First, hello to any visitors from BlogHer!  Recently I was fortunate enough to have my post, Why I Use The F Word be featured there, so welcome to any visitors that are stopping by via BlogHer.  Please feel free to look around and I hope you enjoy what you find. Comments are moderated here, but I get to them fairly quickly, so please comment!

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This post was inspired by my BIG LOVE for Suzanne Collin’s Hunger Games trilogy and by the following thoughtful, incisive blogs: Malinda Lo’s Why I’m Team Katniss and Nancy Werlin’s The Hunger Games, Casablanca, and the Madding Crowd

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When you love a fictional character, love them so much it can ache, it’s hard to say good-bye.  It’s hard to know that, for you, in that giddy first-time-what’ll happen next way, it’ll all be over!  When other people complained about The Deathly Hallows epilogue, I  loved and defended it.  I did that for a lot of reasons, one of which is that I think it’s absolutely necessary to the text, but another main reason was that *I* needed to see Harry that one last time, knowing that all was well.

So, that’s what I feel (impractically, I know) the day before Mockinjay takes flight.

I feel so sorry that it’ll all be over!

The Hunger Games trilogy are the kind of books that light up reader’s eyes, the kind of books I have literally seen teenagers push into each other’s hands.  They’re the kind of books you feel: gut-punches, breath-stealing, oh no! gasping.  They’re the best of what young adult literature can do: the best ambassadors for when you’re telling friends who don’t read “kid’s books” about just how amazing the genre is.  They’re what we hold out when we say, “Wanna read something great?”

I can’t wait for Mockinjay, I can’t wait for that moment that so many of us all know, that we all get to the end of this intense, emotional, unforgettable story.

And I’m Team Peeta.

But what does that mean?

For some readers, I think that has come to mean that I only validate Katniss through her external relationships with boys, that unless she’s “with” a boy in the story, I’m not interested.

But it’s not like that at all for me.  See, I’m Team Peeta and Team Katniss.  For me,  the romance makes me Team Katniss just as much as Team Peeta, because it means I think Katniss deserves to live, to have joy and beauty in her life, to have someone who’ll stand by her and respect and admire the woman she becomes.

And I think Peeta is the obvious (and perfect) choice to be this someone.  Which brings me to the other thing: I’m Team Peeta regardless of Katniss.

I love Peeta Mellark just as much as I love Katniss Everdeen. (which is a heckuva lot!)

I love how he is totally guileless and open (he’s actually shocked, to some degree, at the end of The Hunger Games when he finds out Katniss was “faking” in the arena) and an uncanny, savvy media manipulator (the interviews he so carefully prepares for Caesar Flickerman, the way he traps Katniss with the locket.)  I love how he not only will he die for Katniss, he’d kill for her too.  I love that he’s brave, angry, and charming.  I love that he’s so fierce and yet so easily wounded.  I love what he sees in Katniss and I love how they interact.  I love that he paints and decorates cakes.  I love that he doesn’t show all of his cards at once, that he’s running several plans at once, that he’s in the Games to live and to win.

A teen patron told me, “I have to know what happens to the Boy with the Bread.”

That kind of character identification?  That’s about Peeta, that’s about what Suzanne Collins has created in his character.  That has nothing to do with Katniss.

And also?  I HOPE KATNISS AND PEETA END UP TOGETHER!!!!!!1111oneone

What’s so wrong about that either?

Love is what makes Katniss more than the Mockingjay, more than a killing machine in the arena that slaughters for people’s amusement.  Love for Prim is what starts the whole fucking story off, love for Rue is what reminds Katniss that she has a soul.  And, in the end, it’s love for Peeta that starts the spark that changes their world.

Yes, love.

Because when Katniss stands up in front of Panem and says that either they both get out or they both die, Panem thinks they’re seeing a romantic love story.  (and, of course, to some degree they are. It’s how Katniss doesn’t quite realize that yet that twists the knife so beautifully at the gasping end of the first book.)  But they are also seeing the moment when two tributes from one District stand up and say NO MORE.  This is platonic love in its purest, this is the moment before the Quarter Quell when the tributes hold hand, expose the Games as the pure barbarity that they are.

