Tweak by Nic Sheff

This week, I finished the book Tweak by Nic Sheff. This book is an memoir- a true story- about his hard life as a drug addict. Nic Sheff was addicted to the whole lot of drugs:meth, crack, cocaine, marijuana, painkillers, anxiety pills, etc. Throughout the story of his life, I realized that Nic Sheff was not addicted to drugs, but to anything that would take the pain away.

Nic had many problems. As a child he always felt that he was the outsider and he saw thing differently from others. He was not an outcast, but just secretly different. He started using drugs at a very young age. He also became sexually involved at a young age too. He describes getting high as making him feel powerful and helping him not give a crap about his worries or his family or his problems with self hatred.  He always felt like his family was so perfect and had everything together and he was a lost puppy and hated himself for relying on him for everything. Nic hated the way he looked, he hated his addiction, he hated being lost, and basically hated everything about himself. Turning to drugs didn't make him love himself, but it gave him an outlet.

This book made me cry. Honest. Sheff told his story with such a raw reality that it was unlike anything I've ever experienced before. To be in the mind of a man who truly hated himself and everything he was was heartbreaking; a man who struggled to find his identity, a man who struggled with drugs. I would suggest this book to anybody. PLEASE DO READ!

The Divorce Express

            The book “The Divorce Express” is about the effects of divorce on a young adolescent named Phoebe. During the book, Phoebe goes through a significant emotional change. In the beginning, she feels like she is trapped by her parents divorce, and that she has no voice in what happens anymore. Throughout the book, Phoebe goes through important events and experiences that change the way she sees her parents divorce. By the end of the book, she thinks of divorce as a chance to learn new things.

            In the beginning, Phoebe feels trapped, and like she’s stuck in the middle of her parents divorce. She also feels lost and like she has no view in their decisions. I know that Phoebe feels confined by her parents divorce because she says “Rearrange the letters in the word PARENTS and you get the world ENTRAPS.” She says this because she feels like the decisions that her parents make in their divorce come down on her and traps her. I know that Phoebes feels like she has no voicing in her parents’ decisions because she says “I had no say. Their divorce was arranged by the time I got home from camp.”

            The events and experiences that Phoebe goes through throughout the book change the way she sees her parents divorce. One example of this is when her father is dating a lady named Mindy. Phoebe notices that he father hasn’t been this happy in a while, and she suddenly thinks that her parents’ divorce was for the best, to keep her parents happy. I know this because she thinks “I’m glad my father found Mindy. He’s happier now. I wonder if he was this happy with mother. Maybe it’s a good thing they divorced, so they could both be happier.” This line shows that Phoebe is starting to accept to reason for her parents divorce. She realizes the good affect is has on their lives, and how when they’re happy, she is.

            By the end of the story, Phoebe thinks of her parents divorce as a chance for her to learn new things and to find her own place in the world. I know this because she says “I don’t feel entrapped anymore, with no place to go. I have both my parents places, and I’m learning to have my own place in the world.”  This line shows that Phoebe is learning to get a handle on her parents divorce, and that she is finding her own place in the world. She doesn’t feel as hopeless and lost in the beginning of the story, and she isn’t as upset about her parents divorce either.  I also know that Phoebe changes the way she thinks of divorce because she says “I also learned that if you rearrange the letters in the word DIVORCE, you get the word DISCOVER.”  That line shows that Phoebe thinks of divorce as a change to learn new things, whether they may be about your life, or someone else’s.

            Throughout the book, Phoebe’s words and actions show how she goes through a significant emotional change, where she comes to accept the fact of her parents divorce and find her own place in the world, after being lost for so long. 

The Skin Im In by Sharon G Flake

                 The Skin I'm In begins with the main character Maleeka, a seventh-grade African-American girl, meeting her new teacher Miss Saunders for the first time. Both Miss Saunders and Maleeka have a kind of beauty that most people don't recognize; Miss Saunders has a large white "stain" across her face and Maleeka is blacker than black. As the school year goes on, Maleeka comes to realize that her blackness is nothing to be ashamed of; as she says "black is the skin I'm in." Maleeka is faced with a lot of the problems that most adolescents face: she struggles to fit in and as a result forms a sort of alliance with some of the "mean girls" at the school. The leader, Charlese, treats everyone terribly and gets Maleeka into trouble on more than one occasion. Finally, Charlese decides that she and Maleeka, along with two other girls, will get revenge on Miss Saunders by destroying her classroom. Maleeka is the only one who is punished for the offense until she has enough courage to stand up for herself and tell the truth about who all was involved.
              I really got into this book.   I could easily put myself in Maleeka's shoes. Maleeka was such an excellent character; she presents the raw emotions that everyone feels at a point in their life and she has this great epiphany at the end that shows that there is no need to be ashamed of who you are. Caleb even shows that no matter what you look like, as long as you are a good person, there will always be someone who cares about you.
             Maleeka was exceptionally poetic. Her diaries about Akeelma were powerful. It was great how she used her diaries as an outlet for all the emotions she was feeling about Charlese, Caleb, John-John, and her own thoughts about herself. I was very glad to see that she won the competition. I can't imagine another middle schooler having the imagination and the diction to write such beautiful compositions. I felt like her work was better than a lot of adult writers.
             Maleeka also showed how to deal with the death of a parent which is so important. I thought it was moving when she went through the box of things that her mother had kept after her father passed away. That poem was a great statement of the love between a father and daughter and of the pride that Maleeka should have in herself. However, I did feel really bad for Maleeka's mother. She lost her love when her husband died and it took her a long time to heal from it. At least she found an outlet (sewing) to bring her out of her grief and to start her on the path to healing.
             This book is a fantastic book for teaching to love who you are. Every single person, no matter who, has self-doubts from time to time either about the way they dress and how they look, etc. This book taught me a valuable lesson that I hope to hold onto for the rest of my life. 

