Shout by Laurie Halse AndersonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Raw and real and loud, Laurie Halse Anderson's Shout takes readers on a poetic tour of the personal experiences that gave rise to Anderson's powerful writing in her novels for young people. Set in three sections, the book explores her childhood and young adulthood in the first with an unflinching look at the real people she, her mother, and her father were and examines the choices they made within their realities. As she says in the introduction, her father "gave me these guidelines: we must be gentle with the living, but the dead own their truth and are fearless. So I've written honestly about the challenges my parents faced and how their struggles affected me." This freedom gives rise to some intense, beautiful, and beautifully gut-wrenching poetry, especially moving to me as a parent reflecting on how the choices I make play out for my own children.
In the middle section, Anderson writes about her writing, her journey to becoming a writer, and her readers. Fans of her work will no doubt enjoy reading about her process and the development of some of her storylines. Personally, I loved the poem "anatomy," which takes Ken doll to task for his flawed anatomical presentation. I also appreciated where Anderson takes time to offer advice to her readers, as in "ignore stupid advice" for young people, and to criticize the efforts of adults who "help" young people by ignoring the realities of life and the need of young people to hear the truth (specifically "emergency, in three acts," "librarian on the cusp of courage," and "inappropriate dictators").
In part three, Anderson returns to her family and reflects on the power names, of story, of shared experience. I most liked her "reminder" that:
the spines of books connect
page to page
writer to reader
teacher to student
page to page
past to future
pain to power
page to page
rage to peace (p. 289)
May we all find such peace by shouting our own truths to the world.
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