Review of Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

 

Akwaeke Emezi’s young adult fantasy novel Pet follows Jam, a selectively mute trans girl, as she embarks on a hunt with Pet, a creature that emerges from one of her mother’s paintings after drops of her blood meet its surface. Before Jam’s world is altered forever, she lives in the aftermath of a revolution in Lucille, a utopian city. The revolution worked to rid Lucille of beings called “monsters” by way of “angels.” Or so Jam’s family believes. Communicating telepathically, Pet tells Jam that her best friend, Redemption, is in danger and only she and Pet can seek out the monster that threatens him. Against the wishes of her mother, Bitter, and father, Aloe, the strange pair begin their hunt for the monsters they believe were defeated. Readers are asked the same question put to Jam and Aloe: are we too afraid to see the unseen and to know the unknown?

Forgetting is how the monsters come back. (20) 

At the center of the narrative is Jam, a selectively mute young woman. Her muteness was an inclusion I hadn’t seen before, where a character chose to speak only when she deemed it necessary. Jam spends much of the story using sign language with those around her. However, when Pet appears, their telepathy provides yet another avenue for Jam to communicate her thoughts and feelings. Despite Pet’s ability to read her thoughts, Emezi gives Jam a great deal of narrative agency by asserting that Jam speaks out loud on her own terms. In the moments she is speaking, we, as readers, understand her urgency and desire to impart her own ideas in a world that prioritizes sound.

Of course there were still monsters, Jam thought. Could you really make something stop existing just by shoving it away somewhere else? (50)

Jam’s relationship with her best friend, Redemption, and his family illustrate a wonderful example of community. Redemption’s family’s home dynamics come to represent the power of unity in home-making. When Emezi introduces Redemption’s family, you’re immediately immersed in their complete care. You can almost smell what Redemption’s mother, Malachite, is preparing in the kitchen and hear his baby cousins playing. I also loved reading about the friendship between Redemption and Jam. Their bond is clearly intimate and purely platonic, always assuaging one another’s fears and anxieties. Together, they are a wonderful example of a friendship that thrives without the pressures of heteronormativity, which sets Emezi’s story apart from what we might encounter in this genre.

The world we enter when opening up Pet is easy to describe as “utopic”: Lucille is a town whose monsters were eradicated by angels. However, Emezi is careful to note that this utopia did not come about solely by the miracle of angels. Creating Lucille took work, labor, and trial and error. In this world, identity is fluid, evolving, and boundless. However, Pet is only there for one thing: to eliminate a monster. The knowledge of a monster in Lucille shocks Jam. She knows there aren’t supposed to be any more monsters in Lucille. Her father, Aloe, has reassured her plenty before. This novel deals with difficult topics, such as sexual ab*se, and Emezi doesn’t shy away from them. They grant their characters a great deal of narrative agency. I was inspired by their determination to rid their world of a monster and continue their practice of community care.

A pool of water with the moon reflecting in it… who would want to throw a stone and break the picture? It is fine to be afraid, to have a fine fear, to not want to cross a fine line. (94)

For Jam, the world seems split in two: she lives in a world where verbal communication is prioritized, and another with its own interrelated, nuanced layers of non-verbal understanding. I was drawn to her through these multiple modalities, and moved to follow her lead as an emotionally mature, loving daughter. A third world is opened up when Pet emerges from her mother’s latest painting, however, that challenges both the closeness she feels with her parents and her understanding of the world. Born from a deep maternal legacy that drives much of the narrative we encounter, the connection between Bitter, Jam, and Pet is shared (literally) by blood and through art. Pet’s maternal nature allows Jam to navigate between these two worlds she finds herself in with deaf/mute culture while simultaneously reckoning with the split she’s experiencing in her reality. Pet brings Jam to an understanding that monsters are still lurking, despite all of our efforts to eradicate them, whether it be through pure goodness or rehabilitation. However, despite this painful reality, Pet’s presence and collaboration with the kids reveals how the power rests in the voices of our youth, no matter how they show up in the world.

