Books about teenagers acting grown up

The principal at the local high school has started the practice of having "book club" PTO meetings. She chooses a theme and a few books, and invites parents to have a conversation about it. The first one last spring was about helicopter parenting and the college admissions pressure cooker. This week the topic was a lot heavier: sexual activity and assault among teens.  The three books were Girls and Sex by Peggy Orenstein, Dating and Sex: A Guide for the 21st Century Teen Boy, and What We Saw by Aaron Hartzler.

I read the first and last of these. Both were rather horrifying. What We Saw is a YA novel about some kids who get drunk at a party. A few days later, one of the girls accuses three basketball players of raping her while she was passed out. The school shuns the girl; everyone believes she was too drunk to remember and just wants to blame someone. She was already a girl with a bad reputation and is blamed for being provocative. And the basketball team is lionized and supported by the school administration, even after they are arrested at school.

The storyline is familiar, pieced together from different news stories - and probably from actual experiences the author had or knew about: the drunken parties, the locker room talk, the girl with a bad reputation.  The behavior isn't new, only everything is more public, and videos on social media act as proof to corroborate what drunken girls - or boys- claim.

I read the book in about three hours without stopping. Lots of dialogue, fast moving plot, the mix of "I can't believe this" and "I can totally believe this" propelling me forward into the wee hours of the morning, after deciding I wouldn't sleep until I finished it anyway.

At the book club, one of the moms said she wanted her son to read it. Another mom said she wasn't sure. I hadn't read it at that point, but after reading, I'm pretty sure I would not recommend it to my kids. One the one hand (spoilers!), the basketball players are not depicted as likable, the coach is definitely villainish, and the main character, a girl, is portrayed as deeply conflicted, unwilling to go along with the popular crowd's opinion and ostracizing of the victimized girl. She struggles with trying to stay out of the polarization of the school and out of the way of the news media, who are hanging around to get a story.  She realizes she was drunk enough that she could have been the victim.  The main character eventually discovers that even her kind and gentle boyfriend was present during the videotaping and did nothing to stop the actions of the perpetrators. 

It's not the depiction of the crime or even the bad decision of the "good" kids to go to the party and drink that makes me think this book is inappropriate. Rather, a couple of plot additions ruin it for me. First, the boyfriend and the main character mention drinking again - without any conflict in their minds about how much is too much, whether they might get caught, or reflection about how sick they felt after the party and how alcohol helped fuel the bad behavior. And moreover, shortly after they start dating, they have sex together, without thinking or talking too much about it - and it is presented as a good thing that they both enjoy and that draws them together, even as the girl can't stop thinking about how her friend was raped.

I can get that the author wants to present a healthy sexuality to counterpoise the assault sex that provides the main conflict.  But it is dishonest to present sex as just a thing that happens, as simple and pleasant as kissing, especially first time sex. When I was talking to my sister about this, she chided me that people aren't always punished for their bad choices, but that's not my complaint (and the perpetrators do finally get caught). What really bothers me is the dishonest depiction of teen sex as a morally neutral part of growing up. It's propaganda of a different kind.  And it's what places this book, like The Fault in Our Stars, on my banned list.

The struggle to figure out what "healthy sexuality" is stymies the author of Girls and Sex.  She spends part of the book criticizing the hyper-sexualization of girls and their willingness to be used by boys in exchange for popularity.  But in another chapter, she lambasts Pam Stenzel and other chastity promoters for scaring kids away from sex, and she struggles to find anyone to hold up as a model of what healthy sexuality, or  even healthy body image, looks like (because it requires marriage).

This book is supposedly a research book, and maybe Orenstein was trying to be balanced.  She invited girls to speak to her about their experiences with sex and their attitudes towards their own appearance and sexuality, so there is definitely selection bias. The girls either say they are proud of their bodies and want to show them off, while at the same time feeling sick after hooking up and wishing some of the hook-ups would call, or they say they have a healthy relationship with a longterm boyfriend, but they still do things they don't want to in order to keep their boyfriend.