It’s the power of love that starts this revolution.

When I say I’m Team Peeta, I mean that I am Team Peeta for who he is and that I’m Team Peeta because I’d like him to “end up” with Katniss.  (assuming they both live, naturally.) Their connection is part of the appeal of the story, for me.  I think Collins’s has worked in their narrative in a heartbreaking and aching way: the pull of wanting to be with someone but not being entirely sure where your feelings came from,  how learning the little details about someone can show you bigger parts of their story, how maturing and changing personally makes your emotional feelings evolve too.  This is smart, this is deep, this is romantic to me in the truest sense of the word.  What’s so wrong about admiring the authorial skill it took to seamlessly weave in a compelling love story in a book where people get their heads chopped off and are eaten alive by monsters?

When we, as readers or librarians or critics, are dismissive of romance, we’re dismissive of HUGE reader bases that are, let’s face it, most frequently made up of women and girls.  If romance isn’t your cup of tea, that’s cool.  But why does it get so summarily dismissed out of hand as useless or a distraction or “bad” for readers?   I think that’s a question worth asking.

I think it’s profoundly feminist to suggest that Katniss can be the bow-wielding-kick-ass spirit of rebellion who never retreats and who rallies people to challenge the status quo while also being a person who needs love, comfort, passion, and companionship.  Since when is the message that you have to choose one or the other?

If fans of romance find themselves drawn to The Hunger Games, shouldn’t we welcome them?  Shouldn’t we say, “Pull up a chair and join the conversation!”? Isn’t it it our job (librarian’s jobs, that is, those of us who do reader’s advisory, run book clubs, get teens talking about and interested in books) to facilitate deeper conversations not just assume that they only part of the story they’re interested in, the only part they MUST be able to grasp is “so, like, which boy?”

I’ll be happy to lead a “Team Gale” or “Team Peeta” conversation at my Hunger Games event but we’ll also be discussing strategy in the arena, the mechanics of how the rebellion could legitimately work, and looking at fan-drawn maps of what Panem might look like and how that might change things.  It seems dismissive to assume that it has to be one or the other.

For me, it’s both.

For me, the romance is a crucial element in a fantastic, one-of-a-kind story I feel so lucky to have experienced, a story I just don’t want to be over.

And it’s one element I won’t apologize for.

Team Suzanne Collins!

“My reality is filled with young people who don’t see themselves reflected in books. And if you don’t see yourself in books, do you exist? Do you matter? Does anyone care about your life? Your story? Well, I know that we all matter, and my goal as an artist is to make sure others know, too.” -Charles R. Smith, Jr. in his 2010 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award acceptance speech

I live and work in a small town.  According to the 2000 census, the population was 11,909.  In many ways, my town is an “average” small town.  We have one four screen movie theater, one grocery store, and no restaurants open after 10 PM.  It’s the kind of place where you can spend ten minutes in the one grocery store and see ten people you know.

But something is different about where I live (which means something is different about where I work) … in my small town is one of the largest science and technology institutions in the world.  People come from all over the world to work here and they live in our community.  For the most part, these people are highly educated and make a whole lot of money.  37% of the population has a graduate or professional degree.  This means that while I work in a small town, my patron base is international.  A few weeks on the job, I complimented a smiling 8 year old on her purse.  She replied, “Thanks, we bought in Singapore.  We stopped there on our way to New Delhi for vacation.”  I would soon find that in this town, that was the norm.  When I look around a story time, I see parents from (among other places) China, Mongolia, India, France, Russia, Nepal, Spain, Israel, Germany, Jordan, Korea, Scotland, and Japan.  Our library has a thriving, circulating foreign language collection that includes books, magazines, newspapers and DVDs.  I live and work in a small town, but I am often reminded it’s not like many other small towns I have known.  I have learned a lot working here and it’s made me more attuned than ever to issues of visibility and why it matters.

When I think of the latest round of cover whitewashing that is slated to occur when Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix comes out in paperback with a barely disguised white girl on the cover instead of an accurate representation of Ai Ling, the kick-ass Asian protagonist actually featured in the book, I think about Jenny.

