Voting Rights and Lesbianism, aka Dear Rachel Maddow by Adrienne Kisner

Dear Rachel Maddow
Adrienne Kisner
★★★☆☆ | 8 Nov 2018

“1. When you look at the papers on your desk and circle something, are you really reading from them? Don’t you read from a teleprompter? When you go to commercial, you shuffle those papers, too. Seriously, is there anything even written on them?”

A close 3 1/2 stars. This book, following a young lesbian writing letters to known lesbian legend Rachel Maddow and while trying to win a school election for the Real Students, has a lot going for it. It missed the mark on a few aspects? But overall, this was really good.

✔ P R O S
→So first of all, this book is fast-paced, and the voice is super super strong, and the book is genuinely funny in places despite being really dark. Brynn’s voice… genuinely reads like that of a high schooler, albeit a younger one.

“Nevertheless, they persist.
I guess that means I fucking have to, too.”

→A really strong main character, who is flawed and dimensional and compelling and easy to root for. Brynn is going through awful things at home, and with family, and has not become sad: she has become righteously angry. That is something I did when I was younger and I don’t think I’ve seen it represented so accurately in a book before. Brynn is like freshman year me and I love it. The discussion of depression, and of her home life is subtle, intertwining throughout the book, but gets darker and darker.

“People call me ‘brave’ all the time, and it annoys me. As if my mere existence is some sort of war. It’s not. I don’t think I’m any braver than another person just trying to live life. I just can’t do stairs.”

→Young Adult literature has a tendency to forget about side characters! This book did not forget about side characters! Lacey, who uses a wheelchair and a keyboard to speak, is one of the book’s funniest and best-developed characters. Michaela, Brynn’s secondary love interest, was a great character as well: I absolutely love her development. Justin! Leigh! Erin!

→This book is a fucking scree against ableism and voting suppression laws. Brynn is! a journalist! And as she attempts to challenge a policy only allowing honors students to vote, the book ends up strongly discussing voting rights: how a literacy test of any kind is an unfair limitation. (This probably would’ve worked better if more characters were people of color; only Michaela is.) There’s an excellent discussion here of how ableism affects the general school’s perception of people like Brynn and Lacey’s intelligence.

✔ …A N D Y E T
→At times I did think the dialogue writing was… messy. Most of the writing is voicey and snappy and fun, but the dialogue just didn’t do it for me.

→There’s a bit where one character sort of cheats on her girlfriend, and… allows herself to be kissed by her ex, and I couldn’t tell if it was meant to be nonconsensual, but it bugged me that it was never discussed. Its inclusion felt really pointless.

→I really like epistolatory novels. However, I also think making epistolatory format hold a book on its own is really difficult. Brynn’s letters, understandably, are a projection of who she is, not a full confession. As a result, Dear Rachel Maddow often struggles with its more emotional moments because Brynn buries her own tragedy in humor. I think this is an understandable and solid character decision; it’s just that the format is so distancing we don’t really see her catharsis.

→And the other problem is that… she doesn’t get catharsis. I’ve been pouring through the reviews trying to figure out why this didn’t fully work for me, and I just have to quote this amazing review:

There’s no catharsis. There’s no fucking accountability. The book is crying out for a scene where Brynn looks her mother in the eyes and says, “Part of the reason I am in so broken is because you’ve been a shit mother.” Where she snaps and busses to her father’s house and demands to know why he abandoned here. Where some adult steps in and says to her stepfather he’s an abusive jerk and the way he treats Brynn is wrong. (And where someone just fucking holds Brynn and promises she’ll be okay.)

Brynn’s character arc is so good, so good, so good, until the end of the book when it completely drops the ball on her confronting her parents. As someone who has had a very complicated home life, I desperately needed her to confront her mom and take even one step herself towards recovery. Without that, this book reads a little bit like one long breakdown.

Perhaps it’s a statement of goodness that despite all that, I was a fan of this book. The story is clear and there are a lot of creative things being done here. And not to make this weird, but does Rachel Maddow know this book is being published? Is she proud?

TW: minor suicidal ideation; challenged homophobia, a lot of discussions of challenged ableism, severe child abuse, drug overdose, and family death. (None of these are spoilers.)

release date: 8 Sep 2018
✨Arc received from the publisher via Netgalley for an honest review.

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