Crystal's Crazy Crazes

Dear people who love to read a good book,

The Color Purple by Alice Walker is the book for you.  Yes, it is also a musical and a movie, but the book is something else.  It talks of women empowerment and it tells a heartfelt and human journey of a black girl abused by her stepfather and her husband.  It tells of how she later found her voice and her individuality and stood up for herself.  It tells of how she gained respect, not only from herself, but from other people.  She has to work through many hardships.  She gives birth at a very young age; the father of her children is her own father.  Her babies then gets ripped away from her arms and sold to another family.  She was later married to a cruel husband and whose children despise her.

“Dear God,

I spent my wedding day running from the oldest boy.  He twelve.  His mama died in his arms and he don’t want to hear nothing bout no new one.  He pick up a rock and laid my head open.  The blood run all down tween my breasts.  His daddy say Don’t do that! But that all he say.”  (12)

Told in broken English, Celie describes her life, and her courage and strength speak out to God.  But it seems as if God isn’t listening.  Celie learns how to find her voice and how to speak up for herself throughout the book, with the help of the beautiful and exotic Shug Avery.  Shug Avery is like Celie’s God, and she teaches Celie a bit about religion in the end too, how something as simple as the color purple is worth one’s admiration.

This quote tells of Celie’s impression of Shug: “Shug Avery is standing upside a piano, elbow crook, hand on her hip… Her mouth open showing all her teef and don’t nothing seem to be troubling her mind… The Queen Honeybee is back in town.

Lord, I wants to go so bad.  Not to dance. Not to drink…Not even to hear Shug Avery sing. I just be thankful to lay eyes on her.” (25)

This book is fast paced and full of empowerment.  It is a very good book to read.  It opens your eyes to the cruelty that does go on in the world, but it teaches how one can survive through anything.  It mainly teaches about standing up for oneself, because Celie finally did and she became successful.

Calling all High School Students:

“In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn, color you hair, watch a third of a hockey game… In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world, or you can just jump off it. In nineteen minutes, you can get revenge.” (1)

You open this book and there you read those thought provoking lines.  Now let me ask you this: Is it all just fun and games when you tease someone? How about when you push them, call them names, or bully them?  Do you make fun of someone just because they are different from you?  In Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult explores what can, could, and does happen when the person being bullied has had enough.  Peter Houghton has been ostracized from society all his life because he was not the typical athlete, and he was “different” from everyone else.  Instead, he was sensitive and creative and for that, he was bullied, called names, been shoved into lockers, beaten up, and being tortured.  No one took the time to talk to him or listen to him.  They always told him to “get used to it” or “man up” whenever he had problems. His own family didn’t accept him for who he was.  It was the last straw when his one and only friend started turning on him too, because she wanted so badly to be part of the popular crowd.

“Ask a random kid today if she wants to be popular and she’ll tell you no, even if the truth is that if she was in a desert dying of thirst and had the choice between a glass of water and instant popularity, she’d probably choose latter.” (241)

Everybody wants the feeling of being accepted into a crowd.  It is the essential ingredient to surviving in this cruel world, and being popular means the high life, or the dirt track.  But why? Why do we mark the people who are different from us?  Why do we put so much importance on being “popular” and “fitting in”?  Why do we not encourage individuality or independence?  This book delves into these questions and explores the emotions that go behind every action, every thought.  It makes the readers forget all they ever thought or knew about bullying and stress, how 16 years of hate can make a person bring a gun to school and go on a killing spree.  This book brings readers to every person’s lives and explores their emotions and how one act affects them all.  The thing that struck me close to home the most was how I see bullying being committed every day at school, and how I would feel responsible if I wasn’t there to listen or lend a hand to someone who needs it the most because I was too absorbed in my own problems.  After reading this book, I felt the need to listen to people more and to stop bullying whenever I see it, because it just might make a difference.  Try it.

book cover: http://www.jodipicoult.com/images/covers/19-400.jpg