Speak

The first year of high school is often awkward, but for incoming freshman Melinda, it is filled with isolation, rejection, and judgment. Other students know that she made the call to police that shut down the end of summer bash—landing a lot of them in hot water, but they don’t know why she called. The only way Melinda is able to communicate about what happened that night is through her art, until her assailant strikes again, in the very halls of the school that has silenced her. Award-winning author Laurie Halse Anderson speaks for the girl who could not in this fast-paced thriller about the realities of date rape, communicating the pain and confusion experienced by the victim. At the same time, Anderson focuses a critical eye on the teens who choose to ignore the truth.

This book triggered a grass-roots movement against book-banning when someone tried to have it removed from a school library due to the mature content. The backlash, marked by the appearance all over popular media of the one word, "SPEAK!" was enough to put this book front and center. (I have to replace multiple copies each year, as my copies make their ways into the universe...I hope to be read by those beyond my reach.)

Note: Speak is a Young Adult novel, and the topic of sexual assault may be a trigger for some.

Anderson, L. H. (1999). Speak. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.