First she looks at high school girls. They wear skimpy clothes and lots of make up to school to attract attention and claim that that attention gives them power and makes them feel good about themselves. They look up to Beyonce and Miley Cyrus for their freedom in "expressing themselves" and "being themselves" and in not letting anyone define them, which is kind of hilarious, because they do the exact opposite, I would posit.  These power poses reflect an imbalance of power in sexual encounters - that one partner should be in control of the other, or at least in control of him or herself, regardless of the other.

Some of the girls dress sexy because they think they look good, which gives them self-confidence, but one girl admits she spends all day at school wondering what people think of her outfit.  The poses on Instagram and other media outlets are supposed to give them more self-confidence and pride in their appearance, but the pictures are carefully edited and scripted and lit just right and then used as a basis for their self-esteem.  Again, the message is about conforming to someone else's idea of beauty.

Adolescence is already a time of intense self-absorption. Give me uniforms!

Orenstein spends a good portion of the book discussing the hook-up culture on college campuses and what the new standards of hooking up are.  For many girls, weekends involve getting dressed up in few clothes and high heels, trying to get into frat parties, getting drunk at frat parties, hooking up, and then feeling hungover the next day.

Some girls claim to like the easy going shifting of sexual partners and the apparent "success" they have in the hook-up culture.  But others feel trapped in the pattern, obsess about boys who never contact them again, and obsess about their appearance. 

Not all the girls she interviews are in the hook-up culture. Some claim they waited until they were in a relationship to have sex. She talks to a couple girls who claim to be glad they were able get over the guilt they felt about having sex by being choosy about with whom they have sex.  Others still feel guilty but say they wish they didn't.  She never talks to girls who are not having sex by choice, mainly, I would guess, because her survey wasn't directed toward them.

Orenstein can't seem to decided whether to admire these girls who take control of their sex lives or to pity the girls who aren't experiencing any of the real pleasures of sex in a committed relationship (which would require marriage).  She seems to want girls to have a satisfying sexual experience - but doesn't seem to share the concept of the human person being more than a body or the idea that body, mind and soul are all so linked that the happiness or pain of one affects the other.

When you look for these books on Amazon - or Overdrive, the library's ebook service - the list of similar titles reveals that there are many books on the same or similar topic out there.  Date rape and rape when one person is under the influence of alcohol or drugs are hot issues right now after the incident at Stanford last spring. And it's not a new issue.  And sadly, even though supposedly in the minds of progressives, more open attitudes toward sex should lead to more egalitarian or at least more satisfying relationships and to fewer cases of sexual assault, I am  not sure if is happening. 

The thing I remind myself of after immersing myself into these absorbing topics is that there are a lot of kids who don't fit the population who are considered in these books.  I shouldn't read these warning books too often because they weigh so heavily, when in actuality a lot of good kids are doing amazing things and avoiding the bad things for the most part.  Adolescence is tricky territory.  There's truth in that sound bite that we should believe the best, but prepare for the worst.  

Burying the dead

My husband just returned from the funeral of his cousin-in-law who died of cancer. This cousin was just a couple years older than us and had three kids about the same ages as our middle three. He was diagnosed with ALS several years ago and was part of an experimental study at Emory University that involved implanting stem cells at the base of his skull. After the first treatment, he had a very good response. His ALS symptoms abated and his quality of life improved, and he became an advocate for research into ALS treatment and right to try laws.  The second round was followed by the diagnosis of a glioblastoma in his brain. The ALS didn't kill him, but the brain tumor he developed metastasized, and he died just four days after the doctors said they could nothing more.

My husband debated going to the funeral. His parents weren't going because his father had just had heart surgery - a defibrillator placed because of tachychardia.  None of his siblings were going. And I don't think anyone expected him or his siblings to go to a funeral all the way across the country in less than a week.  But when they were younger, my husband and this cousin whose husband died were good friends. They spent a lot of time together growing up, and when he was in college he went to her family's house for Thanksgiving a few times.  We went to each other's weddings and visited them in New York as newlyweds years ago. She was one of the few in the extended family who made an effort to keep in touch by sending baby gifts and birthday cards to the kids when they were younger. I reciprocated for awhile, but trailed off as the kids grew older.  We've stayed in touch through other cousins' weddings, their grandmother's big birthday celebrations, her funeral, and through Facebook and Christmas cards.

