Speak
Book cover of the first edition
Author	Laurie Halse Anderson
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Fiction
Publisher	Farrar Straus Giroux
Publication date	October 1999
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	197 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN	ISBN 0374371520 (first edition, hardback)
OCLC Number	40298254
Dewey Decimal	[Fic] 21
LC Classification	PZ7.A54385 Sp 1999

Speak is a 1999 novel by Laurie Halse Anderson about a teenager named Melinda Sordino who is an outcast as a high school freshman due to reasons later revealed in the book. It was made into a film of the same name in 2004. The novel was a New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller. Speak was also named a Printz Honor book in 2000.

[edit] Plot summary

A few weeks before her freshman year of high school, Melinda Sordino and her group of friends are invited to a high school party. There, Melinda gets drunk and meets an upperclassman, Andy Evans, who takes her to a secluded part of the woods and rapes her. She calls 911 and the police break up the party for underage drinking, arresting some of the kids. Numb and alone, Melinda walks miles home to an empty house. She tells no one what happened in the following weeks, and as a result, no one realizes she was raped.

All her friends and the partygoers are angry with her for getting them into trouble, and ostracize her once school starts. Desperate for friends, Melinda becomes friendly with a new girl, Heather, who clings to Melinda only to abandon her when she gets the chance to join a popular clique.

As Melinda's depression worsens, she begins to skip school, withdraws from her parents, and aspires to do nothing more than take a nap. She creates a makeshift hide-away in an abandoned janitor's closet at school, where she goes to sleep during the day or hide when she is feeling anxious. Her only solace is art class, taught by Mr. Freeman, who encourages his students to express themselves.

When the school year is almost over, she befriends David Petrakis, her lab partner. When her former best friend, Rachel, begins dating Andy, Melinda feels obligated to tell her about the rape. The response is intense hostility, but eventually Rachel acknowledges the truth and dumps Andy.

As the school year comes to a close, Melinda returns to her janitor's closet to gather some things she left inside it. Andy confronts her, accusing her of fabricating the assault, saying that she consented and is jealous of his relationship with Rachel. When he attempts to physically rape her, she screams, breaking a mirror; she holds a shard of glass up to his neck, saying, "I said no." Fortunately, Melinda's former friend Nicole and the lacrosse team hear her scream from the closet and come to her aid.

On the last day of school, Melinda stays late to finish her art project and finishes the course with an A+. As the student body hears the story and realizes the truth about what happened at the party, Melinda goes from social pariah to something of a hero. Mr. Freeman prompts her to tell him her story, helping Melinda to move past the rape.

[edit] Censorship

Due to its controversial subject matter, Speak has often been challenged. In the Platinum Edition of Speak, released 2006, Anderson spoke out against censorship. In material printed at the end of the novel, following an interview regarding the content of the book, Anderson wrote:

But censoring books that deal with difficult, adolescent issues does not protect anybody. Quite the opposite. It leaves kids in the darkness and makes them vulnerable. Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them.^[1]

[edit] Film adaptation

The story was adapted into a 2004 film, which was directed by Jessica Sharzer and starred Kristen Stewart as Melinda Sordino.

[edit] Translations

The book has been translated into Chinese and is sold in Taiwan under the title of I No Longer Keep Quiet (我不再沉默)^[2][3][4], and into Dutch by Hans Heesen with the name Silent as a Grave ("Zwijg als het graf"). It was also translated into Spanish with the name "Habla!" which could be translated as "She Talks!" or as the command "Talk!" and into German with the name "Sprich!" which is the command "speak!". The book is also translated in Finnish with the name "Lukossa". The word itself is hard to translate in English, but it means quite like "Locked in" or "locked." The book was translated into Hungarian with the title "Hadd mondjam el", which means "Let Me Tell You".

[edit] References

1. ^ Anderson, Laurie Halse (1999). Speak. United States: Farrar Straus Giroux. ISBN 0-14-240732-1. 
2. ^ "Educational listing Taiwan ?". http://lib.ncl.edu.tw/cgi-bin/isbnget?OPT=BOOK.F&VNM=&TOT=1&THIS=1&RID=891013*0151&TYPE=F. Retrieved 2007-02-14. 
3. ^ "Findbook Taiwan". Findbook.tw. http://findbook.tw/b/ISBN/9789578157545. Retrieved 2007-02-14. 
4. ^ "Books.com Taiwan". Books.com.tw. http://www.books.com.tw/exep/prod/booksfile.php?item=0010147311. Retrieved 2007-02-14. 

• Anderson, Laurie Halse (October 1999). Speak (1st ed.). Farrar Straus Giroux. ISBN 0374371520.