"Am I Blue" Bruce Coville

 Am I Blue? 

 Bruce Coville

           I recently read the short story Am I Blue by Bruce Coville. This book is about the struggles of Vince, an adolescent boy who is bullied in school because his peers assume that he is homosexual, although Vince is still really unsure himself whether he is or isn’t. In the very beginning, Vince encounters Melvin, who is his fairy godfather. Throughout the story, with the aid of Melvin, Vince gains courage and acceptance of himself and others.  

            In the beginning of the story, Vince is embarrassed to be with Melvin because of how ‘openly’ expressive he is of his homosexuality. He says and I quote, “How much trouble is it going to give me to be seen with this guy? With Butch and his crowd already calling me “faggot” and “fruit”, walking around with a guy who moved the way Melvin did wasn’t going to do anything to improve the situation.” Here, Vince is only worried about how other people’s reactions. He fears what others might do if they think that he is gay. This is causing Vince to judge Melvin and not be accepting of the person Melvin is. Vince also says to Melvin “Do you have to walk like that?” Vince wasn’t accepting of the way Melvin walked because thought it was different and out-of –the norm. By being bullied, I think that Vince has been trained into thinking that gay is wrong.  Vince also feels that he is unsafe in confiding in anybody about his identity problems. Vince is still not aware of whether he is gay or not, but he is too afraid to confess this to anybody. In the story he says, “That thought had crossed my mind more that once as I was trying to figure myself out over the last year- and not only with regard to dating. I would have been happy just to have someone I felt safe talking to about this. “  This shows that Vince is conflicted, and mostly afraid to express himself to anybody.  The bullying that Vince must bare with causes him to be intolerant of Melvin’s personality in the beginning.

            Despite Vince’s bigotry, later on, Melvin helps Vince gain confidence and courage by showing him that there is a world full of people with all different types of sexuality. In the text, Melvin says, “If gay people hadn’t been forced to hide for so long, if we could just openly identify ourselves, there would be plenty of people you knew that you could ask advice. Everybody knows gay people, they just think they don’t.”  He also says “Listen, honey, the world is crawling with faggots. But most of them are hiding because they’re afraid they’ll treated the way you did about an hour ago.”  He is trying to show Vince that people are only kept in the closet because of their fear of what others might do. To further enforce this message, Melvin gives Vince a ‘gaydar’ for a day. This gaydar turns gays different shades of blue depending on the intensity of their homosexuality. Vince is surprised that many of the people around him that he sees everyday blue to some extent. Vince gains valor through this because he realizes that if he were to be gay, he wouldn’t be alone. He learns to accept his surrounding and realizes that too many people have concealed who they truly were and stuck to the conformity of society.

            By the end of the story, Vince is an entirely altered person. He uses one of the three wishes that Melvin offered him and asks that Melvin turns every gay person blue in the whole country as if everybody from coast to coast had a “gaydar”. Vince also wishes that Melvin turn Butch Carrigan (the boy who bullied him in school because he thought he was gay) blue, but it turns out that Butch was already “blue as a summer sky”, so the wish was useless. Vince gains the courage and strength to do these things because he didn’t want anybody to have to keep their true identity hidden because of what other people think like he did.  Vince says “And my third wish, I’ve decided to save it for when I really need it- maybe when I meet to the girl of my dreams. Or Prince Charming. Whichever.”  This shows that Vince has come to accept that he may or may not be gay, and he no longer has a problem with it. He is no longer secret about it and is accepting to the idea at this point.

            With Melvin’s assistance, Vince went from keeping his true identity in the closet and not accepting the person he might be, to embracing it. Vince is an inspiring character because of the incredible change he underwent. His experience taught me a valuable lesson; that nobody should have to conceal who they are because of what other people think, and that everyone should be tolerant of others.