Observing my continual gushing and geeking out when I met Woodson at the LA Times Festival of Books, Amy at My Friend Amy decided to try her out and fell in love with Woodson’s writing and story (how could anybody not?).  When Amy reviewed I Hadn’t Mean to Tell You This by Jacqueline Woodson, a title that I hadn’t read yet, and sobbed her way through it, I put a hold on it at the library immediately.  Yes, something about people sobbing through books attracts me a great deal.

And thus we come circle.  I love turning readers onto new authors who then turn me onto titles from said author that I haven’t read yet.  I love that blogging about books makes reading books a social activity.   So it’s my hope that for all those who have yet to pick up a Woodson title (despite the fact that I keep reviewing them here!) will do so.

Jacqueline Woodson’s writing is incredibly beautiful and I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This is no exception.  But while the writing is beautiful, the subject matter certainly is not.   It is unbelievably sad and gut-wrenching.  Marie is twelve-years-old and lives well off in a black suburb.  She never wants for money, nice clothes, or friends.  Her father is a college professor and she’s got a full ride scholarship in her future.  But what is missing in her life is her mother.  A mother who was so depressed with her life that she leaves both Marie and her father behind in favor of living her life by seeing the world.

Lena, a new white girl moves to Marie’s school and it’s fairly clear that she’s what everybody, including her father, calls white trash.  She doesn’t take care of herself, she’s dirty, and her clothes are old, baggy and clearly hand-outs.  Despite their differences the two girls are drawn to each other and Lena desperately wants to be her friend.

Marie soon comes to know that Lena has also lost a mother.  Through this common bond, Lena shares a secret so deep that Marie doesn’t know what to do.  Does  her silence help Lena or will reaching out be able to save her from a nightmarish home?

I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This is a short 114 pages.  It can easily be read in under an hour and a half.  But it’s that short hour and a half that will stay with you forever.  As a fair warning to both teens and their parents, the subject matter of this book is about sexual abuse of a child.  It’s a subject that’s never easy to read but it’s books like this that bring it out into the open to be discussed.  And on top of that, Woodson effectivally explores the themes of child abandonment from a parent and also the death of a parent.

It’s a heavy handed book for sure but yet Woodson leaves you with a glimmer of hope and the knowledge that you have just experienced a beautiful book that seems almost effortless to achieve.  I’ll leave you with the same quote that Amy chose in her recent review:

Yes, of course I wanted to fly. I wanted to cast off, feel the ground droop slowly out from beneath me. “What is air, Mama?” I asked when I was five. Caressing the back of my neck with her hand, my mother waited a moment before she answered. “Air,” she said, “is something there isn’t enough of here.”

Links of interest:  Jacqueline Woodson website, more book blogger reviews, Maw Book reviews of other Woodson title’s including  Show Way, Feathers, If You Come Softly, Behind You, Peace Locomotion, Locomotion, and Miracle’s Boys.  My experience meeting Woodson at LA Times Festival of Books.
Genre:  Young Adult fiction.
Publisher:  Speak.  June 8, 2006.  First edition 1994.
Paperback 128 pages.  ISBN 0142405558
I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Anke’s home is not one of love.  It’s one of abuse.  Anke, her brother, her sister and mother all live with a dark secret.  Anke’s father abuses them all.  Her mother, brother and sister through emotional, physical and sexual abuse.  But for Anke, it’s neglect.  It’s a complete lack of attention from her father.  She might as well be invisible.  In fact, she might as well just be a piece of furniture in the home.

I am always there.
But they don’t care if I am
because I am furniture.

I don’t get hit
I don’t get fondled
I don’t get love
because I am furniture.

Suits me fine.

Anke despises the abuse.  Wishes she could speak up about it.  Wishes she had the power to stop it.  But she fears that her father would kill them all if she stepped up to him.  So the abuse continues.  Her father comes home at night and goes into her sisters room.  She knows the hell that her sister is going through but does nothing but listen.

