The Death Issue

              Once upon a time, I attempted to write a novel. I bought a leather-bound maroon book with gold trim and lined paper and told myself I would scribe until the end of the volume and publish it (in the process becoming rich and famous and getting a dog). I was six. Needless to say I did not make it to the end of that book. In fact I only finished about 20 pages in my huge first grade block letters. The book was about two friends who grew apart, but got back together  due to an elaborate plan and some minor animal kidnapping. The girls, named Anika and Sophie, were my dream alter-egos. They had their own rooms, pets and had delicious things like mac and cheese for dinner, and whipped cream and waffles for breakfast. They were talented (Sophie was a dancer, Anika drew), smart, pretty, basically perfect in every way. But that's what happens in the idyllic world of children's books, everything works out and everyone is special. Its so different from the YA books of today with their death, rape and social destruction-al themes. And transitioning between the happiness of early picture books to the disparaging works that fill my current shelves was one of the most eye-opening moments of my life.
                    Death becomes more integrated into the books we read as we get older, no longer just belonging to sickly animals or ancient grandparents. As death extends its dark reach to our teenage heroes and heroines, we wonder just how vulnerable we are. John Green informs us about cancer, Laurie Halse Anderson tells us about bulimia, Ellen Hopkins opens up our world to drugs. To the closeted reader that I am, books are a way to soak up the impossible and the all to possible. Books are the doorways and manuals to things I have yet to experience, and death is such a huge part of that.
                Where do we go? So many volumes have tried to address this inevitability. What religion doesn't tell us, stories make up, or sometimes refute the teachings of old. Heaven. Hell. What is even the difference? Elsewhere, a charming yet borderline creepy book, tells us we will be reborn as young children, perhaps addressing the degradation of our society and of ourselves. The Golden Compass, or to be more specific the Amber Spyglass, speaks of the dead, shadows in a barren land. The idea of this anomaly troubles me, for although when we were little death was a peaceful slumber, I now know the unknown lays beyond.
                 How will we die? Of course we don't know now, how would life work if we just counted the hours we had left in this world? Books have addressed this issue and more. But back to the question. The Hunger Games teaches us about our inner savages, waiting for the right venue to explode, the potential for violent ends in all of us. The Fault in Our Stars tells us of a different kind, a languishing death, so poignantly slow and painful that it almost hurts to read. Conrad sought suicide in Impulse and found "eternal rest." And others still teach us about the sudden death that occurs via car or crashing wave, unbeknownst until its too late. These different means expose us to both the horrors surrounding us and those within. All waiting until something falls into place and we vacate this world.
              So death surrounds us, and books have taught us that. Exposing some to that which was not imaginable and warning others about their paths. Innocent childhoods stolen by death, lust, greed. They're gone. For me it was books that took away my innocence and opened so many doors. And to think people say that teenagers feel like they're invincible; I feel closer to the grave than ever.

Claudette Colvin: An Unheard Shout

         Recently I finished the book Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose. I had been devoid of reading material after I finished the books on my kindle and was wanting for some new stories to sweep me up into their fantastical and implausible world where everything turns right in the end and the characters either always know exactly what to say or turn muteness and societal awkwardness into something worth reading about. I picked up this book thinking that it was the fictional antidote to my boredom but found something entirely different. Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice was about a civil rights figure, a pioneer, who stood up for her rights and spurred the segregated African American community of Montgomery Alabama by refusing to . And all at the age of 16. However, Colvin did not stop there, even after facing a difficult teenage pregnancy with a married man, Colvin struck out at segregation again when she was asked by lawyer Fred Gray to testify in the groundbreaking trial Browder vs. Gayle. I was shocked. It wasn't because I had thought the book to be fictional, but because I had never heard of her before.
              In Social Studies lessons on segregation and the civil rights movement Rosa Parks is the name most referred to, or even little Ruby Bridges, commonly known as the first black child to attend a white school. I have admired these people all my life, but Claudette Colvin was a teenager like myself and broke barriers 9 months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus. I think the reason why Colvin is so unknown today is because she was a teenager. Teenagers were known to be unruly and irrational. Therefore it was easy for white people to ignore as just another rash act by a black teenager rather than a formal protest for her rights and a stand for her people. While this was the reason that many whites ignored it, I also believe that the african american community did not want a teenager at the face of their civil rights movement as teenagers are changeable and not recognized as conscious and educated adults that a court of law might take seriously. As Hoose states in the book, "{Rosa Parks} wasn't a teenager....{or} feisty and emotional as Claudette was rumored to be..." Both of these subtle motivations probably prompted her fading away into the back pages of history books, as well as the fact that she got pregnant right afterwards and, in her words, "they all {the NAACP} turned their backs on me when I got pregnant." Claudette herself felt bitter at the time and remembers thinking, "Hey I did that {refusing to give a seat to a white person on the bus} months ago and everybody dropped me."
                I think that teenagers not being respected as valid members of society and having their actions dismissed as merely hormonal or rebelliousness is a problem in todays society and was a problem even back then. Young people have important things to say and they deserve to be heard. Dismissing someone just because they are young is not only insulting (as Colvin felt), but also damaging to a society that might have benefited from the ideas spoken.  Rosa Parks might have been a better candidate for spurring the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-6 because she was "widely known as an activist," "respected by both the black professional class and ordinary workers," "light skinned but not white," "and struck almost everyone she met as a contained, pleasant, committed and levelheaded individual," but I believe that Claudette did not deserve her chameleon like status as someone who was not important. I am so glad that this book was written so that the world can know of her heroism and courage, even though she was a teenager.