Jenny is twelve years old.  She’s an avid reader.  She’s also Chinese. One day several months ago we were talking about manga.  She asked me, with disgust, if I knew about the upcoming Avatar movie.

“Did you know they cast white people in that movie?” She said, disgust rolling off her every word in that way only twelve year olds can manage.

“I did.  That’s so dumb, isn’t it?”

“What is it?”  She asked, practically vibrating with anger.  “Do they think Asians aren’t cool enough or something?”

This, this simple question, is everything you need to know about visibility.  This is the question I think M. Night Shyamalan and everyone involved with Avatar the Last Airbender should have to answer to Jenny’s face.

Many people have written much more eloquently than I could about the problems with changing the cover of Silver Phoenix. (and its forthcoming sequel Fury of the Phoenix)  Here’s a sample of some of those posts:

Inkstone: I Guess I Still Have One Post In Me
Steph Su: Why I Want More Asians on YA Book Covers
Trisha: Asian-American Characters and Me
Miss Attitude: Guess What This Post Is About? (with a great link roundup)

But one point I never really saw addressed was this: what about libraries (like mine) that bought Silver Phoenix when it first came out?  How do these covers look together? My library system purchased it for a variety of reasons: great reviews and huge demand among our patrons for fantasy with strong female characters, for instance.  But we also bought it because we have large Asian patron base, because we see dozens of readers like Jenny every day, because it’s our professional responsibility to put books that reflect their faces, their identities, into their hands and their hearts.

For all of these reasons, and due to the success we’ve had with the first book, it’s a no-brainer that my library will be purchasing Fury of the Phoenix. So what now, Greenwillow Books?  How do these covers look together?

How will these books look to Jenny if she sees them together?  What message is she going to be getting?  What are we saying to Jenny?  How should my library display these books together?  What should I say when I am booktalking, promoting, and hand-selling the series and showing both books to my patrons?  Do you think they will not notice this difference?  Do you think it doesn’t matter?

VISIBILITY MATTERS.

There’s a reason Queer Nation took to the streets and shouted “We’re Here!  We’re Queer!  Get used to it!”  There’s an equal reason that, in 2002, The Simpsons would have Lisa tell the Gay Pride parade marching down her street and chanting this once radical statement of purpose: “You do this every year.  We are used to it!”

About a month or so ago, I was researching Justin Bieber (no, seriously.  He’s a youth cultural phenomenon librarians should at least be somewhat cognizant of.) and I discovered that he has a duet with Sean Kingston.  The duet, Eenie Meenie, went platinum in the US and the video has over 12 million hits on YouTube.   That part isn’t much of a surprise, Bieber collaborates with everyone (a key to his success and appeal, for sure) and, really, he and Kingston have a lot in common.  They were both discovered as teenagers through their presence on social media sites and built huge fanbases online that translated to “real” album sales.  When I looked up the video, however, I admit I was kind of blown away by the plot.

Basically, Bieber and Kingston are unwittingly competing for the affection of the same girl at a party.  She flirts with one and the other as they are in different parts of the house party.  Bieber and Kingston eventually meet up and realize that GASP this “eenie meenie miney moe lova“ has been PLAYING THEM BOTH!  Neither one seems to have hard feelings, they roll their eyes and embrace as the girl stomps off.

On the one hand, besides the problematic “girls, never flirt with more than one dude at a time or else you’re an unfaithful skank!!!” messaging, this is a pretty typical video.  Bieber and Kingston aren’t in the video as super-famous-musicians, they’re just two guys at a party who happen to be flirting with a girl that seems equally interested in both of them.  Why get blown away?

I was blown away that this simple narrative of “one girl is equally interested in two guys and is perhaps coyly leading them on simultaneously” was presented featuring one guy our society would absolutely consider “fat” and one we would consider “normal.” (NOTE: obviously, I’m not assigning or claiming either of these words to or for Bieber and Kingston, but in contemporary American culture, I think it’s inescapable and obvious that they’d be labeled with them.)

Sean Kingston and Justin Beiber nonchalantly competing for a girl is VISIBILITY IN ACTION.