So when a cheap fare was available, as was a cheap hotel, my husband decided to go to the funeral.  I wasn't really excited about him going after he was gone the weekend before to see our boys at college for a football game with their younger brother.  We didn't have much on the schedule for the weekend, and we haven't had any recent financial "emergencies" like new car tires or appliance repairs.

And I had a hard time thinking of the trip in financial terms only. I struggle with maintaining relationships with people I once loved but who now live far away because we or they have moved. We often keep in touch via Facebook, but only on the surface of life: "Here we are at a football game. Here we are at graduation. Here we are on vacation, having a nice life."

That is something, and I'm glad I know something about the lives of these relatives.  But I also know how nourishing even short visits in person with family can be.  I loved being able to go home with my oldest daughter for my grandmother's funeral from Guam. My husband was grateful he was able to spend time with his mom when she was undergoing breast cancer treatments. He also has no twinge of regret that he and our two oldest boys went to his grandmother's funeral, which was a huge celebration of her life and the joy that all her children and grandchildren shared in each other's presence.

So even though this funeral was much more solemn because it was for someone in midlife rather than at the end of a long and happy life, it was still a celebration of our cousin's courage to stay cheerful in the face of a mortal illness, and his commitment to his family and friends and community, including his church.  And my husband commented that his cousin and the kids seemed to be comforted by the presence of all these people who were inspired by their husband/father.  It is nice to send a card that says "I'm sorry for your loss."  But to share a hug and a glass of scotch to toast the departed is a different, deeper kind of condolence.

Comfort for the living is surely part of the reason why "bury the dead" is one of the acts of mercy.

Love/hate

These things make me inordinately happy:

Another cross country season

A new sport

Strange sea creatures . . .

... that seem to want to be patted.

Burrowing owls

Blessing of the animals

Another book lover

Plumeria! Finally! A cutting from a friend has been nurtured for months until rewarding us with blooms.

Passionflower!

And some things fill me with disgust, like finding a pile of shredded candy wrapper, tufts of fabric, and other evidence that El Raton found my secret stash of chocolate in a bag inside of my favorite backpack. The war is on! Snap traps, sticky traps and poison bait have been laid for the intruder...

Mountains to Desert

Over Columbus Day weekend we went camping in the San Bernardino National Forest near Mount San Jacinto State Park.  Original plan: Go to Joshua Tree National Park for the weekend. Reservable campsites were all reserved (Because of Desert Trip?). Backup plan: Find a spot with trees on the other side of the mountains. Although the state park was full, the National Forest Service had a handful of quiet, private, sites for half the price. No showers or flush toilets, but I happen to like primitive camping, as do the boys. The girls would rather have some running water, but they compensated by not going to the bathroom very much while we were there.  The weather was perfect for camping, although because of the drought, no fires were allowed. So at night after the kids were tucked in their sleeping bags all cozy, we drank our cups of cheap wine in the dark, peering at the stars between the pine trees. I missed the fire, but the upside was not smelling smoky when we returned.

Despite the complaining and whining about going camping, the kids really seemed to have a good time.  They don't want to disconnect and leave their friends. They are afraid they might miss something good. But the further away from home we get, the more they relax and begin to talk to each other and to us. The youngers spring from the car and head off on an exploration of our site in the forest before we can remind them about setting up camp. Away from the concrete and traffic at home, they jump and laugh and climb and are generally rambunctious until time for a hike and dinner.
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I used to reject the notion that to grow in wisdom, a person must travel. We have had conversations with friends (and books) about whether wisdom comes primarily through lived experience that should include travel to exotic locations in order to gain knowledge of the entire world or whether wisdom comes with reading and reflection and conversation.

What is meant by wisdom is perhaps the first question.  Obviously, it isn't just memorizing facts or recognizing landmarks or accumulating content information, or even learning how to process or discover information. Being wise surely must also have an element of seeing outside the self, of being empathetic or compassionate, of loving, - of knowing and loving others, as well as knowing and loving things.

I still don't believe that true wisdom requires travel. But travel does provide a type of knowledge, or a way of seeing, that differs from the kind of knowledge or reflection that happens when you stay at home.  Being dislodged or relocated shifts your view - maybe just a degree or two, and not for very long. And traveling provides the opportunity to meet new people and find they are knowable and lovable, even though you may know that in theory from books and conversations at home. And after traveling, you go home, and home seems more lovable.

