Bailey serves as a vehicle to help Tibby learn to see past appearances as they make a documentary to

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My addiction cheap hotels rates to YA literature has moved on to another cheap hotels rates series. I decided to check out Ann Brahsares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants . Aside from the fact that I am going to really milk this series for review fodder, I really enjoyed it, for many reasons.
Seldom do I find stories written by women that tell women s stories that I think get so much right. Here, we have the stories of four young women, Bridget, Carmen, Lena, and Tibby, who have grown up together, and for the first time are going to spend a summer cheap hotels rates apart. Young women who have grown so much a part of each other and have formed such a tight bond, a sisterhood that forged long before the eponymous pants found their way into Carmen s closet from the thrift store, must branch out and discover how to be whole women by themselves.
Three of the four girls goes away from home to stretch her wings in situations that are so poignant that I felt the need to hide my face behind my book and bury my tears in the pages. Of the four of them, Tibby alone remains in Washington, D.C. for the summer, getting a summer job, dreading being home without her friends. During her shift at the department store Tibby begins an at first reluctant relationship with a twelve year old girl named Bailey, who passes out in the middle of the antiperspirant display that Tibby had built. cheap hotels rates Through a series of events that leads Tibby to Bailey s bedside both at the hospital and at her home, it is revealed that Bailey has leukemia.
Bailey serves as a vehicle to help Tibby learn to see past appearances as they make a documentary together, or the suckumentary as Tibby likes to call it. First intended to be a slightly mocking film about people Tibby finds somewhat laughable, Bailey conducts interviews that help Tibby see these people for unique and wonderful cheap hotels rates people, each broken and needy like she herself is. Bailey is, of course, here to teach a Very Special Lesson to Tibby, who will then go on to learn so many wonderful lessons from it that she will pass on to her friends in the form of a message on the Pants.
cheap hotels rates Because naturally Bailey s time runs out. Time, that thing that Bailey fears most, calls up on Bailey. And Tibby goes through a long and painful denial that she must call upon the Pants and her friend Carmen to help her overcome.
I must ask: Why do we always read of the story of Cancer Girl from the perspective of the healthy and able bodied outsider? I have read so many stories ( My Sister s Keeper , comes to mind, and although she doesn t die, I know I have read others where the Kid with Cancer is meant to teach a lesson cheap hotels rates from outside the perspective), and have yet to find one that tells Bailey s story. cheap hotels rates Bailey is brave, and good, and wonderful, and she has much to teach us, but does she not ever depart the world with any wisdom of her own? Is she only here to impart and never receive?
I hate that the Baileys of YA are only ever vehicles and never the main character. I hate that I have to read Bailey s story from someone else e eyes. It reminds me that the disabled and chronically ill are to be talked about, but not to. Our stories and lives are teaching tools, but not to be lived or experienced. cheap hotels rates We are to be silent.
Bailey s story marred this otherwise cheap hotels rates exceptional book for me, and yes, I was delighted to also have Bailey be a young woman, another woman s story, but she was just a window dressing, like Tibby s guinea pig who also died.
Bailey lives on, though, in the Pants, and in Tibby s first movie, and in the friendships she forged outside of her sisterhood when she needed to. I just wish that it didn t take Bailey s life and story to teach this Very Special Lesson.
Also worth noting, the author uses the word lame frequently, although I think it was only for two of the characters, as casual dialogue. It grated on me to no end. I wish it wasn t so pervasive. This otherwise lovely novel that has strong feminist language and themes was kind of flawed by this.
Thank you, always, to Chally, for recommending this book to me. I am going to be reading the next in the series very soon. It seems that one of the girls deals very seriously with depression, and if this is a continuing theme, perhaps you will hear from me on that one too.
You might be interested in Before I Die, by Jenny Downham. That one is told from the point of view of a girl dying of leukemia; I thought it was very well done (and the narrator was definitely a fully realized person and not there to be a lesson to anyone).
Oh, and My Sister s Keeper drove me [redacted per comments policy] for exactly that reason. I was reading the book thinking WHY do we get everyone s point of view except Kate s? WHY? and when I realized it was at least partly in service of a cheap plot trick, as well as general erasure, I wanted to throw the book across the room. (Which I didn t actually do until I got to the other cheap plot trick at the end, at which time I literally threw the book across the room.)
