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9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn't live up to its potential, December 19, 2004
This review is from: Orphea Proud (Hardcover)
I really, *really* wanted to like this book. It was set up like an open mic show, with a teenage girl telling the story of how she came to terms with her sexuality through narrative and poetry. She was black and her lover was white, so there was also a race dynamic in there. I'm interested in sexuality issues and racial issues and young adult novels written in creative ways, so I was super excited to read this.
While I appreciate Wyeth for bringing a Black protagonist into the gay young adult genre, and while I admire *any* writer who is willing to tackle this difficult subject for any age group, I was greatly disappointed in this book. The writing style was wishy-washy, the characters were one-dimensional and the dialogue was strained. I kept on thinking that maybe I was missing something, because I really couldn't believe that this book wasn't living up to its potential. It was melodramatic and meandering in its plot. In terms of young adult novels about discovering a gay identity, I would recommend, "Boy Meets Boy" and "The Realm of Possibility" by David Leviathan, "Annie on my Mind" by Nancy Gardner or "Empress of the World" by Sarah Ryan.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Strike a Pose!, October 11, 2006
If Sharon Dennis Wyeth's Orphea Proud is any indication of the direction of children's literature, may all kids henceforth be gifted with iPods, Xboxes, and Game Boys, which will undoubtedly require of them more brain cells than this book. At its best, Orphea Proud is an affront to both creative writing and the art of storytelling with its faux sincerity and patronizing passages. At its worst, it is filled with candy coated scenarios, resulting in one hundred and eighty-nine pages of potential energy that never turns kinetic. Its "life is a box full of chocolates" type of philosophy is pure fantasy, even for its intended teen audience. And its trite and cliche-filled poetry is so painful that it likens itself to nails on a chalkboard. Nothing is explored in this book, no lessons learned. Wyeth is so preoccupied with turning out a crowd pleasing novel that she seems to have forgotten the definition of the word sincerity. This book, about a girl on a path to self-discovery, is uneven and dull in its execution (it involves making the reader a part of a live audience), and features characters, including the narrator, that are drawn so thin they will remind one of the cardboard cut-outs used in place of real people in kindergarten plays.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
To quote publisher's weekly.., July 12, 2011
"Orphea Proud tells her "love story" as a performance piece, also sprinkling some poetry into the mix. She talks about losing her preacher father at age seven, the death of her mother the following year, and about being raised by her strict half-brother and his wife. At age 10, she meets Lissa, and they become best friends. But years later Orphea feels "panic" as she realizes she is in love with Lissa. When her brother, Rupert, catches the 16-year-olds in bed, he beats Orphea, and Lissa, hurriedly driving away in the snow, crashes and dies. There is a lot of tragedy for readers to swallow, and the preacher and Rupert seem too stereotypically cruel to be credible. But the performance angle keeps the pace brisk, even though some of the material seems more expository than would be plausible before a live audience (as would its length). After Lissa's death, Orphea has a breakdown, and her brother ships her to her mother's aunts in remote Virginia. The two elderly women seem overly familiar, but they add some warmth and much-needed tolerance to the story, assuring Orphea that "you're family, honey child" even after she tells them she is gay. Wyeth (Once on This River ) brings the story to life with tactile details, such as the "wood smoke mixed with snow clouds" smell of the aunts' store on Proud Road. All in all, a tender, if not always believable, novel. Ages 14-up. (Nov.) "
All in all. I had to comment. This book isn't the best, but I like Orphea. And Lissa. Some the characters seemed a bit fake (specifically Rupert) but there were some pretty interesting characters: the wife, the boy with the 'horse complex.' It was a little slow in the beginning - took a while to jump into the action.And it does not deserve one star.
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