Thought Train to Pusan

As you might imagine, this memoir is not a fun one to work through, but that fact doesn’t mean it is not a good or doesn’t have significance. I was drawn to reading it after just finishing a YA novel focused on sexuality in a majority Mormon community, only to see that the trailer for the film adaptation for Boy Erased just dropped. And watching it was a lot to handle at a moment where I was already emotionally compromised, but I figured it would be worth it to read the source material and see just how Garrard Conley’s story played out in his own words before being altered to suit a different medium. Boy Erased: A Memoir focuses on a brief period of time for Garrard Conley when he was 19 years old and entered into conversion therapy for his homosexuality; the son of an aspiring Baptist pastor, living in the Bible Belt of the United States, Conley is shown through flashbacks struggling with his sexuality and the negative messages he has received throughout his lif...

It seems like I've been on a bit of a YA romance kick this year, and I think it's because there is nothing quite like a sweet story about first loves. And this thoughtful novel by writing-duo Christina Lauren delves not only into this area of young love, but also largely focuses on what it means to grow up queer in a largely religious area that doesn't support this facet of humanity. Autoboygraphy is largely from the point of view of a teenager named Tanner, who moved about 2 years earlier to Provo Utah: back home, he was openly bisexual with both his family and the community there, but upon moving to this largely Mormon city in Utah, his mother has urged Tanner to be careful about outing himself, after her own negative experiences with the church in the past. While a bit stifling for Tanner, this is all well and good until the mentor for one of his writing courses that graduated the year before strikes something in his heart: this being Sebastian, the local bishop'...

I could see this book being involved in some good classroom discussions. I can also see certain communities resisting this, and not for the right reasons. From what I can see, Jewell Parker Rhodes’ body of work consists largely of novels dealing with current events and social commentary, aimed at children, and Ghost Boys is no different: in this novel, we follow the spirit of a young black boy named Jerome, after he has been shot by a police officer while playing with a toy gun. Jerome’s spirit both recounts the events leading to the incident, as well as follows his family and the trial surrounding his death. This is where he meets the daughter of the officer who killed him, as she tries to understand her father’s actions and look towards making things better in the future. Jerome also meets the spirits of other young black boys who have been killed over time due to discrimination and racism, most notably Emmett Till from 1950s Mississippi. The novel bring...

Coincidentally the second piece of media released recently that I've taken in having to do with the historical figure of PT Barnum; one more and it's a pattern. But in The Mermaid , the story is not per say about him, but rather about a fictional recounting of a mermaid who finds herself in his exploitative employ (inspired by the infamous Fiji mermaid hoax). But despite the magical elements therein, this novel is more of an introspective exploration of personhood, freedom, and human cruelty. The Mermaid begins with what almost comes across as an old legend told about one of the inhabitants of a small town: a mermaid (Amelia) who wanted to explore the world and ended up leaving the sea, only to find love and a quiet home amongst the people there. But just as she longed to see more than just the sea, she eventually also wants to see more of the world of humans beyond her small coastal village, and ends up sought out to become a new exhibit for PT Barnum's museum in New ...

Upon first seeing the title of The Art of Starving , I thought there could only be two major things it would be about; either following the trials of a person struggling through famine/poverty/war, who struggles to survive these hardships while literally starving, or it would be some romanticized tale of an eating disorder, possibly with some “love heals all” thrown in there too which I’ve seen far to many times when regarding stories about mental illnesses. But while perhaps The Art of Starving is closer to the latter, it definitely isn’t a sanitized or pretty thing: this novel is ugly, which is ultimately both a strength and a weakness for it. In Sam J Miller’s acknowledgements at the end of the novel, we see him mentioning his own eating disorder as a teen, and reminiscing about how seldom this is recognized in teenage boys vs girls, hence the subject for his novel here: The Art of Starving is about a teenager named Matt, who suffers from an eating disorde...