{"id":36995,"date":"2015-03-01T10:55:52","date_gmt":"2015-03-01T14:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=36995"},"modified":"2015-06-28T17:25:13","modified_gmt":"2015-06-28T21:25:13","slug":"hard-love-by-ellen-wittlinger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/hard-love-by-ellen-wittlinger\/","title":{"rendered":"Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hard<\/a>These days, too many young folks know little of\u00a0life before smart phones enabled virtual instant access. Last century\u00a0\u2013 in the 1990s, that is\u00a0\u2013 something called ‘zines’ gave voice to\u00a0angry young voices … albeit writing, designing, and actually printing these self-productions took much longer and required considerably more effort than the immediate gratification of today’s blogs, vlogs, updates, snap chats, instagrams,\u00a0and the like.<\/p>\n

Way back then, high school junior\u00a0John Galardi expresses the anger and frustration he can’t show at home or school into a zine\u00a0filled with the\u00a0misunderstandings he faces daily as the only child of dysfunctional divorced parents. His weekends are supposed to be spent with a father who can barely get through a Friday\u00a0night pizza\u00a0with him. His mother is still reeling from abandonment, even as she’s about to marry someone else; in the five years she lost her husband, she’s been unable to even touch her only child.<\/p>\n

For everything he can’t say, John\u00a0creates\u00a0Bananafish<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 a nod to his “Bible,” J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories<\/em>\u00a0in which “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” exposes the hypocrisy of adults.\u00a0Someday, John hopes\u00a0his “homemade and weird”\u00a0efforts can\u00a0be more like\u00a0Escape Velocity<\/em>, the zine of his dreams, written by a 17-year-old self-described\u00a0“Puerto Rican Cuban Yankee lesbian.” By the time he tracks down Marisol\u00a0at the Boston Tower Records (blast from the past for us oldsters!) where she drops her latest installments, he’s already becoming\u00a0someone else; he introduces\u00a0himself as\u00a0Giovanni,\u00a0never mind his Italian roots are six generations removed. Theirs is a fraught but quickly bonded friendship, made fragile for all the lies they tell each other\u00a0\u2013 and to their own selves. As their relationship reaches breaking point, both\u00a0will learn lessons about hard love … of all kinds, between parents, parents and children, friends, impossible lovers, and lovers-to-be.<\/p>\n

Ellen Wittlinger<\/a>\u2019s author website lists almost two dozen awards and honors for\u00a0Hard Love<\/em><\/a>, including\u00a0a 1999\u00a0Lamda Literary Award<\/a>\u00a0and 2000 Michael L. Printz Honor<\/a>. That plethora of recognition is surely well-deserved. While\u00a0the techno-details (or lack thereof) might initially make Love\u00a0<\/em>seem dated for\u00a0today’s 21st-century, plugged-in\u00a0audience, reading\u00a0onward will be worth every head-scratching effort. Emotions \u2013 especially the hormonally-overcharged variety \u2013 remain timeless.<\/p>\n

For\u00a0added urgency and immediacy, you might choose to go aural; narrator Mark Webber has just the right angry young man intonations to give voice to Gio’s\u00a0angst-filled, frightened but arrogant, teenage soul. Carefully, authentically, Wittlinger manages to balance desperation with hope, resentment with communication, and heartbreak with options. Hard love was never about\u00a0easy answers, anyway.<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Middle Grade, Young Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>:\u00a01999<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These days, too many young folks know little of\u00a0life before smart phones enabled virtual instant access. Last century\u00a0\u2013 in the 1990s, that is\u00a0\u2013 something called ‘zines’ gave voice to\u00a0angry young voices … albeit writing, designing, and actually printing these self-productions took much longer and required…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,6,197,199,30,60,31],"tags":[82,6608,3173,10,189,11,6216,50,13,6217,39],"class_list":["post-36995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-audio","category-fiction","category-hapa","category-latinaox","category-middle-grade-readers","category-nonethnic-specific","category-young-adult-readers","tag-adoption","tag-bookdragon","tag-ellen-wittlinger","tag-family","tag-father-son-relationship","tag-friendship","tag-hard-love","tag-lgbtqia","tag-love","tag-mark-webber","tag-parent-child-relationship"],"yoast_head":"\nHard Love by Ellen Wittlinger - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/hard-love-by-ellen-wittlinger\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"These days, too many young folks know little of\u00a0life before smart phones enabled virtual instant access. Last century\u00a0\u2013 in the 1990s, that is\u00a0\u2013 something called ‘zines’ gave voice to\u00a0angry young voices … albeit writing, designing, and actually printing these self-productions took much longer and required...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/hard-love-by-ellen-wittlinger\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-03-01T14:55:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-06-28T21:25:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2015\/01\/Hard-Love-by-Ellen-Wittlinger-on-BookDragon.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1650\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"2475\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@SmithsonianAPA\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger - BookDragon","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/hard-love-by-ellen-wittlinger\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger - BookDragon","og_description":"These days, too many young folks know little of\u00a0life before smart phones enabled virtual instant access. 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