Laurie Halse Anderson Character Analysis

I really enjoyed listening to renowned author Laurie Halse Anderson because she is different author than I’m used to reading/hearing about. She said that she was born in 1961 and she was raped at age 13, which prompted her style of writing. She had a broken childhood and she was on the path of living a broken life until she decided to take a different path down the writing lane. One of the main things that Anderson repeatedly mentioned in her talk is that she writes about the things that are hard for people to discuss. She uses her novel Speak to support that notion.
Speak is the story of a girl named Melinda who was raped at a party over the summer in Syracuse, New York by Andy Evans. She keeps the rape to herself for a very long time
and isolates herself from her parents, her teachers, and her friends.
She would take hall passes and disappear into a janitor’s closet during school. The only class that interested her was her art class. While all of this is happening, she tells her former friend Rachel about the rape because she fears that Andy will harm Rachel. Rachel does not believe Melinda, but either way, Melinda feels better because she got it off of her chest. Eventually, she tells her parents and teachers in school which helps her move on from the trauma. She becomes involved in more activities and has a more positive view on life. She focuses on drawing a tree for her art class, and in the end, she presents her tree to her art teacher and explains her story. This story sort of parallels Anderson’s sexual assault through what Anderson spoke about today, although she said that her novel is different than her personal assault. In her talk, she says that she traveled to different states to discuss her book with high school students. While she was in Texas, she had a boy repeatedly ask her the same question, which prompted her to tell the students that she was raped at age 13. She said that many of the students began
to tear up and their emotions completely changed. It was through that boy that she realized she had to tell more people her story. She said that telling the class in Texas was the first time she had ever told her story to anyone besides therapists. For a very long time she had difficulty telling her story to others, like Melinda in the novel. When she did tell her story, she felt so much better deep inside knowing that she could tell others and impact their lives. This is what primarily got her to write novels centered around ideas and concepts that our culture has difficulty discussing.
She mentioned that she wrote Speak for herself, but that many schools included it within their curriculum which surprised her. My high school in New Jersey actually included this book as a summer reading assignment for incoming freshman taking a College Preparatory English class. I never had to read the book because I went into my school’s honors English program, but my older brother had to and he found the novel interesting although he did not like to read. He too felt that the novel was different than what teacher’s usually assigned for reading. I find it fascinating that Speak is being taught as a part of high school curriculum because in the beginning of the semester when my lit circle group had to read the book And Tango Makes Three, we discussed how the book would be difficult to incorporate into a school setting because of the strong message. Speaks strong message about sexual assaults I feel would be very strong to teach freshman in high school. Therefore, I can see why Anderson was surprised that her novel was being taught in high school’s across the country. But beyond her eminent novel Speak, she discussed her struggle as a writer. She said that growing up she did not do well in school. She hated learning and only really enjoyed history classes. Her love for history influenced her interest in the epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793. She felt that this epidemic was an interesting topic that could be taught to a group of middle schoolers. When she decided to write, she started out as a newspaper reporter. She started writing and published 10 different novels. She focused on writing YA and Historical Fiction novels. The Fever of 1793 sparked her trilogy The Seeds of America which consisted of the novels Chains, Forge, and Ashes. She said that she wrote about 100 children’s picture books and was turned down on all of them. This led to her statement that as a writer you have to be willing to take risks and to fail every once in a while. She failed quite a few times with her picture books, yet she still saw herself as an up and coming writer. Anderson explained that writing can be very difficult and you often have to go back and re-write paragraphs to make them stronger for a novel. When she writes, she is constantly thinking about the next thing she is going to do. She mentioned that as a future educator, myself and others should give our students the opportunity to read for fun. Towards the end of her talk, she mentioned how Speak was turned into a movie.
She said that the movie producers gave her the opportunity to write the screenplay for the movie but she turned them down because she was already working on another novel. She also gave a fleeting remark that she was in the movie as a very small background character. Overall, I really enjoyed listening to Laurie Halse Anderson speak. She definitely is a different author than I’m used to reading. I have never truly experienced a novel where an author is willing to write about adversities that are prevalent in our culture that not many people are discussing. She writes to teach an extremely strong message and I admire her for that. Her book Speak can definitely serve as a sliding glass door for children who have experienced traumatizing adversity like herself because there is not much literature in our world to serve that purpose for children. I am pleased that I was presented with the opportunity to listen to such a powerful
author.