Please Don't Kill the Freshman
Belief:
Why I Want to Turn Religious People Into Atheists
Greta Christina
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
Don't Fear the Deficit Bogeyman
John Miller
DrugReporter:
The War on Weed: Marijuana Is Basically Harmless -- The Monumentally Stupid Drug War Is Not
Jim Hightower
Environment:
White House Garden Won't Make Up for Obama's Nomination of Pesticide Lobbyist for US Chief Agriculture Negotiator
Jill Richardson
Food:
Don't Be Scared of Food: Are We Being Needlessly Hysterical About Food Safety?
David E. Gumpert
Health and Wellness:
47,000 Women Could Die As a Result of the New Mammogram Guidelines
George Lakoff
Immigration:
Hate Group, FAIR, Is Looking for "Ethnically Ambiguous" Actors to Amplify Its Racism
Adam Luna
Media and Technology:
The Memory Scrub About Why Ft. Hood Happened Is Almost Complete ... If It Weren't for Archives
Mark Ames
Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler
Politics:
White House's Ties to Health Care Industry Deeper Than Visitor Records Show
Daniela Perdomo
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Why Can't We Look Away From Sarah Palin?
Vanessa Richmond
Rights and Liberties:
Whatever Happened to the CIA Black Sites?
David Corn
Sex and Relationships:
Hot Mormon Muffins and Models for Jesus: What's With All the Sexy Christians?
Liz Langley
Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders
Water:
Poseidon's Financial Shell Game: Why Is a Private Desalination Plant Asking for Public Money?
Peter Gleick
World:
Is Obama Following in the Footsteps of Bill Clinton?
Jeff Cohen

Zoe Trope is a smart, expressive, queer girl at a Portland high school growing up in a post-riot-girl world. "Please Don't Kill the Freshman" is her memoir, a collection of short prose-poems that are both dense and playful.
The book was published by her eighth-grade creative writing teacher. It started out as a regular email exercise, but soon her teacher Kevin Sempsell offered to publish the writing as a small-press, zine-like paperback. In the book's introduction Sempsell writes, "When she began high school she started to send me these little journal-like updates about her friends and teachers...She was good in my writing class but this was pure inspiration, pure adrenaline. I told her to keep sending me the updates and that she was 'on to something."
"Please Don't Kill the Freshman" is about Zoe, and her friends, and her life, but about much more. It's about the uncertainty of high school friendships and intimacy and about growing up in a school, at a time where it's accepted among your peers to be gay, queer, bi and to have crushes that defy all those labels.
In one early piece she writes about a young woman whom she is interested in, referring to her as "Plum Sweater." "Plum Sweater on my voice mail," she says. "Heart palpitations induced. What a punk rawk goddess. I'm going to faint. My fingers are shaking. I'm so f**ked up. I am SOOO...fourteen."
But she clearly has a crush on many of her male friends as well, most of whom are also questioning their sexual identity. In another passage she says, "Yesterday I learned all my friends are gay and I feel responsible. Wonka Boi, a boy with black hair, exploring his uncertainty as I sip a Sprite. I hold him, filled with guilt. Not a bad score. Out of four male friends, I've managed to turn 2.5 gay. Beat that, Margaret Cho."
While Zoe pours her feelings out, she treads very carefully and doesn't make the reader feel as though they are crashing into her personal life or snooping into her diary. Zoe is candid in some moments while cryptic in others through her use of keywords, and half sentences. She is constantly dropping hints, hoping her readers will take the time to figure out the answer. She talks about dropping in to the "the wife of Burger King" for an ice cream cone and hopes we'll know she means Dairy Queen.
Although this is still a highly personal work, Zoe's guard is definitely up. In fact, Zoe Trope is a pen name and she gives all the people in her life nicknames for the purpose of the book. Instead of picking "normal" pseudonyms for her friends, she names them things like Linux Shoe, Plum Sweater, Vegan Grrl, and Wonka Boi. The first page of the book has a handy "Cast of Characters" list, with descriptions like you'd read at the beginning of a play. On these pages, she defines them and yet works hard not to put them in boxes. When describing Linux Shoe, she writes: "fourteen years old. freshman. best friend. homosexual. beautiful. has made me cry many, many times. disgustingly insightful."
| ||
Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »
| More News and Analysis: | ||
|
Whatever Happened to the CIA Black Sites? Rights and Liberties: The CIA ordered its secret prisons closed, but lawyers for terrorism suspects want them preserved as possible evidence -- and the CIA won't say what's going on. By David Corn, Mother Jones. November 26, 2009. |
Don't Fear the Deficit Bogeyman Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: A second dose of deficit-financed stimulus spending would create a lot of jobs that America needs. By John Miller, Dollars and Sense. November 26, 2009. |
Bailed-Out AIG Forcing Poor to Choose Between Running Water and Food Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace: Thanks to AIG, some of the poorest residents of rural Kentucky learned you can always be made poorer by corporate villains. By Yasha Levine, AlterNet. November 26, 2009. |
Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.
Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.