Red

One of the most interesting things that I liked with this book was the introduction. Amy Goldwasser the editor of the book Red also wrote the introduction. What I found so endearing about the introduction to the girls stories was that Goldwasser wrote "Truth is, these girls' delights and concerns are as existential as any adult's. They're just freer, more honest documentarians" (Goldwasser xv). I think this is absolutely true most of the times real stories about adolescence are written after the author has ceased to be classified in that stage, with this book though the reader gets the honesty that many look for included with dirty details and even some humilation. Another thought that crossed my mind while reading this was how interesting the chapter headlines are. I always look through the chapter titles before I read a book to kind of get an idea of what is going to happen the most interesting ones were Hey You, Freshman with the Face!, Mascara Wands Are Instruments of War and lastly Appeal from an Angry Not So Emo. Lastly another thing that made me really appreciate this book was how these young writers were able to make so many of their stories universal to everyone. The story Curve was one of those that could be seen as a universal story of struggling with the body that was given to you and not being able to control the fact that your too skinny or too fat to fit into the mainstream culture and even fit in with your friends.

My Adolescent Novel

My adult novel would be focused around and adolescent growing up in a small down and then moving to a larger city. The title would be More Cows than People because in the town that where said adolescent grew up in there were far more cows than there were people. I would discuss how much of a struggle it was to move to a completely different place than where that adolescent grew up. This could be similar to Sherman Alexie’s novel in the ways that Junior was ostracized for being different and I feel that I could tie it into my own experience as an adolescent and make it somewhat autobiographical. I feel that this is a universalized feeling because many times people go through moving from one place to another and things that they once cherished can be seen as irrelevant in the new situation and vice versa. However I would also write about the fact that the adolescent realizes that this was ultimately the best thing that could have ever happened because they would have been a completely different person if they had stayed in the small town. It would definitely be an innocence to experience themed novel. Even though there are probably many adolescent novels that are similar to this I would still want to write it anyways maybe I could offer up something to the adolescent literature world that would be worth reading and one day read in a classroom, if not then well at least I had fun writing it!