DN

A Discussion of The Witch Boy by Molly Ostertag

Molly Ostertag’s debut middle-grade graphic novel The Witch Boy was first published in 2017. The graphic novel was written and illustrated by Ostertag, and it follows Aster, a boy who wishes to practice witchcraft despite it being forbidden for boys. He lives in a magical community with his family, which is separated from human society and the only contact they have is with other magical families around the area. Each member of the community contributes to sustaining the way of life. The men in the community become shapeshifters whereas the women learn about witchcraft and perform spells. Aster has no interest in shapeshifting or physical fighting, instead, he wants to learn spells and the ways of the witches. Men and boys are forbidden from learning witchcraft since the community adheres to strict gender roles. There is only one man in the community who attempted to learn witchcraft before and it did not go well. Besides the challenges Aster faces due to his gender-nonconforming identity, his cousins are mysteriously going missing.  

While reading this graphic novel, I could not help but pay attention to the representation of girlhood and how the novel constructs it. Currently, I am taking a class with Professor Lashon Daley in which we look at representations of girlhood in Middle-Grade and YA novels. The Witch Boy is a graphic novel that interacts heavily with gender roles and how girlhood has been constructed in a magical society. 

The Witch Boy does not waste any time in depicting girlhood. The graphic novel's construction of girlhood mirrors our society’s image of girlhood. For example, Aster is caught spying on the girls’ magical lesson, and an elder scolds him by saying: “Aster! This lesson isn’t for you -- these girls are learning secrets!” (Ostertag 5). Aster, as a boy, is berated for trying to learn girls’ “secrets.” While reading this, I could not help but think about how girls and boys are separated for sex education in middle school. Boys are not allowed to learn about girls’ bodily changes. The boys in the graphic novel do not have lessons like the girls’; they just play around and sometimes practice their shapeshifting. We learn quickly how gender roles are strictly upheld in this world, which very much mirrors our own. I enjoyed how this is how we are introduced to Aster. Immediately, we know that he does not fully fit into his community because of what is being said to him and where he is on the page (up on a tree at a distance).

In Dr. Daley’s course, we read Megan Henesy’s article ‘Leaving My Girlhood Behind’: Woke Witches and Feminist Liminality in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” which centers Sabrina as the gothic figure due to how she navigates two worlds (2). In class, we discussed how Sabrina, as the “woke witch,” embodies the following characteristics: liminality, activism, being 16 years old, being a virgin, encountering a dark wizard, feeling out of place, choosing her place in society, and having a sidekick. I believe that The Witch Boy is a great book to read through this lens. 

Many of the elements of Henesy’s “woke witch” framework are present in The Witch Boy. First we have liminality. Aster exists in two spaces, boyhood and girlhood, and because of this he does not fit into his culture. The second characteristic is “activism,” which Aster engages in due to questioning why boys cannot perform witchcraft. Once Aster is caught spying on the girls’ magic lesson he has a conversation with his mother about not being able to perform witchcraft: “I don’t understand why Juniper and Hazel and them can all learn how to talk to trees and make potions and do spells and I can’t...It’s not fair” (7). After this he goes on to perform magic on his own, challenging the system in place. Furthermore, Aster does not meet the age requirement for the “woke witch.” The Witch Boy is a middle-grade text, and his age is not specified. Aster can be presumed to be an older tween (10-12) or a young teen (13-14). As for the virginal state, The Witch Boy does not engage with sexuality, and due to his age Aster mostly likely fits this criteria of the “woke witch.” Aster does have an encounter with a dark wizard, which in this case is the villain of the narrative. The villain in this text is a dragon-like creature who wants Aster to join him in his dark magic endeavors. The “dark wizard” is similar to Aster, but he has embraced the “dark side” of magic.

The next characteristics of the “woke witch” framework are feeling out of place, choosing your place, and having a sidekick. Aster’s family constantly reminds him that witchcraft is solely for girls. For example, his mom explains to him: “But, Aster, that magic is for you...Women and men have different types of magic” (8). She then tells the story of Mikasi, Aster’s great uncle, who did not adhere to the gender roles and was ostracized in the community, “[h]e was cast out for he was a danger to himself and the family” (11). Aster’s mother lets him know that if he were to practice magic openly he could be banished from the community. This serves as a warning and solidifies how out of place he is within the place he calls home and the people who are supposed to love him unconditionally, his family. Moreover, Aster is able to choose his place when he meets Charlie. She is a human he meets while walking outside his community. They share the same feelings of not belonging in their communities. Charlie is a girl who loves sports and has two dads. As the story progresses she becomes Aster’s sidekick, encouraging him to perform magic. She eventually asks him to heal her injured leg (75-76). 