When I see Sean Kingston flirting, dancing, looking hip and suave, and wooing a girl – I have a new way of rejecting the preconception that everyone has to look one single way, that there is only one standard for what makes you desirable, noticeable, what makes you, as Charles R. Smith, Jr. might say: exist.

When I see Sean Kingston, to some degree, I see myself.

We all deserve that experience.  That’s why these conversations are so important.  That’s why it matters that we keep discussing what Ai Ling should look like on the covers of the books she lives in, what it means and what messages it sends when she disappears into a black blur and turns into an oblique and ambiguous pair of lips.

Like Queer Nation so many years ago, we should ALL stand on the rooftops and march through the streets and shout: WE’RE HERE! until our stories are told, until attention is paid.

We owe it to Jenny.

The DUFF: the designated ugly fat friend.  The one girl in a group that’s just not “as pretty” as the others.  DUFF: it’s a “real” thing, you know.  You can look it up on Urban Dictionary, where it’s been an entry since 2003.  The DUFF, the girl in any group who’s just not as pretty, not as skinny, not as noticeable, not as special as the friends she’s with. And, regardless of the group, regardless of the situation, you already (and always) know who the DUFF is…don’t you?  She’s you.

“For a girl with such a fat ass, I felt pretty invisible.”

FINALLY, you are saying to yourself SHE’S GOING TO WRITE ABOUT A FAT BOOK (AS PROMISED) AT HER FAT BLOG.  IT’S ABOUT TIME!

Well, about that . . .

But!  But!  It says “fat” right there, in the title!  Yet one of the things that works about The DUFF is that we don’t really know if our protagonist, Bianca, is “actually” fat.  And one of the things that doesn’t just work but that makes The DUFF brilliant is that it still manages to be about the complicated and often painful politics of body image.  Bianca might be fat.  She might not be.  The DUFF challenges readers to ask: what does fat look like and what does fat mean anyway?

The DUFF starts one night out when Bianca is out with her friends.  She is approached by Wesley, school hottie and well-known player, who attempts to chat her up so her friends will like him.  Why would that work?  Because, as Wesley explains, Bianca is The Duff among her friends.  She knows it and they know it, he assures her.   If they see him talking to her, why, they’ll think he’s sensitive and kind for deigning to talk to her and probably make out with him.  Bianca, naturally insulted, throws her Cherry Coke in his face and stalks off.

Of course, you can probably guess where this is headed.

One of the things that works the best about this book is that though many plot developments seem inevitable and predictable (Bianca and Wesley’s hostility is also chemistry?  You don’t say!) Kiplinger still manages to give them an extra dimension, something just a little different than what you thought you guessed.

Like I said, we don’t know “how fat” Bianca is, but we do get to hear some of her thoughts on how fat she feels.  She refers to herself as having “big thighs” (p. 12), as being “chubby” (p.39),  and as having a “fat ass” (p. 139). But, again, Kiplinger knows that everyone feels that way sometimes, that feeling like that doesn’t always describe how we actually look.  Is this a book about a fat girl?  Kinda.  But it’s also a book about how society sometimes makes you feel like “a fat girl” by making you feel like “fat” is the worst of who you are.

Another nice touch: Bianca’s best friends, Casey and Jessica, also have insecurities about their looks.  Though Wesley opens by telling Bianca she’s the DUFF, Casey and Jessica are only human.  At one point, Casey protests SHE’S the DUFF.  Casey thinks she’s “Sasquatch” (p. 44) … but tall girls are all models, right?  They never have anything to worry about! Kiplinger knows that’s not true, and she knows that’s the heart of the DUFF.  One particularly nice, subtle moment comes when Bianca says something dismissive to Casey about the girls on the cheerleading squad, a squad Casey happens to be a member of:

“…He wouldn’t even date a girl on the Skinny Squad–”

“I really hate it when you call us that.” (p. 190)

Such a nice touch!  Slamming of the other cheerleaders who have “skinny” bodies doesn’t pass without comment.  Casey lets Bianca know that makes her uncomfortable, that the language is reductive and hurtful.  In less than 20 words and without beating you over the head with it, Kiplinger gets the point across, loud and clear.

