Stephanie's Virtual Bookshelf

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

This is one of the first books I read that introduced me the genre of sci-fiction and dsytopian societies. I truly connect with the main protagonist, Tally Youngblood. She is clever, compassionate, and brave enough to undermine the very society that she so desperately wanted to join at the beginning of the novel. This book taught me to question the standards our societies are built on and how to think critically about the ways we choose to navigate them. 

Dear Abby by Abigail Van Buren

This is a work my mother recommended me when I first visited by grandparents house in India. My mother told me the novel was a collection of advice articles by a very famous 1950s journalistic named Pauline Phillips whose pen name was Abigail Van Buren. I loved this novel cause it was not only a collection of memoirs and stories, but it was also a column dedicated for women to share and express their thoughts and opinions during a time when women were expected to be seen and not heard. This novel taught me impact that literature isn't necessarily produced and consumed, but rather it is meant to engage and connect authors to audiences and vice versa. Literature provides outlets and safe spaces for those voices who want and need to be heard.

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi

This work was one of the few books I actually enjoyed reading as part of my middle school curriculum, because up until that point all the books I had read prior were about male protagonists. This book is an exciting story about a young English girl named Charlotte who leaves on a month long voyage to North America on a ship complete with an all-male crew and captain. Despite the harassment she receives from the crew, Charlotte quickly learns the tricks and trades of the ship and by the end of the novel she becomes the captain. This novel shaped me by introducing to me new hero, a young girl that was in many ways like me in middle school. This piece of literature helped me to understand that the most important part of storytelling is that it is open to everyone no matter their race, age, or sex.

Dawn by Octavia Butler

This is one of the few novels that stood out to me when I took a feminist sci-fiction writing course last fall. I really enjoyed this novel cause it was through the perspective a young, African American mother named Lilith and her interactions with an alien race called the Oankali. Soon after to learns the Oankali way of life, she becomes an ambassador for the human race because long before the she met the Oankali, the Earth blew up after nuclear war the Oankali saved the surviving members of the human race. This novel grapples a lot with the ambiguity of social constructions like femininity, masculinity. This novel is valuable in its contributions to a lot of difficult topics like consent, rape, and exploitation.

"I, Too" by Langston Hughes

I really enjoyed analyzing this poem for LIT2000. This poem, through it's careful and thoughtful choice of words was able to effectively and powerful describe the experience of African Americans during the 1930s in America. This poem not only illuminates the oppression felt by the author and his community, but it also opens up a dialogue. It encourages and challenges people from other views, backgrounds, and perspectives to weigh in and discuss the nature of this systemic injustice.