2024 Seek By Laurie Halse Anderson

Emma Ehrlich Mrs. Mitchell English III CP, period 45 8 March 2024 Seek as an Autobiographical Reflection of Laurie Halse Anderson A hot August afternoon, a gentle babbling brook, luscious shade from a grand oak tree, a thirteen-year-old girl being brutally raped by an older boy. More than twenty years later, that same girl began to cry, hoping somebody would hear her. That girl was Melinda Scordino, the protagonist of Speak. Author Laurie Halse Anderson heard her cries and wrote her story, realizing along the way that Melinda’s story was all too similar to her own. Looking through the eyes of a traumatized teenage rape survivor, readers are introduced to Melinda’s story, a collection of author Laurie Halse Anderson’s personal experiences and

She went on to say that the book was symbolic of a “[p]art of [her] that needs some reassurance”(Anderson qtd in Tannert-Smith). Since its 1999 publication, the book has gone on to win numerous awards and become a New York Times bestseller (“Laurie” 1). Twenty years later, Anderson wrote her own story in her 2019 memoir Shout, sharing her opinions on what she experienced. Following her 1996 nightmare, Anderson began to tell her own story through Melinda. Anderson used her own life experiences to shape her character, incorporating specific anecdotes to tie them together. Growing up, Anderson learned lessons from her mother on dealing with abuse that she wrote to Melinda. After watching her father attack her mother as a child, Anderson dared to ask why it happened. She was given the response “‘I wouldn’t shut up, [...] He had to”’ (Anderson, Shout 12), teaching her that “[W]ords/Had so much power/Some must never be spoken” (Anderson, Shout 16). She took this with her later in life, believing that “[society] never talked about rape. Ever” (Anderson, Shout 67). Anderson’s personal experiences are present throughout the novel, but are particularly prominent directly after Melinda recalls the night she was

Both described their rapist zipping their jeans, as a way to symbolize the rape was over. Even the structure of the paragraphs are the same, using prose to convey what happened. While Shout is written almost entirely in prose, the use of the language in Speak reveals further similarities between the two, insinuating a poetic feeling towards what each experienced. Both Anderson and Melinda were able to recover from their respective incidents, largely due to the support they received from their teachers. Anderson is more aware of the impact her teachers had on her life, saying, “‘[t]he reason that I’m not dead is that I had teachers that would look me in the eye and say ‘Hi, how are you doing? I haven’t seen you in a while. Welcome back to the site. Now you have to serve detention, but I'll be there”’ Anderson qtd. in Glenn 7-8). Melinda was less aware of the impact her teachers would have on her life, but received similar support to Anderson’s from her art teacher. After attempting to teach Melinda to use her voice through art, Mr. Freeman eventually tells her, “‘Melinda, [...] You're a good kid. I think you have a lot to say. I’d like to hear it’” (Anderson, Speak 123). While the character was slow to open up, her teacher kept trying to understand her, eventually making the realization, “‘[y]ou've been through a lot, haven’t you?”’ (Anderson, Speak