, Nolan released a new YA novel: _The Summer of Kings_. I found it in the library at my high school and, remembering how much I had loved _Dancing on the Edge_, picked it up and read it. I was surprised by how much I still loved Nolan's writing. By that time, I was 18 and reading books targeted toward adults.

Since then, I've gone back and read a few more of Nolan's books. _Send Me Down a Miracle_ and _If I Should Die Before I Wake_ are just as good as the ones I mentioned above. I think she appeals to me just as much now as she did when I was younger because she doesn't underestimate her audience. She's very political, but equally subtle: something I admire a lot in any writer who explores that territory. The fact that she does so successfully while writing for young teenagers is pretty astounding.

I probably wouldn't be reading Han Nolan as an adult had I not first read her when I was in middle school. Knowing that has made me go looking for books I never got around to reading as a kid, and I've come across some pretty interesting stuff.

You might too. Go read some YA lit (or some other genre you wouldn't normally pick up off the shelf). You just might surprise yourself. :-)

Addendum, 03/25/2010:

I just found out that Han Nolan will be releasing a new book this fall!

Paige

I only have one sibling, a sister who's younger than me by more than four years. She's a junior in high school and still lives with our parents.

I haven't been back to Grosse Pointe since early January, when I flew home from Colorado. Paige has since turned 17 and fallen in and out of lust several hundred times.

The two of us have always lived according to how our parents (and everyone else we knew) narrowly defined us; I have always been the "book smart" one, while my sister has always been the "street smart" one. We embraced these roles, but I see now that the labels have been extremely limiting for both of us. I'm a bit of a Cowardly Lion and Paige doesn't have very high expectations of herself or her future.

I worry about her. My mom told me recently that Paige hasn't brought home a report card in over two years. I was stunned--not by the fact that Paige hasn't shared her report cards with our parents, but by the fact that they haven't gone to the school to get it themselves.

My mom thinks Paige should be responsible for herself (as I was at her age). If she flunks, she'll suffer the consequences.

But Paige is still in high school. She's not 18 yet. So I think my parents have a responsibility to see that she makes it through high school. If they really think we're so radically different, why do they expect her to approach school the same way I did?

I just sent my sister a text message asking her to come visit some weekend. I think a drunken heart to heart is in order. Besides, I still owe her a birthday gift.

Now all we have to do is convince our parents to let her borrow the car...

Tripping over things

For the past year or so, I've been hatin' on my major (still officially creative writing), and what said major has gotten me into (editing and publishing). Hence the quarter-life crisis.

But every now and then, something tugs at my memory and reminds me how much I love to write, and even edit.

My good friend Britt (a fellow writer & feminist) came to town at the end of January for the first time since moving away over the summer. We went to a poetry reading and then out for a few beers. We ended up workshopping some poems in the bar. I fell back in love with writing, and called my mom the next morning to babble on about how wonderful I felt. It's hard to think I once felt that way all the time. My love of writing fueled everything I did, which explains why losing it left me stagnant.

The other day I was in the student publications office on campus, laying pages for this semester's issue of Cardinal Sins. And I found myself enjoying it (which is how it should have been all along). We were on spring break, so the campus was dead, and I think the stillness eliminated the pressure of deadlines and whatnot. It wasn't anything like the euphoria I experienced when Britt came to visit, but oddly, it was better, because it wasn't joy, it was contentedness--something else I hadn't felt in months.

It'd be easier for me to change my mind & do something else with my life if I didn't have these constant reminders of how much I love what I do.

Ugh.

Recently I got together with a friend of mine from the Controlled Burn Seminar. He's originally from Bay City but attends U of M, so lives in Ann Arbor. Since he was on spring break last week, he came back to his hometown and because I happen to live close to Bay City, we got together to catch up on things.

We found ourselves talking about the friends we'd made at the seminar, and what they're up to now. At one point I mentioned that one of our mutual friends had come out as a lesbian. His response? "What a shame. She's too hot for that."

You can't make this shit up.

And it's everywhere.

I regularly attend a monthly arts event in Bay City. It's referred to as the Spoken Word, Music & Open Mic, and until recently, was held at a local coffee shop. Last month, a featured poet explored topics of homosexuality and sexual assault, and the following day, the owner of the coffee shop posted a note to his Facebook page about how he thought her work was "inappropriate" and should not have been shared in a public venue because of its "offensive" subject matter.

When I told my mom about what had happened, she surprised & upset me by siding with the owner of the coffee shop because, as she put it, she's "getting tired of the gay thing" and wishes they'd "stop being so damned vocal about it."

Well, fine. But if you expect homosexuals to shut up and keep to themselves, could you at the very least keep your bigotry to yourself too?

Learnin' to deal.

It's no secret that I've been utterly frustrated with every aspect of my life lately. So naturally, I've been thinking about happier times. And it's funny: I zeroed in on 2008 and can easily say it was the best year ever. And yet if I could go back in time and ask my then 19-year-old self if she was happy, I'm pretty sure she would have said no.

2008 was one hell of a productive year. I finally got my driver's license (as well as my first car--a blue Kia Spectra). I did well in school and for the most part, loved my classes (one of which was a history class that made me hate the United States/capitalism). I read Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, and Margaret Atwood for the first time and wondered how I'd survived 19 years without their books. I listened to John Lennon's song "God" and suddenly wanted to strangle organized religion. I stopped being afraid to identify as a feminist. And I voted for the first time, in the presidential election. (Nice timing, right?)

I was incredibly frustrated most of the time, but it was the kind of frustration that motivated me to work toward something, which, I think, is very different from the frustration I'm experiencing now. (Is there a way to change that?)

So for now I am just going to drink wine and listen to Lady GaGa. If you've got better advice than that, let me know.

Tidbits

• I found this article on my friend's Facebook page yesterday. And it's too good to keep to myself.
  

• Speaking of Facebook, I've decided to boycott the site during the month of March, just because. As my friend Matthew said, "Call it nostalgia for the 20th century."

• Sapphire, the author of _Push_ (which inspired the film "Precious") will be speaking at SVSU next month. Wednesday, March 3, 6:00 p.m. in the Malcolm Field Theater. It's free & open to the public. You should go.
  

• My current ringtone is Lily Allen's "The Fear." I use my cell phone as an alarm clock, so the first thing I hear each morning is, "I don't know what's right and what's real anymore. And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore. When do you think it will all become clear? 'Cause I'm being taken over by the Fear." Probably not the best thing to wake up to when you're 20-something and as as frustrated with life as I am. Oh well.