This book review was written as part of a series for the Oregon Council of Teachers of English in Spring 2021.
Speak: The Graphic Novel (2018) by Laurie Halse Anderson and artwork by Emily Carroll
Laurie Halse Anderson’s novel Speak ushered in a provocative new era of YA literature when it was first released in 1999. Narrator Melinda Sordino, a ninth grader, unflinchingly guides us through both the universal—the perpetual indignities of high school—and the personal—as she describes it, “My Summer Vacation: A Drunken Party, A Rape, and a Shunning.”
Terms like consent and trauma were not yet part of the mainstream lexicon. The #MeToo movement was 18 years away from tearing through our culture of silence and shame; soon afterward, Anderson would reveal she was a survivor of sexual assault herself.
More than two decades after the original novel’s publication, the graphic novel adaptation of Speak brings Melinda’s voice to a new generation, rendering her story in an affecting fusion of haunting and whimsical imagery.
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| Cover art: Emily Carroll |
An accomplished horror comics artist, Emily Carroll expertly utilizes light and shadow to distill Melinda’s struggles down to their essence, conveying the sensory experience of trauma and its aftermath. Nuanced visual details enhance Melinda’s incisive observations and compel the reader to linger on each page.
Melinda initially asserts that “it is easier not to say anything,” then, inspired by Maya Angelou, the suffragists, her caring art teacher, and a few peer allies, she eventually gathers enough strength and trust to share her story and shed her old belief that “nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.”
This new iteration of a modern classic ensures its place both inside and outside of the classroom as an enduring tool of revolution, reminding us it is not a book for only women and girls. Updated with technological references and language for the 21st century, it is a rallying cry for each of us to use our voices in the brave conversations all our students and fellow humans deserve.
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