Speak

Laurie Halse Anderson's "Speak" is a seminal young adult novel centering on Melinda Sordino, a high school freshman who becomes an outcast after calling the police on an end-of-summer party. Unbeknownst to her peers, Melinda was raped at the party and her subsequent silence is a symptom of her trauma and PTSD. The book follows her internal struggle to process the event, her withdrawal from friends and family, and her eventual journey to self-expression through art. It's a raw, honest, and ultimately empowering story about finding one's voice, identity, and recovery from sexual assault, making it a crucial read for teenagers and a valuable tool for parents and educators to discuss difficult topics.

From her first moment at Merryweather High, Melinda Sordino knows she's an outcast. She busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops -- a major infraction in high-school society -- so her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't know glare at her. She retreats into her head, where the lies and hypocrisies of high school stand in stark relief to her own silence, making her all the more mute. But it's not so comfortable in her head, either -- there's something banging around in there that she doesn't want to think about. Try as she might to avoid it, it won't go away, until there is a painful confrontation. Once that happens, she can't be silent -- she must speak the truth. In this powerful audiobook, an utterly believable, bitterly ironic heroine speaks for many a disenfranchised teenager while learning that, although it's hard to speak up for yourself, keeping your mouth shut is worse.