It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? 2.6.17

This week was actually pretty great for reading. I got through two books, and thankfully enjoyed both of them. The first was The Born Frees: Writing with the Girls of Gugulethu by Kimberly Burge. I’m usually not one for nonfiction novels, but this one was good. It follows a year spent by Kim (or Mama Kim as the girls sometimes call her) in South Africa. In South Africa she starts a creative writing club for girls in the town of Gugulethu, one of the poorest townships in South Africa. The book intermixes both history and current events to bring you the lives of the girls within her club. I loved that Burge was very open with the telling of the stories. She, of course, got permission to share the girls’ stories, and many of them are eye opening. The book focuses on a generation of girls known as the Born Frees because they are the first generation to grow up post-apartheid. The apartheid was basically the segregation of South Africa prior to 1990 when the new government took control.

Pros: Burge doesn’t hold back. She tells things like they are no matter who they are about. This book has a lot of self-searching within it. She often spends moments revealing things about herself that I for one would not be caught sharing. She also tells the girls’ stories as they want them to be told. Each girl gets to write their own introduction about themselves. These girls haven’t had the best childhood and yet they still have hope. These girls share not only the bad things that have happened in the past, but also their hopes for future change. The story is easy to follow, and is told in a way that you begin to fall in love with the girls. The ending of the book had me holding my breath as I waited to find out was happening in the girls’ lives today, well in 2010 when the book was published.

Cons: There is a lot of history in this book. Sometimes the history overshadows the actually story of the girls and Burge’s time spent in South Africa. I understand that a lot of the history was needed to convey the background of the stories, but at the same time I almost felt bogged down by it. I think it was partially because the history became so repetitive. There were times I felt the same facts were repeated several times just in different ways. I found myself skipping over the longer sections of history to get more about the lives of the girls in the book.

Since I surprisingly managed to get through two books this week (I know I was shocked too) I suppose I should  talk a little bit about the second.

Do you remember your first relationship? Did you think it would last forever, but then discover that hey maybe there are other people out there? Then you might find Forever by Judy Blume pretty relatable. Kath and Micheal are high school seniors, and they are pretty sure their lives will be spent with each other forever. This book has a lot of teenage sex in it, and at times the descriptions made me feel pretty awkward. I often wondered if I would be able to finish the book, but rule number one of book club is have the book finished. In other words, I didn’t really have a choice.

Pros: This book is super informational. There is a lot in here about the teenage experience and having safe sex. Kath goes to visit a Planned Parenthood and get put on birth control after her and Micheal start having sex regularly. Micheal’s best friend suffers from depression, and shows many of it’s real effects on those close to someone suffering from it. Kath has a fairly good relationship with her parents, and they have a pretty open line of communication. Kath also has a pretty good relationship with her grandmother, which prompts many good decisions on Kath’s part. Overall it would be a good read for any teenager. It was very informative and brings up a lot of points about being sexually active as a teen.

Cons: Honestly, as much as this book made me uncomfortable I don’t think that there were really any cons to it. The one thing I did notice is that Blume almost tried to include to many teenage issues within the novel. By doing this she really wasn’t able to spend a lot of time on certain issues. These issues instead are made as passing comments that almost detract from the main point of the story. Also, Micheal has some really awful character flaws that also detract from the story. You could definitely say that I didn’t ship Micheal and Katherine’s relationship.