When I was a teenager, we read Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak. Over the decades since then, Speak has become a widely read and celebrated novel detailing an all-too-common experience for girls and young women. I think it still deserves a place among literature that provides representation for an under-represented perspective. But I do feel Speak is beginning to show its years, despite recent attempts to contemporize it.

I just read a different novel that I feel takes the path left by Speak and blazes ahead of it. Dear Medusa, written by Olivia A. Cole, is a story written in breathtakingly beautiful verse that weaves itself in and out of your bones. Where Speak stops short of exploring the darkest corners of trauma, Dear Medusa brings the reader along as it plumbs the depths of the traumatized soul. This novel tells its story unflinchingly, daring to stare down the patriarchy in all of its forms. 

I see Dear Medusa as an opportunity for literature education to explore many of the same themes that are present in Speak while also being able to discuss the lyrical style of writing Cole provides here. I think what a reader and student gains by replacing Speak with Dear Medusa is a better understanding of the themes of violence, victimization, and trauma as well as fresh explorations of symbolism and greater meaning. With Dear Medusa we are invited to question all of the things we are told and encouraged to build our own knowledge. 

Dear Medusa is so much more than a problem book. It's a love letter to all of the souls who've found themselves caught in a wolf's teeth.

There were times while I read Dear Medusa that I felt like my old wounds were bleeding fresh. Cole's words unearthed long-buried hurts that allowed me to follow our narrator's journey as a participant rather than a spectator. I felt as though our narrator was speaking to me, with me, as I whispered back, "Me too. Me too. Me too."