YA Book Tour- Montana

Next stop in the YA book tour is Montana with Emily M. Danforth's The Miseducation of Cameron Post.  Warning this book will make me bust out my soap box on equal rights for gays and lesbians.

Cameron Post is just beginning her adolescents when her parents are killed in a terrible car accident.  The accidents, also, happens the day after Cameron kiss a girl.  Cameron's guardianship is taken over by her old fashion Grandmother and her ultra-religious Aunt Ruth.

As Cameron continues to grow, she knows that she is a lesbian.  She has a summer fling with another girls whom she swims against, but it is when she meets Coley Taylor that she discovers how deep her feelings for another person can be.  Unfortunately for Cameron, her aunt finds out about her feelings and decides she needs to be "fixed" shipping her off to Promise, a christian center to cure her of her homosexual desires.

This book was wonderfully written with fantastic and complex characters.  I feel empathy for Cameron as she struggles to keep her sexual orientation hidden knowing that her small town and her aunt would not be accepting of it, and yet, she is not truly trying to deny who she is. I mean, come on, high school is a struggle when you are straight girl, I can't even imagine how hard it is when you are a lesbian in a small town in the early 90's.

Cameron is such a wonderful character, and so well written.  She is true to herself, even when she is sent to that horrible christian reform place.  I think she says it best when she said she never thought of herself as a homosexual, but just was herself. My heartbreaks for her when Coley betrays her trust, and when her aunt can't love her for the way she is. And lets face it, the problem that Cameron really needs to deal with is not that she is lesbian, but that she is a kleptomaniac.

Coley and Aunt Ruth, oh where to begin.  Aunt Ruth comes in after Cameron's traumatic loss of her parents and starts making big decisions for her without even seeming to care for what is going on with Cameron.  She never for a second stops to think that maybe she is the one that is wrong, and there is nothing wrong with Cameron. Coley, who encourages Cameron's feelings, just takes her heart out and stomps on it.  Coley is in deep denial about herself while we are it.

Promise is what makes me most sad, partly because I know there are really place out there like it. (About to hop on my soap box.)  Being gay or lesbian is not a disease, it is just the way some people are.  It does make them wrong or a perversion. There is no need to cure what is not a disease. The "incident" with one of the students at Promise just goes to show that these places are doing way more harm than good.

This really is a wonderful book, with a great theme of being true to yourself even when the world seems set against you.

Currently Reading:
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie