In general, the majority of people associate the color pink with feminine things. Pink is girly. When someone is having a baby, and you find out it’s a girl, you give them pink things. Why? What decided this fact about society? While finding that out would take some research, it is something interesting to think about. And something that is dealt with in the book Pink by Lili Wilkinson.
Pink starts out with Ava, a girl who is a lesbian, has a girlfriend, and very supportive parents, is getting ready to attend a new school. A new, private school, at that. She wants to challenge herself, and she wasn’t getting that at her public school. In addition to wanting this academic challenge, Ava wants to experiment. At her old school, she was the goth-lesbian girl who everyone thought was weird. Ava wants to reinvent her image at her new school. So she dyes her hair, pulls out the pink sweater, and attempts to fit in. But it isn’t as easy as she thought. And not only does Ava have to figure out how to fit with the in crowd, she’s also trying to figure out her own sexual identity.
What I like about this book is that it’s a kind of reversal of what I see as the typical young adult LGBTQ novel. Ava starts out as a lesbian, and ends up trying to figure out if she’s straight or not. She experiments with guys, instead of experimenting with girls. Now, I may be completely crazy, but in other young adult novels dealing with this theme, it’s the other way around. The girl has to deal with some sort of struggle with coming out, figuring out if she’s a lesbian, all that kind of stuff. But Ava doesn’t have those issues. Her parents completely accept who she is, she doesn’t have any struggles where that’s concerned. Her problem lies in figuring out if being a lesbian is what makes her happy.
I also liked how this book explored the fact that people don’t have to fit into one box when it comes to sexuality. People can be attracted to guys and girls, gender doesn’t matter to them when it comes to having that attraction with a person. I don’t think there are enough young adult books out there at the moment that deal with this issue. Sure, there are more LGBTQ books in general, but how many of them deal with bisexuality? They’re people too, and I think they deserve just as much recognition as anyone else.
Okay, now for the negatives. As much as I liked Ava, she really got on my nerves sometimes, espcially when she was so focused on being a part of the popular crowd. The group she ended up hanging out with most of the time (the Screws) were all awesome people, and I just really wanted her to see that and get over the whole trying to be popular thing. She was definitely one of those characters that you just wanted to point out her faults to so she could fix them and move on with her life. Other than that, Pink is a pretty awesome book that I think many people would enjoy! I’m not exactly sure what I’ll be reading next, seeing as school is keeping me pretty busy, but hopefully it will be something good. Until next time, happy reading! 🙂