Reading Response

      As an adolescent girl who is growing into a mature teenager, I'm sure girls like me can agree that we change a lot, from when we're transitioning from middle school into high school. We change how we interact with others our clothing etc. But most improtantly, we change how we voice ourselves to others. The book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is an example of that. Mel is a teenage girl who was raped when she went to a party with her friends. She didn't tell anyone up until a year later. This shows me that in time, no matter how difficult of a time you are going/ went through it's important to speak up.

     In the beginng of the book, Mel really kept to herself in entering highschool. She didnt talk to any of her old friends because they hated her for calling the cops at the party last summer. The only gorl who really talked to her was Heather. Heather was new in town and needed someone to show her the ropes, and she needed Mel. When Heather tried to introduce Mel to her other new friends they all turned away. I think Mel really should've spole up and developed her voice again. This is from the book: " You're the one who got my brother fired. You Bitch"  She pulled my hair when I sat in the bleacher in front of her. I didn't say anything. I was on mute.

      Towards the middle of the book, Mel still wasn't talking only it seems that her vow of silence made everything else worse for the world. She remained non talkative with anyone besides Heather. She never really showed any kind of emotion was when she was doing art. She showed passion and admirance to displaying how she saw things in life on paper with assistance from a pencil. But she finally started to ask herself: "Was I raped?" That moment in the book, was her 'aha' moment almost because she was finally being honest enough with herself to realizee that she was raped and she needed to speak up and tell someone.

My favorite part of the book is the ending. She realizes that she has to get the message out that she was raped but in her own way. So she used the power of her words. She realized that her ex- bestfriend began to date the same guy who raped her, but her bestfriend didn't believe her so she wrote about him along the bathroom walls. Mel says, "It felt good to know that I wasn't alone". By the end of the book, everyone knows that Mel was raped because her rapist tried to raped her again in the janitor's closet; luckily someone was there to hear her voice.

As you can see, it's very important to SPEAK your mind out loud so that your voice is heard. When your voice isnt heard when you need to speak your mind you may lose you voice until  yourconfident enough to bring it back up again.