SPEAK up, because if you don't, what makes you think anyone else will?

I get it.  Sometimes, people say stupid things to provoke a response out of others.  You see it with ignorant people who troll certain forums around all day long and make asses out of themselves.  You see it with politicians all the time (though they probably don't think what they're saying is stupid). 

You also see it with "Christians" who are more concerned about controlling others than they are about the well-being of our nation's youth.  See the ignorant article that sparked such outrage here.


I first read SPEAK in 10th grade.  I cried long and hard.

I was not raped, but I did have family problems in 10th grade.  They were problems that ripped everything I knew about life to shreds.  I questioned myself, my friends, my family, the adults in my life.  I questioned God  when I never attained the answers I so desperately yearned for (I went to Catholic school from Pre-K to 8th grade and have always considered myself agnostic).  Why was all of this happening to my family?  Why me?  Why now?  Why why why?

My friends cut.  Some did it for the attention.  Others did it because they hurt too much and needed to ease the pain in some way.  I will never forget one particular night when my best friend at the time wandered off while our group was hanging out.  She called me on the phone twenty minutes later, a sobbing mess.  I sprinted as fast as I could to the brook, where she'd wandered off to...

Her forearm was covered in blood. 

It looked like she'd squirted ketchup over the entire surface, nice and thick.  Streaks of it streamed down to the palm of her hand, dripping tiny droplets off onto the grass below.

She'd found a piece of dirty glass.  Was hurting so badly she jammed it into her arm and sliced the skin, over and over.  The pain refreshed her.  Revitalized her.  It was like she'd been possessed at the time it happened and didn't realize what she was doing until she'd finished.  And then, seeing her arm a bloody mess, she freaked out.

Some of my friends were anorexic.  Some were bulimic.  A few of my friends had parents who relentlessly harassed them about their weight.  Their looks.  Forced them to go on diets--bribed them to go on diets.

One was deemed suicidal because of the poetry she wrote for an English class.  She cut.  She dressed in black.  She kept to herself.  She wasn't suicidal, though.  She was just trying to express herself because writing was a mode of therapy for her--for all of us.

Which is how we were all introduced to our school's social worker.  She became like a second mother to all of us.  She cared about us when we thought nobody else would.  She recommended SPEAK to all of us in 10th grade.

Every. single. girl. cried.

None of us were ever raped, thank goodness.  But we had issues with our families.  Issues with ourselves.  Guy issues.  Everything a high school student suffers, and then some.  And we were silent about it.  We thought we had to keep it to ourselves; we thought nobody would care about what we had to say.

SPEAK helped us realize that someone out there, in the world, gave a shit about us.

So we cried, and cried, and cried.


I have an Italian quiz tomorrow.  I need to learn over 200 nouns and phrases this afternoon.  And yet, instead of studying for this college class, I've been sitting in front of my laptop all day long, completely speechless because of the article I linked to up above.

For starters, how could one ever compare rape to soft porn?  How?  Why?  Where's the logic behind such a comparison?  Unless, of course, said person is a bit wonky in the head.  In which case, it would be best for a person to keep one's mouth shut.

Scroggins believes that SPEAK is inappropriate for young adults and children.  Enough to make such a comparison on the internet.

I am always shocked and appalled when people make such brash statements.  They worry more about control than about the actual issues at hand.  What would be better to speak out against?  A book that's therapeutic, or the issues that book attempts to confront?  Why waste one's energy bashing a book meant to help people, when one could spend that same amount of energy fighting against rape and keeping silent?

Why are people still trying to keep sex taboo?  Why are we letting our youth live in ignorance when it comes to sex?  Why the fuck can't kids learn about sex in schools without one stupid ass parent ruining it for everyone?  You don't want your kid to learn about sex?  Fine.  But don't ruin it for the rest of us.

You don't want YOUR CHILD reading SPEAK?  Fine, but shut the fuck up and let everyone else make that decision for themselves.  I'm talking to you, Mr. Scroggins.  Shut the fuck up and let people live their lives.  Stop trying to dictate what teenagers can and can't do.  They have a right to have access to these sorts of books.  They have a right to have access to a quality sexual education so that they can make educated decisions when it comes to having sex.

People like Scroggins sicken me.

That's all I'll say about this.  Other people have talked about this issue more eloquently than I can right about now.  I highly suggest checking out Anderson's response.  The video at the end, the poem in response to her book, was beautiful.

This giveaway is now closed.  I have contacted the winners via email.