So, Bianca finds herself pulled into a quickly escalating physical relationship with Wesley in an attempt to get through some rough personal times. (again, an refreshingly honest detail: sometimes, we use physical and sexual intimacy in a way that’s not always healthy or fair.  But it feels good and it makes us feel connected.)  They banter, bicker, have sex, and start to scratch each other’s surfaces.  But can they ever be more than just “enemies-with-benefits?”

(This is one of the book’s less believable parts: it’s so honest about sex that when the plot starts to veer off to “and the guy you have random hook-ups with could totally turn into awesome boyfriend material if you just stick it out and give him a shot!!!” it feels a little unrealistic.  Yeah, that happens, but, in my experience, not that often.  But this is, in many ways, a romance novel so it’s not entirely jarring or unexpected within the genre.)

The relationship between Bianca and Wesley is good, don’t get me wrong.  For one thing: their sexual relationship is sizzling and integral to their relationship as a whole. (This is one of very few YA book I can think of that discusses cunnilingus.  [maybe the only non-lesbian one?] And discusses it in a way that seems totally believable and real to a teenage girl’s mind.) No hand-holding here, Edward Cullen!  The way the book deals with sex is definitely for mature readers but it’s also good to see YA fiction moving beyond the billowing curtains.  And Bianca and Wesley’s banter is good too: natural, unforced, and kind of mean in all the best ways.  So are the moments when they start to really connect.  She stands up to him, calls him on bullshit, and doesn’t let him treat her like crap.  He likes her more because of that.  That’s believable, that works.

But, for me, what makes The DUFF really work is Bianca’s relationship with her girlfriends, some other girls at school, and herself.  This is a feminist book.  It’s a book about owning your identity, about not feeling bad for feeling good about sex, a book about rejecting “sexist” labels and words that tear girls down.  (yes, Kiplinger uses the word sexist!  HURRAH!)

Reading The DUFF and not knowing how ugly or fat Bianca “really” is doesn’t just show how subjective and individual measures like that are.  Keplinger knows it helps readers understand that everyone feels like the DUFF sometimes.  Perhaps that seems a little simplistic, but I think it’s a message teen readers NEED to hear.

Hell, I think it’s a message we ALL need to hear.

Recommended for: Language and sexual situations make this one for older teens only.  I recommend this as a first purchase for public libraries and for teens in grades 10-12.  I think this has the potential to be one of those books teen girls pass around from friend to friend.

A NOTE ABOUT THE COVER!

You’ll note that my post features two covers.  The one of the left is a picture I took the ARC cover.  The one one the right is the one that’s shown on Amazon, Kiplinger’s site, etc.  I IMPLORE YOU, POPPY, PLEASE USE THE ONE ON THE LEFT.  Not because the girl on the left is “fat” (maybe she is, maybe she isn’t…which fits the text!) but because the cover on the right seems all wrong for the book.  Funky eyeshadow?  Blowing a bubble with bubblegum? What does that have to do with anything?  It seems almost tween-ish.  AND THIS IS NOT A TWEEN BOOK.  That model looks almost flippant and uninterested.  The girl on the left is looking right at you: up close and unblinking.  I can practically see the smirk on her lips.  She’s Bianca.

Comment for a Chance to WIN A COPY OF THIS BOOK!

I hope you can’t wait to read this book!  It doesn’t come out until September 7, but after ALA I ended up with two advance reading copies.  (thanks to Little & Brown!)  I knew that meant I had to give one away!  So, as I did with Some Girls Are, I’m going to use random.org to select a random winner from the comments.  It could be you!

All you have to do is leave a comment with your thoughts about the word DUFF and you’re entered. (details: contest is open until August 12, US entries only please, don’t forget to use an e-mail address when you comment so I can contact you.) And if you don’t win,  don’t forget to go into your local library and request they buy a copy.

In the meantime, I suggest everyone take a moment to embrace their inner DUFF, the first step in working towards letting go of any power a word like that might have over you.

We *are* all The DUFF.

And that’s OK.