Review: Freak by Marcella Pixley

[gehayi]

Title: Freak by Marcella Pixley
Pages: 144 pages
Rating: 2/10
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary

Comments

[tabular_rasa]

I'm not sure how I feel about this, actually. I definitely agree that the lack of support from authority figures is unrealistic, not to mention terrifying. And I do think the ending is supremely implausible.

Weirdly, however, I think I might have liked this at the age I was being bullied. Considering my thoughts about being bullied at the time, I was into the whole "Well, she must have a reason for the way she is" thing, and being able to see her flaws and forgive her for what was borne of them was, while a bit self-righteous, my way of feeling like I had some power in the situation. I couldn't change her, but I could choose whether or not to forgive her. I was the saint with the power to judge, or something like that.

That said, when my bully apologized to me (which she actually did, and it took me totally off guard) in junior year of high school after more than seven years of torture, it certainly didn't make us friends. I still even made my college decision on not going to the same school as her.

I think I would need to read this for myself to know for sure-- though it's likely I'll like it a lot less now than I would have ages 8-15. Looking back, I'm not always thrilled with how I handled my bullying; I never fought back, never stood up for myself-- the only time she got called out was when a kid in my class witnessed something between us and told her off in front of everybody-- and now I feel like that probably would have been warranted when at the time it was absolutely unthinkable. At the time, all the stories about bully victims standing up for themselves in fights or gathering up a crowd of supporters seemed far more unrealistic than forgiving bullies their transgressions, ignoring them, and carrying on with my life.

So I'm kind torn between what would have given me the most hope at the time and what is more realistic. Which is more important for the YA reader?

[gehayi]

Honestly? I'd go with realistic. I don't like books that raise false hopes in victims, and I think that's exactly what this book does with the "if you're nice to them, then they'll be nice to YOU" philosophy.

But...YMMV.

[tabular_rasa]

I'm curious: What do you think would have been a realistic response? How would you have ended this story instead? (Anybody can answer with their thoughts).

[gehayi]

Well, I wouldn't have ended at this point. The physical attack, and the heroine's fear that things were going to get worse, would be in the first third of the book. The bullies would bide their time for about a week and then start to escalate. But at the same time, Miriam would notice that kids who were keeping their heads down and being nice and trying to avoid conflict weren't doing any better than she was.

About the time that the bullies started escalating, Miriam would recognize two things:

1) Grownups don't want to admit that bullies are dangerous or that you can't control their behavior by being nice yourself.

2) The only way to stop a bully is to hurt the bully so badly that bullying you is not worth it.

She would also recognize that she could not do this herself. That she needed backup.

So Miriam would start getting in touch with the other victims of the bullies. "Okay, we're not popular like they are," she'd say. "But we're supposed to be smart. And there's a lot of us. More than there are of them. Maybe, just maybe, if we work together, we can force them to stop hurting all of us. The big problem right now is that when they pick on one of us, we're alone. We don't have that many friends, and those that we have aren't popular. So no one sticks up for us.

"But if we stick up for each other--if, when one of us gets attacked, the rest of us plan a counterattack--that changes everything. It won't be one lone kid against a bunch of bullies. It'll be a bunch of smart, geeky kids against a bunch of cowards who are used to having everything their way. They won't even expect us to fight back...certainly not successfully.

"This isn't going to be just one argument," she'd admit. "Or one fight. This is going to last all through junior high. But...it may also guarantee that WE'LL last through junior high."

Some of the kids wouldn't figure that it was worth it. Others would probably shrug and think it was nothing but big talk. And a few, a very few, would figure, "Hell, what have we got to lose?"

And the rest of the book would be about the organization of the bullied kids versus the bullies (who don't know who's on Miriam's side, but who are aware that she's not operating in a vacuum anymore) and versus the administration (which wouldn't like Miriam's group, as it's upsetting the status quo; children, after all, are not supposed to go to school and learn that they can't depend on established societal organizations to protect them). It would be morally ambiguous, because Miriam and her allies would be fighting a war. And you can't fight or win a purely defensive war. Sooner or later, you have to hurt the enemy. And you have to go into battle knowing that you're going to hurt the enemy because that's the only way you're going to survive.

The book--if I were writing it--would end with Miriam entering her first year of high school. She would be more confident. Stronger. Braver.

But as she surveyed the halls, the reader would realize that she was scanning for danger spots where kids could get ambushed and for escape routes that she and her friends might need. Miriam would survive and she wouldn't be a victim...but she also wouldn't be entirely a kid anymore. She would have spent two years fighting to protect herself and others. She'd be a veteran soldier of an undeclared war. Yes, she'd gained in terms of strength and maturity--but she also lost innocence, trust and part of her youth. And she lost those things because the grownups who should have been protecting her and the other kids were far too invested in the Cult of Nice to face what was really going on. The End.

(And if Miriam's organization sounds unlikely...well, that's exactly what I founded and co-ran for two years in response to bullying at my high school.)

[lilya7]

I'd buy it. I'd love it. I'd recommend it to everyone I know.

[holyschist]

Old reply is old...

...this is a lot like what Kel and her friends do in the first two books of Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small quartet, although it's complicated by the fact that these kids are also training to be knights and killing bandits and monsters periodically as well (so they are not exactly full of innocence and trust anyway). The culture is such that pages are not supposed to report bullying, and hazing is acceptable, so there is no help from authority figures; Kel and her friends end up banding together in a large enough group to look intimidating (and typically win fights) and patrolling to find bullies picking on the younger kids. I'm not sure it's entirely well-executed--for one thing, it seems to go too easily--but it's something.

[albijuli]

Realism. Young adults are underestimated about how much they could "handle" enough as it is.