There was one YA book I read, about a boy with leukemia that was told in first person, by the boy. It was called Hang Tough, Paul Mather, I think. He obviously didn t die in it because he was the narrator, but the ending of the book left the possibility very open, as I recall (I read it 20 years ago). That s the only Kid with Cancer cheap hotels rates book I can think of that centers cheap hotels rates around the kid, that I have read; I ve also heard of one called The Chemo Kid, but I haven t read it. Both of them have male protagonists, but I would have to read/ re-read them to see how relevant that is as an issue.
When I was a tween/young teen i actually stumbled on a handful of YA books where the main characters cheap hotels rates had cancer/lupus/etc. Wish I could recall the titles. It WAS the 80s though, back when I could remember anything except my homework.
Reading this reminds me of a YA series I used to read, One Last Wish by Lurlene McDaniel. They were all books about kids with either terminal illnesses (cancer, AIDS), medical issues requiring an organ transplant, or chronic illnesses like diabetes or cystic fibrosis. I can t say, now, from the standpoint of 27 years old and becoming more aware of disability issues (though by no means perfect) whether the books treated these issues respectfully, but they were about 75% from the perspective of the person with cancer/the transplant recipient/etc. Your comment on books not being from the perspective of the person with the illness or disability reminded me of it.
I ve read a bunch of YA books told from the perspective of teens with cancer cheap hotels rates or other chronic illnesses, most of them by the author Lurlene McDaniel, whose specialty is this sort of thing. So they do exist, but the McDaniel books at least tend to be pretty problematic IMHO, and not just because they re sappy and poorly written. There s a lot of reducing PWD to Tragic Figures, cheap hotels rates and many times they end up Doing Inspiring Things and Inspiring Others even if all or part of the stories is told from their perspective. And very often the main characters (or at least side characters) end up dying, particularly the girl characters (who were the majority of McDaniel s character). There s a lot of Victorianesque romanticizing of the delicate white female cheap hotels rates who dies young, which is just disturbing and problematic on a number of levels. (Another problem with the McDaniel books: I can t think of a protagonist who isn t white and Christian. Heck, I don t think there are even many minor characters who don t fit this bill.)
As for Jodi Picoult, I m afraid this trope is common with her, as seen even more egregiously in Handle With Care. (a book about a family with a young girl with a disability. We don t even hear her perspective until the very end of the book, when she commits suicide either unintentionally or intentionally. I wish I was kidding.)
Part of why this story grates on me is that I *was* the kid with leukemia, and it definitely sucked, and I really didn t have the time or energy to inspire anyone with my touching life lessons about seizing the moment. In fact, one of the things that I found the hardest was the pressure to behave perfectly to be brave and uncomplaining and gracious and grateful to my doctors at ALL times. Partly this is because my parents are doctors and I was treated at one of their hospitals, but it really was a tremendous burden. (I don t want to sound like an asshole here, of course I am grateful to my doctors, but it s maybe a bit much expect a kid to thank someone for giving them a spinal cheap hotels rates tap, yes?)
Hey, thanks for this post. I m a writer (oh, I use the term loosely) the points you make have inspired me to get down to work on a story I ve been mulling for a while based on a girl I know who has leukemia (and has been kicking it s ass for five years now).
Re: Picoult The My Sister s Keeper ending is the laziest one I can think of. The whole book sets up the question cheap hotels rates of whether or not Anna can refuse the transplant, decides she can, and then kills her in a car wreck so there s none of those messy gray areas to deal with when her sister dies as a result of her decision. (I actually preferred the movie ending, although it does do the whole Tragic cheap hotels rates Figure thing. And Cameron Diaz? Really?!) And it is true that most leukemias are (relatively) easy to cure, but some types are more deadly than others, and any relapse pushes down the chances of recovery. In My Sister s Keeper, Kate has APL, which is pretty rare, and she s relapsed cheap hotels rates repeatedly since she was a toddler, so death is a pretty realistic cheap hotels rates outcome there, I think. And IIRC (it s been a while since I read the book), it s her kidney failure caused by the cancer its treatment that s killing her, not the cancer itself. Brashares definitely did not do so much research.
Apologies cheap hotels rates for all this barely on topic stuff, but I alwa