Remember the old mnemonic device for spelling desert: you want more dessert, so you ask for two s's. You want less desert, so it only has one s.  Some people love the desert. People who live in adobe homes decorated with bougainvillea, who paint sunsets in vivid golds, pinks, and purples, and who smoke peacepipes and speak in aphorisms.  Ok, plenty of other people, too, but driving by all of these colorful homes made me realize the number of people who chose to settle where less than an inch of rain falls is not small.

I am curious about the people who originally came to Palm Springs to live, or Las Vegas, or any other desert town bulging with ostentatious wealth. Were they people who had something to escape, who had secrets or past crimes to hide, or who wanted to engage in illegal or prohibited activities like selling alcohol, or gambling, or whatever other vices were bought and sold? Why did they settle in the middle of the desert? How did they have the audacity to found a luxury resort in this place?
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We didn't actually visit Palm Springs, although we could see it from a mountain top.  But we drove through a few small towns nearby, where dust covers the windows of tin roofed homes so that they looked condemned on uninhabited, but in fact, someone is living there. The high school in one desert town is next to a maximum security prison. Train tracks and an interstate divide a town into thirds in which no one has a good location.  Laundromats and Super Marts and Vape shops line the streets across from taquerias and iglesias. But no one walks the street. You don't see any people, except an old man trimming the lone palm tree in his front yard. Where do they hide in the daytime? Where do they go to work? Vines are withered, fields are dust, creosote is the only thing that grows. Perhaps these really are ghost towns haunting the edge of a glittering high- end outlet mall next to a high rise mirrored casino blinding motorists, preventing any view of the interior - or out.

We had plenty of time on the road to image the lives of those who live in the desert, both the very, very wealthy and the very, very poor.  I have decided I am a mountain person.  I'd rather be high in the trees on a hillside, than oceanside in the sand. Or rockside in the desert, although I did love the warmth of the sun on my arms. The weekend was a study in contrasts in many ways.  I'm glad we made the trip to escape routine, to enjoy family bonding, and to explore a few other wonders of creation.

Wildflowers

Do you see the bighorn sheep?

A zoom lens is on my wishlist

Joshua tree forest

Petroglyphs

Skull rock

Dry land log rolling

The all seeing eye

The color has been added by "vandals."

Natural color. That deep blue may be what desert lovers are addicted to.

Purple mountains majesty

Fiery sunset

Goodbye friends! Outside of the friendly corner bakery in Idyllwild

Genius and its discontents

I just finished reading T. C. Boyle's The Women, Boyle's fictionalized account of Frank Lloyd Wright and his wives and lovers. I like T. C. Boyle's writing, although I can't say I loved this book. It was interesting to read, despite some slow parts, mostly because, although I  am familiar with a number of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings - and some of their structural woes - I was not familiar with the story of the murder of his lover and six other people at the Wisconsin retreat house he had built on family property.  That's not the central idea of the book, but part of the intrigue behind a man who had an ego larger than life.  He was a certain kind of genius and he knew it, but he also spent a lot of time and money convincing other people he was a genius.

The megalomania and obsessiveness that drives certain creative types to ignore the emotional wreckage they leave behind them are curious personality types that are probably disorders but also responsible for some of the world's marvels of artistic creation. Are there some potential artists out there who are over medicated or therapied into being too nice to create?  Is the greatest struggle for the Christian artist the struggle between his soul which must be humble and his genius which must be exalted?  Can the Christian artist disregard and neglect the people around him enough to create a work of miraculous magnitude?

An interesting side note to The Women: T. C. Boyle was inspired to write the story after he bought a Frank Lloyd Wright home in Santa Barbara where Wright lived for a short time.  I didn't realize we were living a short distance away from this place - although I did drive through Montecito a couple times. It's the neighborhood where Oprah sometimes lives and sells her free range chicken eggs.  I'd guess the average home price is probably in the $10 million range.  (See http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-wildlife-of-tc-boyles-santa-barbara-27234/?no-ist=&page=1

I also picked up A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers.  I know that many people love this book and rave about it, and I wanted to like it more - we were practically neighbors to Lake Forest - and then California - but I just couldn't get into it.  It just seemed too self aware and intentionally attention seeking - the narrative voice reminded me a little of a contemporary Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye.  Perhaps in a different mood, I could have worked up a little more enthusiasm for it, but I decided I didn't want to spend any more time with it, and I skimmed until the end and moved on.  I'm sure it is a good reflection on the struggle to live in a dysfunctional family in a dysfunctional world, and a reflection that normalcy comes in a variety of forms.

