Overture

This is my writing blog.

It could also be seen as the one place on the internet, outside of school correspondence, I use capital letters. (I just don't find them attractive, same as with yoga pants.)

This is going to be the start of Very Big Things!
(I'm still figuring out the rules of Capitalization on the Internet, maybe.)

Being my first post, this post is very special, so I'm going to talk about something Very Special to me! Speak has been in my life since I was, I'm pretty sure, nine years old. I have known this book longer than I've known any of my closest friends, and for many years, if someone asked me my favourite book, I'd say this one.

I just read it for the first time in a while. The first time since I've been in college, anyway. And on almost every page, I found something incredible like this:

I think the Merryweather cheerleaders confuse me because I missed out on Sunday School. It has to be a miracle. There is no other explanation. How else could they sleep with the football team on Saturday night and be reincarnated as virginal goddesses on Monday?

which, strangely, reminded me of Katy Perry, but also made me think, I would never have understood this when I was nine years old. Or twelve or fifteen. And in a way, I still kind of don't understand it, or I want to explore it further. Why is it that, if everyone knows these girls sleep with the football players, the school chooses to see them as virginal goddesses? Is this the ideal femininity in high school (yes, of course, because otherwise you're a slut)? Why are the cheerleaders forgiven and worshipped and adored when other girls are branded as sluts?

Questions like these are traffic-jamming all up in my brain, just because this one sentence fascinates me! This sentence from a book I first read when I was nine. A book that is actually crammed with questions about how we create our own identities -- the topic, perhaps, I'm Most Passionate about (besides my homegurl Britney Spears)! A book that I'm going to read again and again and again when I'm twenty-five and thirty and really, really old. Because it gets me thinking about something new every time. It makes me ask questions, of my world and of myself! Plus, the writing is so gorgeous it makes you shiver, and so raw it feels like it's snapping your bones in half. (I have really weak bones, though, my arms have broken three times.) IF YOU HAVEN'T READ SPEAK YOU SHOULD OKAY.

Sorry, too many capitals.

Anyway, that's my idea of an amazing book, the kind I'd like to write. What's yours?

I'd love to get to know you.