Aster’s journey in The Witch Boy follows the dynamics of Henesy’s “woke witch,” except for the age. Reading this graphic novel and looking at it through this framework was a fun exercise! I wanted to showcase how children’s literature scholarship can be applied widely and the type of exercises graduate students like me engage in.

I hope you will pick up The Witch Boy by Molly Ostertag because it is truly a wonderful graphic novel. I know I will be reading the following volumes in this trilogy (Hidden Witch and The Midwinter Witch). Also, it is being adapted into a Netflix animated musical, so why not get ahead of the movie release?

References:

Henesy, Megan. “‘Leaving My Girlhood behind’: Woke Witches and Feminist Liminality in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.” Feminist Media Studies, 2020, pp. 1–15. Crossref, doi:10.1080/14680777.2020.1791929.

Ostertag, Molly. The Witch Boy: A Graphic Novel (The Witch Boy Trilogy #1). Illustrated, e-book, Graphix, 2017.

- (NA)

Professionalizing Percy: Teaching a Childhood Favorite

 

Professionalizing Percy: Teaching a Childhood Favorite

 

Cover of The Lighting Thief by Rick Riordan

As mentioned in a previous blog post, I had the opportunity to teach Introduction to Literature for the first time this semester. One of the most challenging aspects of this opportunity was creating a course reading list. As I settled on a course theme, “The Hero(ine)’s Journey,” I immediately included a classic 21^st century children’s literature text: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, which details the journey of a modern-day Greek demigod living in New York. This book was placed in juxtaposition to the previous unit of canonical male and female heroes, comparing the intersections of youth, weakness, learning disability, and gender with traditional definitions of heroism. I was aware of, yet consciously brushed aside, my concerns of including a text that I had such a nostalgic pull towards. It was relevant to my course theme, but what if this middle-grade wasn’t challenging enough for university-level education? Though I claim to specialize in children’s literature, I fell prey to the fear that analyzing a middle grade that I liked would stray from the professionalism that this teaching position would require. Even so, I kept it on the reading list, which was approved.

As the course progressed, I relished the chance to reread The Lightning Thief and invite critical discussion of its successes and failures. I had never revisited this novel in a scholarly context and was excited to do so with students who never read it before, as well as with those who had the same cultural nostalgia for it as I do. However, I also felt a lingering desire for approval, more for this text than for others. Would the students like it? Is it too childish, or is Percy’s voice still likeable in 2020? These concerns led to careful lesson plans that drew attention to Riordan’s specific details in characterization and the definition he posits of “hero.” Student engagement seemed to be strong in these classes, with students participating in a variety of formats such as polls, group discussion, and class conversation. The result was that several students chose to write on The Lightning Thief for their literary analysis essays: some chose to analyze one or two of the female characters for the feminine strength prompt, while another chose to use Percy as an example of how the Hero’s Journey template fails to account for some significant heroic traits.

The discussion and critical work that arose from The Lightning Thief was all successful, and yet, what lingers as I reflect on this course is my sense of relief that students liked the book. Not that the book was challenging, or that it offered a complex and nuanced representation of heroism in middle grade novel, but did they like it? I had already known that this novel would provide excellent content for challenging the definition of heroism without eschewing tradition entirely. Yet putting this on the syllabus, I wanted students to appreciate the novel for the affective response it provokes, whether on a first read or a fifth. Perry Nodelman and Mavis Reimer write on this topic extensively in The Pleasures of Children’s Literature, which I encourage you to read at your convenience.  

I rely on my own fledging experience as an instructor-scholar to conclude that it isn’t  wrong to be attached to certain books. I don’t think that the impulse to share a book that I find valuable needs to be justified. And yet it’s healthy to recognize flaws in books that are pristine in my memories. After a year and a half of graduate study, and after having taught it to students who love it and to students who never read it before this class, I still think of The Lightning Thief fondly. A treasured book will still be treasured whether or not others feel the same. In the midst of a pandemic, it doesn’t hurt to be reminded that people who are grieving can change the world for the better. We don’t have to use books to escape into another world and find heroes. Maybe like Percy, even with all of our flaws, we already are heroes in the world we live in currently. We just need the reminder.

-       (AN)

Works Cited

Nodelman, Perry and Mavis Reimer. The Pleasures of Children’s Literature. Pearson, 2003. 

Riordan, Rick. The Lightning Thief. Scholastic Inc., 2006.