Now I'm bogged down in James Martin's My Life with the Saints, which I keep on the back of the toilet to read in short bits. It has some good insights and is conversationally written and definitely readable. I especially liked the chapter on Pope John XXIII and his joviality.  But I'm not inspired enough to read it more quickly or often, so my reading burst has come to an end.

Reading in review

           More notes on recent reads:  Much of my reading has been children's books - keeping up with the kids.  As I mentioned, the fifth grader had to read a Hardy Boys book, which was entertaining, and Sing Down the Moon for assigned summer reading. I loved Sing Down the Moon when I read it as a child and again now- it is the touching tale by Scott O'Dell, of Island of the Blue Dolphins fame, of the removal of the Native Americans from their home in Canyon de Chelly to a reservation in Arizona before the turn of the 20th century when the western expansion movement was at its height.  In reading it, the tragedy of this movement in our nation's history is painfully apparent, but the book doesn't seem overly political.  Indian removal was motivated by greed and fear, inexcusable, but fed over time by a variety of occurrences.

Interestingly, Native Americans here in San Diego county, the Kumeyaay tribe, have been protesting a local building project by the government.  A finger bone was found in the process of land removal, and the government called in archaeologists, publicized the finding and released information. Then they redesigned the project with a setback, but now there is a protest, after building has resumed.  There is no evidence that the area is actually a burial ground, but the issue is very sensitive and receiving a lot of press. Misunderstandings abound, but after people met face to face around a table some of the issues have been resolved. A member of the tribe is being hired as a consultant and some other concessions have been made, and right now the building is moving forward.
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In light of recent movie releases, I also just read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. This was another entertaining read - albeit darkly so, rightly described as gothic - that I put off for some time, skeptical of the best seller reputation, but since a movie version is arriving soon, the kids wanted to read it, and I thought I needed to check it out. The kids and I flew through it. It is the story of people with special - peculiar - gifts or abilities - to make fire in their hands, to be invisible, to see the future, etc, - who live in a "loop" or a time warp zone where a day repeats itself endlessly in order to keep these "Peculiars" safe. The main character's grandfather was a Peculiar who refused to live in the loop - and eventually trouble catches up with him and he is murdered. His grandson, clueless about this secret identity, but also a Peculiar, proceeds to investigate the clues his grandfather left behind and discovers the loop and the conflict between the Peculiars and their monstrous enemies, the Wights and the Hollowgast.

The book is fast paced and notable for the positive portrayal of the grandfather/grandson relationship - but a weak father/son relationship and a some crass language that sounds teenagerly. We are eagerly awaiting the return of the second book to the library so we can continue the series and see if the promise holds.  It does have an intensity and darkness to the plot that disqualify it as a family read.  For some reason it reminded me a little bit of the Spiderwick books, maybe because of the threshold crossing theme? And perhaps in another mood, I might not like it, as I didn't like the darkness in The Night Gardener.

P.S. I jumped ahead and read the third book, The Library of Souls, great title, instead of waiting for book 2. It was again a page turner, but I'd say it is bit dark for young readers.  All's well that ends well, of course, and I can't remember anything more objectionable than violence. But little relief from the the dark tone and subject matter are offered. I imagine the film all in a shadowy black and white like the vintage photographs that accompany the text.

This book caused me to look closer at some of the vintage photographs around my house of various family members. I couldn't find anything really peculiar about them...

Here is a favorite: the photo of my grandfather looking handsome in a long wool coat holding a cigarette as he gazes toward the camera.

That grandfather used to call me Buckles after my maternal great grandmother, Mrs. Buckles, because he thought I smiled like her. Here are few photos of her as a young woman at her family farm.

My other grandfather and his wife, daughter of Mrs. Buckles, the stylish grandmother.

My other grandmother as a little girl and her best friend:

My parents as pre-schoolers: