Sunday, March 8, 2020

And We Stay by Jenny Hubbard

Title: And We Stay
Author: Jenny Hubbard
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: January 28, 2014

Format: eBook
Price: $4.99
Page Count: 240 pages
ISBN-13: 9780375899430

Reading Level: Grades 9 and up (ages 14+)
Lexile: 810
Interest Level: Grades 9 and up (ages 14+)

Annotation: After Emily's boyfriend shot himself in the school library, her family sends her to boarding school where she continues to write poetry and heal.

Plot and Content Summary: Set in 1995, Emily transfers to a boarding school halfway through the school year. With her, she brings a lot of baggage: her boyfriend Paul committed suicide after she was forced to break up with him and get an abortion. To tune in to her emotions and confront her memories, she writes poetry inspired by Emily Dickinson. As the story progresses, we get small flashbacks of her and Paul.

Evaluation: Emily's story is told in a very poetic way, reflective of how our main character connects with her emotions. While we know what happened to Paul from the beginning, there are a lot of missing details that readers will be eager to discover. As we are given snippets, going back and forth from Emily's past to Emily's present, we see how she uses poetry to be vulnerable. When her roommate comes across part of her life, she is able to understand Emily a lot more. Although And We Stay was fairly interesting, for the most part, it was difficult to connect with Emily. She wrote about Paul in her poems, but I still am not sure how she feels about their situation. This was not a terrible book, but it is easily forgettable.

Bibliotherapeutic Usefulness: Emily is dealing with grief and she uses a form of art to convey her feelings. For teens who are going through something similar, this could be something to turn to if speaking out loud is difficult. Sometimes, we have emotions that we do not know how to explain, and maybe something else can describe it better—if not poetry, then music, lyrics, painting, etc.

Issues Present: If And We Stay was challenged, it would probably be due to suicide and abortion—two topics we cannot ignore. Books that deal with difficult issues can show readers they are not alone in feeling this way. Although there is not much discussion about Paul's suicide in And We Stay, teens may still connect with how he felt in the situation and want to talk about it. Additionally, it can also be a new perspective for teens, and they may notice this behavior in their peers. If so, it can alert them so they can hopefully help others.

Book Talk Ideas: "Oh, yes, she could feel it / even though the bullet / had never stabbed her skin. / The bright white heat / burned at her core / where two lives beat, and if he'd aimed / there and pulled the trigger, / red would have crested / like a broken dam / over her hands / as her last word rushed / up to her throat—Paul— / a sound that took no time / and also lifetimes." (p. 39)

  • How does Emily use poetry to deal with her grief? (p. 39, 77, 137)
  • Discuss Paul and Emily's relationship. Was it a healthy one?
  • What is the correlation between Emily, our main character, and Emily Dickinson?

Genre/Subgenres: Realistic fiction

Readalikes: Smoke by Ellen Hopkins, Death, Dickinson, and the Demented Life of Frenchie Garcia by Jenny Torres Sanchez, Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer, The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

References
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