'Speak' by Laurie Halse Anderson

Anderson, Laurie Halse. (2000). Speak. Narrated by Mandy Siegfried. New York: Random House Audio Publishing Group.  ISBN 9780739336724

Photo by: L. Propes

Being a teenager is difficult.  Cliques.  An unspoken demand for conformity.  Attempts to live up to a nearly impossible standard of femininity and masculinity.  Countless rules and regulations regarding behavior.  The seemingly inevitable and subtle bullying that occurs when one doesn't fit in.  And that's just within the halls of high school.  Even though Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak is set in the age just before social media exploded into students' lives, rumors still manage to rapidly burn through the ranks of students, leaving Anderson's main character, Melinda Sordino, in an isolated bubble.

Speak begins on Melinda's first day of high school.  It doesn't begin well.  Someone throws a Ho-Ho wrapper at her head on the bus.  No one wants to sit with her.  Melinda's best friends have suddenly diverged into new cliques now that they're in high school.  Melinda informs the reader, "I am clanless.  I wasted the last weeks of August watching bad cartoons.  I didn't go to the mall, the lake, or the pool or answer the phone.  I have entered high school with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, the wrong attitude.  And I don't have anyone to sit with" (Anderson 2000, 4).  Melinda goes on to compare herself to a wounded animal, seeking succour anywhere she can find it.  Her former best friend, Rachel, openly detests her, and this is only the beginning of the book.

Things only go from bad to worse for Melinda.  Her grades drop.  Her parents constantly hound her about her grades and attitude.  Her new friend Heather can't decide whether to be friends with Melinda or drop her for one of the "cool" groups.  Melinda avoids speaking as much as possible.  Her social studies teacher, who already doesn't like Melinda, is unyielding and dictatorial.

Plus, Melinda's assigned subject for her year-long art class is a tree.  Trees remind Melinda far too much of what happened to her.  Not to mention the winter in Syracuse seems to last forever to Melinda.

The reason for Melinda's silence, depression, and isolation slowly reveals itself, and Anderson sprinkles hints throughout the book until Melinda tells the audience exactly what happened to her in August.  After Melinda refuses to attend a pizza party with her lab partner, David, and some of his friends, she forces herself to examine what happened to her.  Even though the word "rape" doesn't form part of Melinda's vocabulary until much later, it is very obvious that she was raped at a party a few weeks before school began.  Slowly, Melinda begins to emerge from her self-imposed shell, eventually reconnecting with Ivy, her other junior high friend, and Rachel.  Inspired by the anonymous, yet highly effective message board format of the girls' restroom walls, Melinda scrawls a message to stay away from her rapist.  The responses overwhelmingly affirm Melinda's statement, and she realizes she's not alone.  More importantly, she concludes the rape was not her fault.

Anderson allows Melinda the opportunity to find her voice, just as the school year draws to a close, and she decides to tell Mr. Freeman, the art teacher, about the events of the past several months.  Anderson does tie up some plot threads here, but there are others that she leaves as open-ended questions.  Speak arguably falls into the category of a problem novel, but Anderson never sends the narrative into moralizing territory.

Much of the narrative of Speak occurs as Melinda's internal monologue.  It contains Melinda's often wry, pointed observations of high school as well as displaying a dry, sardonic sense of humor.  Those flashes of humor prevent the book from becoming bogged down in desolation.  Melinda has a perfect foil in Heather, the new girl from Ohio.  In contrast to Melinda's retreating silence, Heather talks too much, is far too eager to please, and somewhat disingenuous.  The adults in the room often come off as one dimensional -- clueless father, waspish mother, befuddled principal, etc. -- but given that the story is narrated by Melinda, it's to be expected.  There comes a point where you want to shake Melinda's parents and make them really look at their daughter and see the roiling waters below the surface.  They do know something is wrong with Melinda, but there's little effort beyond making token statements about doing anything about it.

Melinda is a believable character, as is her narration.  The language off all the teenage characters is exactly what one would expect to hear in the mouth and head of a teenager, especially ones who are still on the cusp of childhood and adolescence.  The other teenaged characters are also realistically portrayed, confident in their place in the school's social fabric or driven to insecurity by the lack of it. Anderson shines in her descriptions of high school, especially when she writes Melinda's running commentary on cheerleaders.

So much of high school involves attempting to fit in to a facet of its society.  Anderson illustrates this perfectly through several methods.  The high school changes mascots no fewer than three times during the school year.  Heather's overeager attempts to find the right extracurricular club.  Rachel's integration with the foreign exchange students as she tries on a variety of different identities under their influence.  Finally, there's Melinda -- standing on the edges of the social scene, belonging to none of the cliques, but surprising tendrils of what she could become poke through her psyche, offering glimpses of where she might fit.

Speak is rife with symbolism.  It's found in the theme of Melinda's English class. (The teacher loves teaching symbolism.)  It's found in the stuffed bunnies Melinda collects and the trees she doggedly attempts to draw.  The silent bunnies are Melinda's lost voice.  The endless pile of failed and more successful trees represent Melinda's struggle to come to grips with the rape.

Even the word rape itself comes laden with portent.  Melinda' can't even bring herself to admit it out loud, and the the first time she tells someone she was raped, she has to write it out.  Rape in of itself is a difficult topic.  It's a psychological and physical violation, and in Melinda's case has caused far more psychological damage than physical.  Until the moment Melinda sees the restroom walls covered with confirmations from other girls about the boy who raped her, she feels nobody will believe her.  Even more so, Melinda feels the less she speaks about the rape, the more she will forget what happened.

Anderson is careful to present Melinda's rape as an act of dominance.  There is nothing titillating about it.  It's about the rapist's ability to take advantage of a vulnerable situation, regardless of Melinda's repeated refusals.  Anderson treats Melinda's recovery from her assault in a mostly realistic fashion, showing the audience the depths of her PTSD following the rape.

Mandy Siegfried does an admirable job providing Melinda's voice in this audiobook.  Her voice perfectly captures the sardonic tones of Anderson's written narrative and credibly sounds like an average fourteen year-old girl.  The performance falters just a little at the end when Melinda begins to sound more hopeful in Anderson's narrative, but Siegfried's voice still carries the acerbic tones.  It doesn't quite suit the shift in the tone of Melinda's narration.

The unabridged audiobook is five hours long on four CDs.

Photo by: L. Propes

Speak offers schools a tool to begin discussions about sexual assault and rape.  It also allows them to discuss bullying in the context of the way Melinda is treated at the beginning of the novel.  Speak can also be used to open a dialogue about depression in teenagers and learning to handle the immense stress they often feel.  Anderson has stated in interviews that she's heard from hundreds of readers -- both male and female -- who have shared their experiences as a victim of sexual assault.  A poem at the beginning of the current print publication contains lines from letters and e-mails Anderson has received.  The last pages of the print publication also contains some chilling statistics regarding rape and sexual assault of girls, boys, men, and women.  Anderson includes several sources for help for rape victims as well.  Some websites offer alternative texts to use with anti-bullying here and here.  Readers might also want to read Leverage by Joshua C. Cohen, which also deals with bullying and rape, but from a far different perspective.

Speak turns fifteen this year.  You can read an interview with Anderson about it here.  RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network) and Anderson have teamed up to raise money for RAINN in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness & Prevention Month and Speak's fifteenth anniversary.

The websites Anderson lists at the back of the book are:

www.rainn.org (RAINN -- Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network)
www.soar99.org (Speaking Out Against Rape)
www.nsvrc.org (National Sexual Violence Resource Center)
www.911rape.org (Rape Treatment Center)

Anderson also includes the number of the National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-HOPE.

Anderson is the author of Wintergirls, The Impossible Knife of Memory, Fever 1793, Forge, Chains, Twisted, and Catalyst (which features a cameo of Melinda several months after the events of Speak).  Speak was a Printz Honor book and Chains won the 2009 Scott O'Dell award.  Speak and Chains were both National Book Award Finalists.  Anderson has also won the 2009 Margaret A. Edwards Award.

Students and teachers might want to have  a look at Anderson's blog Mad Woman in the Forest. The page for teachers includes information about how Anderson approaches writing and research.  She also has information about arranging a visit to the school via Skype.
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"Anderson's powerful debut YA novel... makes for a gripping, enlightening audiobook.  Ninth-grader Melinda Sordino begins her first year of high school as a veritable pariah.  Her friends have dropped her 'like a hot Pop-tart on a cold kitchen floor' as payback for her actions just days before... and Melinda is so traumatized, she cannot muster the voice to tell anyone; she pretty much stops speaking altogether.  Youthful actress Siegfried makes a believable teenage protagonist, effectively expressing Melinda's humorous sarcasm, wit, and pain." -- Publishers Weekly, 2000

"[Melinda's] early silence about an unspeakable act turns her toward harmful isolation and self-hatred... Her silence is almost palpable.  It stands between the adolescent girl and any useful, caring contact with those who inhabit her world of school and family... Anderson contrasts Melinda's awareness of and resistance to pressures to learn the correct, feminine, sanctioned ways of speaking with the behavior of her one friend, Heather, whose pathetic attempts to please and be attractive come at great personal cost." -- Sally Smith, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2000 

"Speak is the powerful story of the aftermath of rape, brought to life by narrator Siegfried, whose youthful-sounding voice is 'right on' in terms of inflection, pacing, and portrayal of teenage character Melinda's thoughts." -- Jean Hatfield, Booklist, 2001

"Melinda's voice is distinct, unusual, and very real as she recounts her past and present experiences in bitterly ironic, occasionally even amusing vignettes.  In her YA fiction debut, Anderson perfectly captures the harsh conformity of high-school cliques and one teen's struggle to find acceptance from her peers.  Melinda's sarcastic wit, honesty, and courage make her a memorable character." -- Debbie Carton, Booklist, 1999

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References

Anderson, Laurie Halse. 1999. Speak. New York: Square Fish. 

Carton, Debbie. 1999. Speak. 09/15; 2014/4, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2216/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA56063651&v=2.1&u=txshracd2583&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w&asid=69fcd4e212c077b9295fa3b54c424cc7.

Hatfield, Jean. 2001. Speak. 03/15; 2014/4, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2216/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA73891032&v=2.1&u=txshracd2583&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w&asid=950ff0b68eb36e9ae2f80fd256bfb85c.

Reviews: Spoken word. 2000. Publishers Weekly 247 (32) (08/07): 31, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2048/login?url=http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=3441349&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Smith, Sally. 2000. Speak (book review). Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 43 (6) (03): 585, http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2048/login?url=http://ezproxy.twu.edu:2060/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=2864940&site=ehost-live&scope=site.