That is one damn
scary thought. I really don’t have any statistical proof when I say this; just
making a naïve observation, but I think that the majority of bookworms lead
extraordinarily ordinary lives. As in
not terminally ill, not a psychopath, not an assassin, have never been raped,
don’t have Asperger’s, don’t have LGBT related acceptance issues, are not
Holocaust victims, don’t have dead parents, lovers, or best friends. And that
one line just described the themes explored in about the majority of realistic
YA novels.
So why are they written? If I had cancer (God forbid), I
really don’t think I would have like to read The Fault In Our Stars – would you? Would you like to read about
how a girl in remission meets her one true love at a support group who in the
end dies? Or My Sister’s Keeper where Kate’s cancer felt like some deux ex machina tool to find a boyfriend
who also dies? I’d most probably read some chick-lit day in and out and
celebrate Meg Ryan and Katherine Heigl movies and lots of K-drama. And maybe
some of those inspirational books people in my life feel obligated to buy me.
So these stories are written for the sake of the ones with extraordinarily ordinary lives. So that we can empathize – like Atticus advises Scott to climb into someone’s skin
and walk around it if she wanted to understand a person. All this bigotry and
hate in this world bubbles up from the fear of the unknown – maybe gays are
mistakes of God and they are just a blemish on this world, right? Thus marks
the entry of anti-LGBT activists.
Speaking for myself, I would have to say that books made me
a better person. It is with some shame that I admit this, but I’ve been brought
up in a society that is extremely prejudiced. Where mentally-challenged kids
are openly referred to as “retards” – I haven’t heard a more polite term in my
mother-tongue. Where gays are freak shows. Where cancer patients are regarded
as sorry sights. (Please don’t judge us – we’re growing).
So that now we’ve answered the question of Why These Books,
let’s move on to the title of this post. How thorough is your book? It’s
shit-scary even contemplating about writing a book that features these issues –
I mean, damn it, how do you do
justice to your character? Fine, so you have a way with words and you feel like
there’s a story waiting to be told. But your character’s voice. His agony. Her strength. How do you put it into words if
you’ve never been through it, personally?
Research. Lots of it. Interviews with people like your character,
their loved ones, doctors, psychologists, reading memoirs, war-accounts – the
whole shebang. Katherine Stockett wrote about her fears of not being able to
write in the voice of a wronged black maid in the South in the Author’s Note in
her The Help. And I totally
understand her. I don’t know much the book came under fire for political
incorrectness but I do know that it affected me in some way. And GOD – Jodi
Picoult. See http://www.jodipicoult.com/faqs.html
for an idea of the research involved in her books. Just reading it made me
tired and awed at these superheroes. And maybe you should also read Patricia
McCormick’s Sold and Never Fall Down and Cut to expand your list of brave authors.
But what if they are still wrong? Murphy’s Law, being what
it is, is bound to turn up author inaccuracies. The idea of this post came when
I was scrolling through the reviews on GR after I had finished reading Laurie
Halse Anderson’s Wintergirls. While I
was reading the book, the thought that kept popping was why the hell she was known as the Author of
Speak when Wintergirls was this good. If you aren’t a cutter (like
me), don’t have an eating disorder (like me), don’t know what it feels like to
hear that your best friend committed suicide (like me), then like me, you will
feel short of breath at the magic Anderson wields with mere words. I mean. That
Book. Is. Just. And I provided those conditional clauses in my judgement
because I really don’t know how you would feel about it if you were Lia. It’s not a book you read curled up with a coffee in
hand; it’s a book you clutch to firmly trying shit-hard not to fucking cry, and
pray for girls like Lia and Cassie. So once I had recommended my GR friends how
they should really read it, I happened to see some other reviews. That left me
confused. So what was LHA doing? Merely showing off her writing skills and
shamming us?
I don’t know the answer to that question. I don’t know if
Jacob in Jodi Picoult’s House Rules is
who a kid with Asperger’s actually is. I don’t know if Gabe in Beautiful Music For Ugly Children represents
the trapped individual living in a body of the opposite sex. I don’t know if
closure is as elusive as it was for Oskar Schell in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. But I do know that these books
needed to be written because else we would continue thinking that we were
“normal” or "okay" and they weren’t.
