The Poet X

I got The Poet X from the library and it sat on my nightstand for a few weeks, then I picked it up this morning and read it all in one go. And it was very good.

Xiomara occupies this ambivalent state of feeling both big and small. The combination of puberty and patriarchy have led boys and men to leer at and harass her. The way they view and treat her has shaped both her reputation and ideas she internalizes about her own worth.

Much like Shirin in A Very Large Expanse of Sea, X has a hardened facade because she is so often targeted. Her tough exterior conceals a lot of hurt, and she wants others to defend her the way she does them. But she expects to be let down.

The book also has some ambivalence in its messaging about high school and youth. On the one hand, you have this idea that sometimes the only way to express yourself freely is to bide your time and escape to college in another town, out of reach. And certainly there is something to the idea that adulthood and physical distance from parents lets people explore themselves and the world in ways they haven't before. But it's still a depressing notion, that you have to just wait it out until you can do what and be who you really want.

Acevedo offsets this by showing how you can find people and places in high school that not only make that stage of life bearable but inject hope and belonging into the present. She shows the role of teachers in providing refuge and outlets to explore interests parents might not understand, accept, or even know about. I think that's an important message to send.

The Poet X is about believing in someone struggling to refute a lot of damaging ideas she has been told about herself. It's a story about a teenage girl telling the world that it has misjudged and underestimated her, and that it's time for her to speak and for everyone else to be quiet and listen. It's a new favorite of mine.