I left class on Thursday after our discussion of Carl Hiaasen’s environmentalist motives, still thinking about whether books for teens should put forth a set of ideologies or preach in support of a particular contentious issue. As I searched for a way to use Speak to shed light on this question, I came across an Entertainment Weekly interview with Laurie Halse Anderson (full text here: http://www.ew.com/article/2014/04/02/speak-laurie-halse-anderson-interview) where the author discusses the personal content of the novel and her motivations for writing books about tough topics for teens.

In several interviews, Anderson speaks about her shock in learning that male readers since the book has been published continue to ask: Why was Melinda upset about what happened to her? or Why was the impact so traumatic? She has used these conversations to argue that parents are failing in instigating important conversations about sex with their children. In arguing for increased visibility of issues such as sexual assault, Anderson presents specific ideologies and writes with a clear purpose. This Entertainment Weekly interview was the first time I learned of Anderson’s personal experience of sexual assault as a motivation for the creation of Speak. In the transcript, she replies:

I’ve read that the idea for Speak came to you in a dream – you woke up after hearing Melinda crying in your head.
That was the impetus for the beginning of the writing. With perspective, I think there’s two things that were happening. One was my oldest daughter was starting middle school. So as a parent, you know, [I was] doing the parent freakout: “Oh my gosh. How do I be a mom to somebody going through this?” But also, I had been sexually assaulted a month before ninth grade started. And my family had been in utter chaos because of my dad’s PTSD and alcoholism at that point. So I didn’t tell anybody for 25 years. And I think what happened was that as my own child was beginning to get close to the age where I was raped, that was making me think – and then my subconscious mind, which is the smart part of me, found a way to work through my story in fiction. Speak is not what happened to me, but having that secret and not knowing how to talk about it, that was my struggle. And writing the book was incredibly healing for me. It finally led me to go and get counseling, and then that completely changed my life.

I wonder if an author’s personal experience with a difficult topic that brings up issues of morality and ideology complicates the question of YA fiction as proselytizing texts. Does this make it more acceptable?