I appreciated where the author then took the story of Because I Am Furniture and the thought process of Anke.  Anke was jealous.  Why did her sister receive her father’s attention?  Was she herself not pretty enough?  Not worthy enough?  In some sickeningly, round-a-bout way she equated love with the abuse.  They were worthy enough to gain the attention of their father.  She was not.  I found this thought process fascinating.

Anke makes up for her feelings of insignificance by trying out for the volleyball team at school.  Volleyball opens up a whole new world to Anke.  One where she is forced to be powerful on the court, one where she must yell to be heard.  She finally learns how to have a voice and to truly be in a comfortable environment.  She also makes a friend, somebody else with an abusive background.  Despite never sharing the nightmare of a home she lives in, she’s happy to have somebody who  understands her and doesn’t ask to many questions.

As Anke’s voice grows, her father’s abuse also increases.  But this time, he’s beginning to notice Anke’s classmate, a girl who thinks that he’s the best dad ever and doesn’t understand why Anke doesn’t think her dad is even cute?  The story accelerates to a devastating climax where Anke finally uses her newly found confidence to step up and do something.

Because I Am Furniture is heartbreaking.  I truly felt pity for each of the characters and fury at the father.   I was invested in these characters.  They were alive to me on the pages and I wanted to yell at them to get help.  Get out of there.  Leave.  Do something!  It’s so frustrating to see characters don’t do something that when you are on the outside looking in, seems so apparent and easy.   You never know what is going on in the house next door.

If abuse, especially abuse of children, is a subject matter that you can handle, I’d recommend this one.  It was powerful.  Obviously, if it’s a topic that you wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole , I’d stay far far away.

How do you feel about reading books about abuse?  I know many refuse to read them.  Many want happy books.  Or find that they emotionally can’t handle it.   Which side of the fence are  you on?

Links of interest:  Thalia Chaltas website, more book blogger reviews.
Genre:  Young Adult, Novel-in-Verse
Publisher:  Viking Juvenile.  April 16, 2009
Hardcover, 368 pages.  ISBN: 0670062987
Source: Library
Because I am Furniture is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Two stories are told in this book.  One of Latha, who’s story spans several decades from her childhood to adulthood.  She has no memory of her early years, no memory of a mother, or a father.  She is brought up in a wealthy home but privilege is not hers.  A household servant and playmate to Thara (who’s name is close enough to Latha that I often couldn’t keep them separate), she knows that she deserves much more than what’s granted hers.  Simple things like wanting a new pair of shoes is never awarded.  As girls, Latha and Thara are the best of friends but as they grow up and Thara takes charge of her own household, Latha is reminded that her place in the family will always be that of “the girl.”

The other story is told many years in the past and spans just 24 hours.  It is of Biso, a fierce mother of three, who living under the abuse of her husband but yet having known love from an affair, leaves with her children in the middle of the night.  Her journey is filled with kindness and hope of a better future but a single moment changes all of that and their lives are changed forever.  One story ultimately shapes the other and Freeman had me curious to know exactly what that relationship would be.

The beginning of A Disobedient Girl was confusing to me.  Enough that I often had to reread several paragraphs over again to realize that the author was giving me pertinent information that I needed to pay attention to.  It wasn’t until about 50-75 pages in that everything settled for me.  I liked Biso’s story much more than that of Latha’s and was always eager to get back to her story.  Although seemingly separate stories, I knew that both would come together in the end and so I patiently let Latha’s story unfold as well.  Biso was the more likable, sympathetic character; her story ultimately shocked me.

I must admit that my knowledge of geography isn’t that great but if it wasn’t for the fact that the jacket flap told me so, I would not have known that this novel took place in Sri Lanka.  But yet Freeman’s description and sense of place is so strong that I was able to get a vivid sense of time and place.  Freeman’s writing is great (despite the rough start) and her storytelling compelling.  Because Freeman wrote of a part of the world I often don’t read about and delved deep into social issues, I’d be interested in reading Freeman’s future work.

A Disobedient Girl is ultimately a commentary on social class and as the publisher description states, “about the will to survive and the incredible power of the human spirit to transcend the unforgiving sweep of tragedy.”

Links of interest:  Ru Freeman website and blog.  Check out other reviews on the A Disobedient Girl TLC blog tour, more blogger reviews,
Genre:  Fiction
Publisher: Atria.  July 21, 2009.
Hardcover, 384 pages.  ISBN 1439101957
A Disobedient Girl by Ru Freeman is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Batuk is just nine years old when her parents throw her a goodbye party.  Can you imagine the parents who love their child enough to give a goodbye party but yet it’s because they will be selling her?  Makes me do a double take and say, “Huh?”   Obviously, it wasn’t a fun party, everybody was uneasy and cried.  Unaware of the occasion, Batuk honestly thought that she was going to die.  But perhaps death was preferable as the next morning her father took her to the city of Mumbai and sold her.  Scared and alone and very confused, Batuk’s virginity is sold to the highest bidder and then she is sent to Common street where we meet her at the age of fifteen working as a very precocious fifteen-year-old who works hard to remain in Madam Mamaki Briila’s favor.

Batuk’s world changes when she is ill and while in the hospital is taught to read and write.  She manages to tuck away a pencil and writes her story in a diary.  Her story is simply haunting and does not spare details.  She shares her memories of home with her parents, and then losing her virginity at age nine to the highest bidder, being raped, beaten, and yet, flirting with the men on the streets so she can bring in more customers.

Although the subject matter is ugly and brutal, the writing certainly is not.  At times it is simple and forward, giving light and explanation to many dark and ugly prostitution practices and at other times it’s very lyrical.  Batuk’s diary writing doesn’t dive deep into the emotional hardships of her occupation but is rather factual, a technique that I  believe Levine uses to illustrate how dead in spirit she has become.  Writing, however does bring out Batuk’s creative side, she is smart and intelligent and given a different environment would thrive.

The Blue Notebook will make you frustrated simply for the reason that we want so much more for Batuk.  She didn’t ask for this life and as the reader we are powerless to pull ourselves into the story and pull her out.  Levine gives a voice to all the powerless girls who have been trapped into the ugly world of sexual slavery.

And after reading this book, you’ll discover that ugly doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Links of interest:  All of the U.S proceeds from The Blue Notebook will be donated to the International and National Centers for Missing and Exploited Children.  More blogger reviews.
Genre:  Literary Fiction.
Published by Spiegel & Grau.  July 7, 2009.
Hardcover, 224 pages. ISBN: 038552871X
The Blue Notebook is available from your local independent bookstore, Powell’s and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Lessons From a Dead Girl isn’t an easy read.  It stays with you long after you’ve closed the book.  I’m sure teens can relate in way or another to either Leah, a friend who you continue to let bully you, or Laine, somebody who desperately just wants a friend.  It’s raw and daring.  Dealing with topics of sexual abuse, child abuse, and alcohol use.  Highly recommended.  I couldn’t put it down.

Jo Knowles website and blog.  Awesome author interviews at Becky’s Book Reviews, Cynsations, and YA Authors Cafe.

At the age of ten Alice is kidnapped from a school field trip by Ray, who is one of the sickest, most disturbing antagonists in literature that I will not soon forget.  For the next five years Alice submits under Ray’s power for fear that he will kill her family.  She learns to give up all of her feeling, power and pain.  Day after day, month after month, year after year, she is emotionally, physically, sexually, and verbally abused.

Alice isn’t the first “Alice” that Ray took.  There was another Alice before her and Alice knows that she’s becoming too big and too old because Ray likes his girls young.  She decides to help him find a new “Alice” at a nearby playground but knows that when she does Ray will probably kill her.  Alice is past all feeling.  She refers to herself as a living dead girl who was born the day Ray took her, her body doesn’t belong to her, she belongs to Ray.  She will do anything for him.

The story of Alice makes you so uncomfortable because like Alice you feel completely powerless.  You want to reach through the pages of the book and if you’re able you wonder which should you do first, rescue Alice or kill Ray?  He makes you that mad.  Living Dead Girl reminded me of the Elizabeth Smart story, which although a huge national story, it was even more so here in Salt Lake City.  The day she was found my class at college was canceled just so we could watch the news.  I remember thinking how come Elizabeth didn’t just tell somebody?   She had plenty of chances.  Elizabeth Scott delves deep into the mindset of a victim who feels powerless against her perpetrator.  Alice is free to come and go, rides the bus, even is questioned by the police and given several opportunities to ask for help and run away.  She thinks:

I am 15, and I figure soon Ray will kill me.
I could run, but he would find me.  He would take me back to 623 Daisy Lane and make everyone who lives there pay.
He would make everyone there pay even if he didn’t find me.  I belong to him.  I’m his little girl.

Alice watches a lot of TV and even knows that people ask those questions.  But she knows they are wrong.

Why didn’t you tell someone?
Why didn’t  you ask for help?
Why didn’t you leave him?
Why didn’t you respect yourself enough to get away?
The women usually crumple, shed their flesh shells, and become quivering living dead girls, trapped.  A few will say that no one listens, that people don’t want to see, and that if you try something, anything, you won’t suffer but others will.
The audience always boos ad says You Should Have Done Something.  You should have fought back.  You should have known no one has that kind of power.  You should have been strong.

. . .  The thing is, you can have that kind of power, and everyone in those audiences knows it.  That’s why they yell.  That’s why they say You Should Have Done Something.
They have power too.
I’d like to see them with it taken away.  I’d like to see What They’d Do then.

Living Dead Girl is sad, disturbing, heart wrenching, and brutal.  While it’s a difficult read it is in not graphic, which actually makes it that more haunting because the reader fills in the blanks.  I felt like a useless bystander who was horrified and powerless to take any action. The book ends with either hope or despair.  To tell you the truth I’m not sure which and I think the author purposely left it that way.

Edited to add an author video:

If you can handle it, I highly recommend Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott.  You will not soon forget it.

Elizabeth Scott’s website.

Somaly Mam, born in a small village in Cambodia, is orphaned at a young age.  She doesn’t even know her real name or her birthday and most of her memories consist of scavenging for her food and finding a place to sleep at night.  No one really takes her in.  Somaly’s childhood coincides with the Khmer Rouge regime but her village was so remote that she has no recollection of soldiers, but later learns that many of her troubles in the future can be blamed on the political upheaval of Cambodia.

At the age of nine or ten, Taman, one of the men in the village sold Somaly to  her “grandfather” as an indentured servant.  For the next few years, Somaly is abused, beaten, starved, and let’s not forget to mention the back breaking work that she must do.  To pay off a debt, her grandfather sends her to another man who has paid for her virginity.  This agonizing rape at such a young age is her first encounter with what will become almost a lifetime of heartbreak, as soon afterward her grandfather sells her into sexual slavery at the age of twelve.

Somaly goes from brothel to brothel in an unending cycle of abuse and rape.  As if the the forced prostitution isn’t hard enough, she’s abused with unthinkable methods including snakes and maggots being poured all over her body.

With this physical devastation, naturally, an emotional devastation comes as well.  Somaly literally feels like garbage, always dirty, ugly, and unworthy.  But of all of this Somaly says,

This was ordinary prostitution.  Stinking mouths and bodies, dirty rooms, violence.  The blows hurt, but the act itself was much worse.  Sometimes there would be only two or three men a day, sometimes many more.  If there weren’t enough, Li would tell Aunty Peuve not to feed us, so we’d try harder.  If there were too many, you hurt inside and out, until you managed to shut all feeling off.

It’s still happening, today, tonight.  Imagine how many girls have been raped and hit since you started to read this book.  My story doesn’t matter, except that it stands for their story too, and their stories are why I don’t sleep at night.  They haunt me.

Ordinary prostitution?  How sad that there is even such a thing!  The effects are longlasting, as Somaly recounts:

The memories that torment me most are those of rape and the stink of sperm.  In brothels, they don’t bother changing sheets much.  The smell of sperm is everywhere.  It’s unsufferable.  Even today, I often have the sense that I’m breathing in the smell of whorehouses.  The custoemrs were dirty.  They never showered . . .

I lived amid this stench for so long, that I can’t bear it now.  Even fifteen years later, I feel dirtied by it.  So I was myself like a madwoman, put cream on and cover myself in eau de toilette in order to mask the stench that persues me.  At home I have a cupboard full of perfume.  I spend money to blot out a smell that exists only in my imagination.  I try to chase it away with the contents of my bottles.

As Somaly enters her late teens/early twenties she manages to escape the brothels with the help of a French aid worker (it’s not as angelic as you think, he does start off as a customer).  She begins to attend some classes and even lives in France for almost two years.  When she returns to Cambodia, she is no longer the same woman.  She’s mad as hell, she’s bold, and she’s not going to let what happened to her happen to other young girls.

Somaly becomes the angel that she herself could have used when she was younger.  She founds an organization to rescue girls, builds shelters, raids brothels, takes down judges in court, and rescues thousands of women and children in not only Cambodia, but also Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos.  It’s difficult work.  Now with two children of her own, their lives were continually threatened and she almost lost her own daughter to sexual prostitution when she was kidnapped.  She witnesses children as young as six being sold for their virginity, being sewn up, and then sold over again.  Many at the hands of their own parents, who don’t view them as a child, but rather as a means to their paycheck.  The abuse is getting worse and the girls are becoming younger.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper reports from Cambodia:

Sex trafficking is a industry that brings in $9.5 billion a year.  Sounds daunting to take on doesn’t it?  Why does she keep persevering?

For the moment, our opponents are winning the war, but we’ve won one battle at least.  They’ve lost face and respect.  We’ve investigated this traffic, exposed it for what it is, and made it shameful.  We’ve shown that these people aren’t invincible, and I’m glad we’ve managed that.  People ask me how I can bear to keep doing what I do.  I’ll tell you.  The evil that’s been done to me is what propels me on.  Is there any way to exorcise it?

A portion of the proceeds from The Road to Lost Innocence is donated to the Somaly Mam Foundation.  I highly encourage visiting the website, for being such a ugly topic, it’s a beautiful site.  This video gives great insight into the work that Somaly Mam is doing:

A interview with Somaly Mam about The Road to Lost Innocence:

This memoir is a testament to the power of an individual to bring about change in the lives of thousands of girls who have nowhere to turn.  Somaly Mam shows them the beginning of a flicker of hope, the realization that they can get out, and that there is somebody who loves them.  One person can make a difference in this world of unthinkable horror and evil.  I give The Road of Lost Innocence, The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine by Somaly Mam my highest recommendation.

Lakshmi is a poor, thirteen-year-old girl who lives in a tiny hut in the high mountains in Nepal. Life is hard, but simple and pleasurable for Lakshmi as her and her mother dream of what they would do if they just had a bit more money. Lakshmi’s stepfather gives Lakshmi to an “Auntie,” and the innocent girl thinks she will be working in a glorious city for a wealthy employer as a maid. It isn’t until she arrives at the red light district in Calcutta and is brutally shown to her first “customer” does she realize that she has been sold into prostitution. Her life becomes a nightmare, but above it all Lakshmi not only endures but triumphs.

Although, this story was brutally honest, heart wrenching, and a difficult subject matter, the storytelling in itself was refreshing. Told in poem like vignettes, McCormicks’ writing style was a pleasure to read. So much so, that I couldn’t wait to read more of her. I now have her two other books, My Brother’s Keeper and Cut, waiting for me at the library. I’ll let you know what I think.

Visit Patricia McCormick’s website for book reviews, summaries, and more.

Update: Looks like I’m not the only one who puts stock in the jacket cover art: