Watch Us Rise
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Description
'This stunning book is the story I've been waiting for my whole life; where girls rise up to claim their space with joy and power. I resolve to give a copy to every teenager I know!' Laurie Halse Anderson, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of SPEAK and SHOUT
'An extraordinary story of two indomitable spirits, the power of friendship, and what leadership looks like in the hands of young people today, Watch Us Rise is the novel we all need right now.' Brendan Kiely, New York Times bestselling co-author of ALL AMERICAN BOYS and TRADITION
Jasmine and Chelsea are best friends on a mission.
Sick of the way that young women are treated even at their 'progressive' New York City high school, they decide to start a Women's Rights Club. One problem - no one shows up. That hardly stops them. They start posting everything from videos of Chelsea performing her poetry to Jasmine's response to being reduced to a racist and sexist stereotype in the school's theatre department. And soon, they've gone viral, creating a platform they never could've predicted.
With such positive support, the Women's Rights Club is also targeted by trolls. But Jasmine and Chelsea won't let their voices - or those of the other young women in their city - be silenced. They'll risk everything to be heard and effect change ... but at what cost?
Book Information
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Oh boy, oh boy. I wasn’t a fan of this. Look – I’m all for feminism and social justice. I think it’s especially important to represent intersectional feminism in YA literature. Howeverrrrr…I really didn’t enjoy this book. There are two protagonists in this novel: Jasmine, a fat black girl whose father has terminal cancer, and Chelsea, an Irish-Italian. Both call themselves art-ivists and like to write poems and stuff. The book is about them founding a women’s rights club and blog at their very liberal school. (Seriously, do schools like this exist? Every student has to take part in a club and everything is centered around social justice. It feels unreal.) I don’t know if each of the authors wrote one perspective, but there’s a noticeable difference in the writing and tone of the two. I wasn’t particularly fond of either, but while I understood Jasmine’s thoughts and struggles, I couldn’t stand Chelsea. Chelsea is the incarnation of a millenial girl who just learned about feminism and wants to teach everybody her ways while assuming that everyone doesn’t have a clue what she’s talking about and she’s the first person ever to learn about feminism. And it’s annoying as fuck. Jasmine is at least being reasonable, but the whole book isn’t particularly well-written and just reads very preachy. This kind of in-your-face-feminism might be suitable for young readers who haven’t had much contact with the topic yet, but I don’t like feeling like authors are forcing their opinions down my throat. And I say that as a feminist. It feels like they want the characters to be strong and empowering, but they just sound whiny af. That’s another point – I’d actually taken a break from YA the last months and books like this remind me what I dislike about it. So much teenage angst. So many brats. Also, they say some things that are undoubtedly against feminism ??? Jasmine and Chelsea make some progress in the process of the story, but you don’t see them learn these new things. They just suddenly have a slightly different opinion and as a reader, this is really confusing because you don’t know where that came from. There are better books about girls fighting for feminist issues out there – check out Moxie or the Spinster Girls series
This book is very important and powerful. It presents and discusses a very distinct view of the world, while also pointing out where sexism is internalized in every day life. I would recommend this book to everyone that is interested by the premise and okay with very much of "everywhere is racism/sexism/etc in our everyday life". Because of these very strongly presented opinions and because I don't agree or like all of them, I'll give this book the middle of the road rating of 2.5🌟. Rounding down because I do dislike more than I like [long, detailed description to come. that at the top is a good summary of my thoughts if you don't wanna read all of it] ~the good~ -The poems and blog entries or essays. So many powerful, thought provoking quotes and poems that were more creative than anything I have ever done. -Jasmine and her family dynamic/plot line(!!) This dealt so wonderfully with this heavy topic. I cried and just wanted to hug my parents. -how incredibly feminist it was. I kinda loved how straightforward/ in-your-face the message was. -that the main characters got called out when they were doing something negative. Even though both of them were very (very) inclusive they weren't perfect and forgot about things, which sometimes got challenged. ~the bad~ -the love stories. It's almost never for me and again this time I didn't care about the relationships. They got too much focus when I was more interested in literally anything else. Also one of the love interest extremely didn't fit into the world view of our protagonist, which is why I didn't get how this plot line continued for so long. -Chelsea's character. Even though I liked how "in-your-face" it was, I just got annoyed how she called out everyone in every situation, no matter if it was appropriate or not. She just isn't a character I can connect to because I'm personally very different. Also she made a lot of mistakes as well (her love interest is just one of them) so she really wasn't in a position to be mad at other people. -for a book that tried to be so incredibly inclusive/diverse and had both main characters have this as a major character trait, queerness and disability was never discussed. and you can't have it both ways -lastly I didn't like how I got the impression that this tried to paint one specific type of feminism (could be a misunderstanding by my part but it's the overall tone I saw). There's a lot of discussion about how "the princess trope" is bad and it paints a bad picture for girls, which is why you shouldn't have it at all. In addition to that the moms got asked why the stay at home and the answer isn't accepted. They're only doing this because some kind of internalized sexism. And that's just not the type of feminism I stand by. I'm of the opinion that feminism is about empowering all woman and their choices, even if it is being a stereotypical housewife.
Description
'This stunning book is the story I've been waiting for my whole life; where girls rise up to claim their space with joy and power. I resolve to give a copy to every teenager I know!' Laurie Halse Anderson, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of SPEAK and SHOUT
'An extraordinary story of two indomitable spirits, the power of friendship, and what leadership looks like in the hands of young people today, Watch Us Rise is the novel we all need right now.' Brendan Kiely, New York Times bestselling co-author of ALL AMERICAN BOYS and TRADITION
Jasmine and Chelsea are best friends on a mission.
Sick of the way that young women are treated even at their 'progressive' New York City high school, they decide to start a Women's Rights Club. One problem - no one shows up. That hardly stops them. They start posting everything from videos of Chelsea performing her poetry to Jasmine's response to being reduced to a racist and sexist stereotype in the school's theatre department. And soon, they've gone viral, creating a platform they never could've predicted.
With such positive support, the Women's Rights Club is also targeted by trolls. But Jasmine and Chelsea won't let their voices - or those of the other young women in their city - be silenced. They'll risk everything to be heard and effect change ... but at what cost?
Book Information
Posts
Oh boy, oh boy. I wasn’t a fan of this. Look – I’m all for feminism and social justice. I think it’s especially important to represent intersectional feminism in YA literature. Howeverrrrr…I really didn’t enjoy this book. There are two protagonists in this novel: Jasmine, a fat black girl whose father has terminal cancer, and Chelsea, an Irish-Italian. Both call themselves art-ivists and like to write poems and stuff. The book is about them founding a women’s rights club and blog at their very liberal school. (Seriously, do schools like this exist? Every student has to take part in a club and everything is centered around social justice. It feels unreal.) I don’t know if each of the authors wrote one perspective, but there’s a noticeable difference in the writing and tone of the two. I wasn’t particularly fond of either, but while I understood Jasmine’s thoughts and struggles, I couldn’t stand Chelsea. Chelsea is the incarnation of a millenial girl who just learned about feminism and wants to teach everybody her ways while assuming that everyone doesn’t have a clue what she’s talking about and she’s the first person ever to learn about feminism. And it’s annoying as fuck. Jasmine is at least being reasonable, but the whole book isn’t particularly well-written and just reads very preachy. This kind of in-your-face-feminism might be suitable for young readers who haven’t had much contact with the topic yet, but I don’t like feeling like authors are forcing their opinions down my throat. And I say that as a feminist. It feels like they want the characters to be strong and empowering, but they just sound whiny af. That’s another point – I’d actually taken a break from YA the last months and books like this remind me what I dislike about it. So much teenage angst. So many brats. Also, they say some things that are undoubtedly against feminism ??? Jasmine and Chelsea make some progress in the process of the story, but you don’t see them learn these new things. They just suddenly have a slightly different opinion and as a reader, this is really confusing because you don’t know where that came from. There are better books about girls fighting for feminist issues out there – check out Moxie or the Spinster Girls series
This book is very important and powerful. It presents and discusses a very distinct view of the world, while also pointing out where sexism is internalized in every day life. I would recommend this book to everyone that is interested by the premise and okay with very much of "everywhere is racism/sexism/etc in our everyday life". Because of these very strongly presented opinions and because I don't agree or like all of them, I'll give this book the middle of the road rating of 2.5🌟. Rounding down because I do dislike more than I like [long, detailed description to come. that at the top is a good summary of my thoughts if you don't wanna read all of it] ~the good~ -The poems and blog entries or essays. So many powerful, thought provoking quotes and poems that were more creative than anything I have ever done. -Jasmine and her family dynamic/plot line(!!) This dealt so wonderfully with this heavy topic. I cried and just wanted to hug my parents. -how incredibly feminist it was. I kinda loved how straightforward/ in-your-face the message was. -that the main characters got called out when they were doing something negative. Even though both of them were very (very) inclusive they weren't perfect and forgot about things, which sometimes got challenged. ~the bad~ -the love stories. It's almost never for me and again this time I didn't care about the relationships. They got too much focus when I was more interested in literally anything else. Also one of the love interest extremely didn't fit into the world view of our protagonist, which is why I didn't get how this plot line continued for so long. -Chelsea's character. Even though I liked how "in-your-face" it was, I just got annoyed how she called out everyone in every situation, no matter if it was appropriate or not. She just isn't a character I can connect to because I'm personally very different. Also she made a lot of mistakes as well (her love interest is just one of them) so she really wasn't in a position to be mad at other people. -for a book that tried to be so incredibly inclusive/diverse and had both main characters have this as a major character trait, queerness and disability was never discussed. and you can't have it both ways -lastly I didn't like how I got the impression that this tried to paint one specific type of feminism (could be a misunderstanding by my part but it's the overall tone I saw). There's a lot of discussion about how "the princess trope" is bad and it paints a bad picture for girls, which is why you shouldn't have it at all. In addition to that the moms got asked why the stay at home and the answer isn't accepted. They're only doing this because some kind of internalized sexism. And that's just not the type of feminism I stand by. I'm of the opinion that feminism is about empowering all woman and their choices, even if it is being a stereotypical housewife.