I have to say though, that I’m in high school right now, and the high school Melinda goes to is nothing like mine. This novel is an attempt to explain both that, and why certain people act the way they do. I was a bit frustrated by this, and sometimes it was hard to relate to the way she acted, but I really have no idea how someone in Melinda’s situation would feel. She’s basically just shut down in an attempt to forget what happened to her, rather than trying to speak about it, or move past it, or explain to her former friends why exactly she called the police. It’s really depressing, because Melinda is just so depressed throughout the novel. The book is pretty short and a quick read in terms of length, but let me tell you, it’s a hard book. This extraordinary first novel has captured the imaginations of teenagers and adults across the country.” And then she would have to speak the truth. Because there’s something she’s trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens. The safest pl ace to be is alone, inside her own head. Now her old friends won’t talk to her, and people she doesn’t even know hate her from a distance. “Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache. Was a 1999 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature.It is my first morning of high school. She speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while demonstrating the importance of speaking up for oneself. In Laurie Halse Anderson's powerful novel, an utterly believable heroine with a bitterly ironic voice delivers a blow to the hypocritical world of high school. But this time Melinda fights back, refuses to be silent, and thereby achieves a measure of vindication.

Her healing process has just begun when she has another violent encounter with him. Only her art class offers any solace, and it is through her work on an art project that she is finally able to face what really happened at that terrible party: she was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated and practically stops talking altogether. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. Speak up for yourself-we want to know what you have to say. The first ten lies they tell you in high school.

Speak laurie anderson