: Marie Myung-Ok Lee
: Hurt You
: Blackstone Publishing
: 9798200758111
: 1
: CHF 10.50
:
: Kinder- und Jugendbücher
: English
: 100
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB

Of Mice and Mentells the tragic story of a Korean American teen who fights to protect herself and her neurodivergent older brother from a hostile community.

Mov ng beyond the quasi-fraternal bond of the unforgettable George and Lenny fromOf Mice and Men, Hurt You explores the actual sibling bond of Georgia and Leonardo da Vinci Daewoo Kim, who has an unnamed neurological disability that resembles autism. The themes of race, disability, and class spin themselves out in a suburban high school where the Kim family has moved in order to access better services for Leonardo.

Suddenly unmoored from the familiar, including the support of her Aunt Clara, Georgia struggles to find her place in an Asian-majority school where whites still dominate culturally, and she finds herself feeling not Korean 'enough.' Her one pole star is her commitment to her brother, a loyalty that finds itself at odds with her immigrant parents' dreams for her, and an ableist, racist society that may bring violence to Leonardo despite her efforts to keep him safe.

Hurt You is a deep exploration of family, society, and the bond between siblings and reflects the reality that people with intellectual disabilities are far more likely to be the victim of a violent crime, not the perpetrator.



Marie Myung-Ok Lee is the author ofThe Evening Hero,Somebody's Daughter, the YA novelFinding My Voice (heralded as the first Korean American own voices novel for teens), and middle-grade novelsIf It Hadn't Been for Yoon Jun andNight of the Chupacabras. Her books have won awards such as Friends of American Writers, New York Public Library's Best Books for the Teen Age, and NCTE's Children's Choice. She has been a judge for the National Book Awards, a Fulbright Fellow, and one of the few Korean American journalists allowed into North Korea. She currently teaches creative writing as a writer-in-residence at Columbia University's Center for the Study of Ethnicity& Race. She has an adult son on the autistic spectrum who helped to inspire her latest novel.

One

Georgia Kim

Secret Diary
(if you are reading this—STOP!!!
This is an invasion of privacy!)

August 12

Umma and Appa, fighting. Again.

I used to be relieved once they had their daily fight. It was like some kind of pressure valve was released, and we were set for the rest of the day. There. It’s done. But now, steam just keeps leaking, dripping sometimes, hissing, occasionally exploding when we least expect it. I have to get real: it’s chronic, like those underground fires that are burning in Alaska because of climate change. I give Leo a look when I think a storm is brewing. He never looks back, because that’s part of his disorder, the eye contact thing, but I wonder if he feels it, the bad air approaching. The daily bad air.

Obviously, I didn’t know my parents before they were married, but I know from my aunt Clara that theirs was a whirlwind romance, one with some Romeo and Juliet–type troubles (like Dad’s family in Korea didn’t want him marrying a Korean American who could barely speak Korean) to overcome, two extremely good-looking young people. I want a time machine so I can see this. Or, act as lawyer, judge, spy, family FBI investigator and demand they produce evidence for their union. Photos, videos, courtroom sketches—I don’t care. Not just for me, I want to see them take in their first dates. Their first, fluttery kiss. The love-blind light in their eyes. I want to see how each thought the other could make them into a better person. I want to see them with so much hope for their pairing that they stride hand in hand into their future together, smiling. Wedding pictures don’t count. Anyone can fake their way through those.

I’ve never had a boyfriend, so I’m hardly the expert on why people come together, no less decide to spend their lives together forever. But I have zero doubt that they were once deliriously in love. And likely still are (however, produce the evidence, please!). And of course, they produced Leo and me.

  • I want to know them when they were happy together.
  • I also want to know that it wasn’t Leo who changed everything.

I shut the book. A sparkly horse cover. I’ve been “off” horses since sixth grade, but my parents seem to think I just stay the same and don’t get older. I can’t help wondering if it’s because Leo has never mentally gotten older since he was maybe three. I don’t know. But I’m still thinking of my own line—“produced Leo and me”—and cringing. I don’t even know how to talk about sex without blushing and metaphorically ducking my head into the sand, giggling like some middle schooler and not a rising junior. But I know that for most kids, picturing their parents having sex is the number one thing they do not want to think about. But I do. I want to know that they “made love” (also cringe, but a little better phrasing) and that Leo and I came out of that. Instead of Leo being the biggest barrier to our family happiness, the biggest obstacle to my success. When it’s the opposite. Truly. Why can’t they see that?

Oops, losing the thread here. I want to be a writer, maybe, but the diary is no longer a compendium of funny and interesting vignettes I could use in a novel someday. But to keep the pen moving (as one of my writing teachers recommended we do to keep the creative juices flowing), my diary ends up repeating words over and over in the pauses, kind of like Leo.Why why why why why why? did we have tomove?

I know why we moved. Between my parents, their own refrain (with different tones): “Because of Leo.”

That’s a lot to put on Leo, who has never ever asked for any of these things. He hasn’t asked for anything, because he can’t really talk.

But I know he’s sad. I’m not sure he knows exactly what’s going on, but it’s been a year since Aunt Clara’s accident. Aunt Clara, the one other person who takes time to try to understand him. To let Leo be Leo even when it means he squawks like a bird when he’s excited. Or when he calls me Nuna, older sister, and repeats “Nuna keep me safe, Nuna keep me sa