Laurie Halse Anderson Character Analysis

I really enjoyed listening to renowned author Laurie Halse Anderson because she is different author than I’m used to reading/hearing about. She said that she was born in 1961 and she was raped at age 13, which prompted her style of writing. She had a broken childhood and she was on the path of living a broken life until she decided to take a different path down the writing lane. One of the main things that Anderson repeatedly mentioned in her talk is that she writes about the things that are hard for people to discuss. She uses her novel Speak to support that notion.
Speak is the story of a girl named Melinda who was raped at a party over the summer in Syracuse, New York by Andy Evans. She keeps the rape to herself for a very long time
She would take hall passes and disappear into a janitor’s closet during school. The only class that interested her was her art class. While all of this is happening, she tells her former friend Rachel about the rape because she fears that Andy will harm Rachel. Rachel does not believe Melinda, but either way, Melinda feels better because she got it off of her chest. Eventually, she tells her parents and teachers in school which helps her move on from the trauma. She becomes involved in more activities and has a more positive view on life. She focuses on drawing a tree for her art class, and in the end, she presents her tree to her art teacher and explains her story. This story sort of parallels Anderson’s sexual assault through what Anderson spoke about today, although she said that her novel is different than her personal assault. In her talk, she says that she traveled to different states to discuss her book with high school students. While she was in Texas, she had a boy repeatedly ask her the same question, which prompted her to tell the students that she was raped at age 13. She said that many of the students began
She said that the movie producers gave her the opportunity to write the screenplay for the movie but she turned them down because she was already working on another novel. She also gave a fleeting remark that she was in the movie as a very small background character. Overall, I really enjoyed listening to Laurie Halse Anderson speak. She definitely is a different author than I’m used to reading. I have never truly experienced a novel where an author is willing to write about adversities that are prevalent in our culture that not many people are discussing. She writes to teach an extremely strong message and I admire her for that. Her book Speak can definitely serve as a sliding glass door for children who have experienced traumatizing adversity like herself because there is not much literature in our world to serve that purpose for children. I am pleased that I was presented with the opportunity to listen to such a powerful