13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Misleading, June 30, 2011
This review is from: Burned (Paperback)
To start off, I think Ellen Hopkins has a wonderful style. I like what she does with words, her concretes, her descriptions. She has flare. And this is one of the edgiest and most original of the verse novels I have thus far read. On the downside this story is making me literally sick to my stomach.
Please understand that I don't have a problem with the theme of struggling with ones faith. When I first read the blurb about the main character going through a crisis of faith, I was more intent on reading this, not less. Then, as I began reading, I realized there was no crisis of faith, no case where the main character has to struggle with pros and cons, goods and bads, or sacrifice one thing for another. Instead the whole thing is very cut and dry. The protagonist's family is brainwashed by a religion that:
1. Believes a woman's whole purpose in life is to pop out babies.
2. Discourages their believers from reading J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolken.
3. Discourages women from learning or getting any kind of education beyond high school.
4. Uses the term "Love and obey" as instruction for how wives view their husbands.
5. Teaches its youth that it's better for a girl to die than lose her virginity in a rape.
6. Tolerates men in leadership positions who look the other way when they know a husband is beating a wife and encourages the parents to use a belt when their kids misbehave.
7. Has no program to help women and children in abusive homes, but prefers to call victims liars rather than deal with any real problems.
8. Instills in their youth such a rigorous guilt complex that girls feel guilty just for dreaming about boys kissing them.
9. Seems to perpetuate the kind of beliefs that allow the parents of this protagonist to not let her drive when she turns 16 because they think it will be better if she waits until her husband can teach her.
Um, does this sound ludicrous to you? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are religions like that. Okay fine, there are cults like that. But dude, what's there to struggle against here? What benefit could there possibly be for the protagonist to stay in this oppressive, brain washing, abusive religion? Are they giving her security, love, a warm home?
No, nothing. The protagonist doesn't believe a bit of it from the get go. So where is the struggle? And you can just imagine what a shock it is for me every time Ms. Hopkins calls this evil, oppressive, judgmental, emotionally abusive religion Mormonism, the religion I've grown up with my entire life. A religion which:
1. Tells couples that how many children they have is a personal decision.
2. Has Stephenie Meyer, Allie Condie, and Becca Fitzpatrick among their ranks.
3. Encourages women to continually learn and in particular to get college educations.
4. Has yet to use the term "love and obey" for a husband/wife relationship in any ceremonies or religious services I've attended.
5. Teaches young women that they are daughters of God, and that God loves them no matter what happens to them.
6. Preaches against violence and excommunicates those involved in abusive behaviors.
7. Takes abuse so seriously that you can download a 70 page 12 step program book from the LDS church's family services page for free. Never mind that they employ social workers and psychologists to deal with the kinds of family problems in this book.
8. Teaches that sex is ordained of God, beautiful, something to be celebrated after marriage. I didn't have any LDS friends growing up who felt having a "sex" dream broke the law of chastity.
9. The last one is just too ludicrous to even try and counter. Having your husband teach you to drive. Are you flippin' kidding me?
Growing up in the east coast with a lot of non-Mormons, I can tell you that most people are very respectful of religions not their own, and that I too was reared to be respectful.
But even in my very diverse high school, there were those who went out of their way to dismiss anything I had to say due to misrepresentations they had read, anti-Mormon movies their pastors had shown them, or sermons they'd heard decrying Mormonism as a cult.
People were taught to fear us.
I had "friends" who would not respect my beliefs, who continually attacked my religion while refusing to learn anything about it. Their reason for this was that I had been brainwashed. They knew because their pastors told them. Please tell me you see the irony here. Then put yourself in my shoes for a moment and try to imagine what it's like to have everything you say arbitrarily dismissed by certain people because they'd rather believe half-truths and misrepresentations than to go to the actual religion and find out for themselves.
I think it's really short sighted for Ellen Hopkins to dismiss every positive message in the Mormon religion by calling it "Mormon Propaganda," then turn around and misrepresent things until it can rightly be called Anti-Mormon propaganda.
If this book had been written about a Jewish or Catholic girl escaping her brainwashing cult religion, most people would be appalled by the blatant religious bigotry. But because it focuses on Mormons, who most people already think are a bit odd, no one blinks an eye.
News flash: I don't care if it's supposed to be edgy. Prejudice is just not cool.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
28 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
burned by the ending, January 6, 2007
I chanced upon this book, and raced through it. Surprisingly, I found the poetry format easy to read, though I would normally avoid this style. The author's talent was undeniable, in the terse, honest, sometimes rhyming verse. The emotions, dramas, and joys of late teen-age years were viscerally accurate and real. I would rate the book a 4 if it ended on a more optimistic note, as it is skillfully written, and the story engaging and worthwhile. In today's world, I simply cannot condone the ending, and found it not only disappointing but deeply disturbing. Pattyn Van Stratten is a high school junior, from a Mormon family. Her father, an alcoholic, abuses his wife and tyrannizes his 7 daughters. Pattyn struggles to find answers to her questions about faith and redemption; she wants to reconcile the violence and tyranny of her home life with her religious faith, but finds only complicity there. After her own small transgressions, she is shipped off to an Aunt in Nevada, where she is surprised to discover acceptance, friendship, freedom, love, and honesty. Unfortunately, this state of grace can't last, and ultimately it was the end of this book that I could not reconcile: it utterly lacked hope, and also seemed to justify the "Columbine" mentality, which repelled me. Although some reviewers were concerned about innacurate portrayal of Mormans in the book, that issue seemed minor to me: religion is often (always?) used as a tool of domination, one need look no further than Jimmy Jones and his kool-aid brew, or David Koresh, or Osama Bin Laden, or the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, or even the born-again revival fueled by W's presidency to see this as a sadly repetitive pattern in human history. On the greater issue of abuse and its inevitable isolation, the book is both accurate, and despairing. Certainly there are enough newspaper articles to prove this tragic fact, though there are also some bright examples of overcoming the odds. I prefer to think of literature as escape, a way out, maybe even a real lifeline for those in need of rescue. In that light, I cannot accept the proffered solution for Pattyn's difficulty; too tragic for my taste.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
