Like an Episode of Teen Mom: Kendra by Coe Booth

Title: Kendra by Coe Booth

Genre: Contemporary YA

Pro-Feminist content: ★ ★ ★

Rage-Induction: >:(   >:(   >:(   >:(

 

There must be some kind of divine coincidence at work when you receive your new month's supply of the Pill the same day you begin a book about teen pregnancy. (Spoiler heavy, not like anyone else reads this thing anyway)

This was one of the few books I've checked out without looking at the cover first.  I pulled it off of the shelf thinking it was the book by Kendra Wilkinson-Baskett, the Playboy Bunny/ex-Girl Next Door who competed on this season's Dancing with the Stars (hey, I had to pick my books in the two minutes before I had to get to class!).  Judging by the reviews on Amazon, I'm not the only one who made this mistake.

When I finally looked at the cover, I was happily surprised to see a person of color on it.  At least, I thought it was a person of color, since I could only see the back of her arm.  I'm not a fan of this faceless girls trend on covers.  It suggests that a woman can't have a distinct identity, she's just her body.  Still, with all the white-washing covers scandals, I was pleased to at least see someone with dark skin depicted on the jacket.

When I read the inset of the jacket, I groaned. Kendra's mother Renée had her at fourteen and all but left her with Kendra's maternal grandmother Valerie (called Nana).  Now that Kendra's 14 she starts "messing around" with boys and everybody thinks Kendra's going to continue the cycle of teen pregnancy. I already know that black girls have higher rates of teen pregnancy and low income girls have higher rates of teen pregnancy.  But the truth of the matter is that it's a complicated situation, and I really don't want to read a book about unflattering stereotypes of young black women.  And if I wanted to watch a trashy teen mom, I'd rather watch the hot mess white girls on Teen Mom anyway.  So obviously, I was expecting to rage from page one (hey that rhymes!).

When I actually started reading, however, my feelings changed as i learned more about Kendra, her family, and her dreams.  The first thing I noticed about this book was the language: very fresh and contemporary.  These characters sound like urban teens rather than adult female romance writers or super witty and erudite adults.  There's mentions of Dominican hair salons, relaxing one's hair, and weaves galore, plus little things like soul food and Goody's headache powder instead of aspirin. At first the language is quite jarring as it carries over into the narration, emphasis mine:

"[Nana] thinks these books are nasty.... The woman would have a fit if she saw this one, because on the cover they got a girl in booty shorts leaning on the hood of some thug's car, and I don't wanna hear Nana's mouth tonight.  Like just because I'm reading these books, any second now I'm gonna start doing what the characters are doing." (pg 12)

We learn in the first chapter that Renée graduated from Princeton with her PhD in Sociology and is now looking for a job and a place to live.  This is a big deal for Kendra because it means she'll be leaving the Bronx and going where her mother is.  Initially I was happy to see that Booth showed that it is possible to finish your education while being a teen mom (note to Amber: stop acting like the GED is as tough as a PhD in astrophysics.  If Janelle Trainwreck Evans can get hers and start community college, you can stop taking coke/beating Gary/neglecting your daughter/picking up convicts from Wal-Mart for an hour a day to study and pass the damn thing!)  But Kendra tells us that she doesn't really have a relationship with her mother since she was raised by Nana.  In fact, it seems like Renée likes to deny Kendra's existence. Among the more heartbreaking passages are the following:

"while I was standing there watching her, Renée's classmates and professors kept coming over to me, saying stuff like 'I know you must be so proud of your sister' and 'Will you be following your big sister to Princeton one day?'... it was the first time I knew for sure I didn't exist when Renée was at college.  I was just the little secret she kept in the Bronx." (pg 6)

 

 

"'When Kendra was little...[she] used to walk around talking about, "When I grow up, I'm going to be a college."  Not a college student or a college professor. No, she wanted to be a college.' [Nana] laughs..." (pg 84)

"When I was little, I wanted to be a college because that's where Renée was all the time." (pg 87)

 

"I don't show up in the album 'til near the end.  There aren't any pictures of Renée pregnant, but all of a sudden, there I am.... Nana has some pictures of me at home, but the fact that Renée has pictures of me, too, it means a lot more.  There's a picture of me on the couch crying my eyes out.  And there's one of Nana holding me in the kitchen. But the only picture I see of me and Renée is the one in Nana's bedroom. Renée is sitting on Nana's bed and I'm just a little newborn right there on the bed next to her. Renée's looking up at the camera, but she's half smiling, half bored.... the weird thing is, even though I'm staring at the picture, it takes me a while to really get it. My crib was in Nana's room." (pg 200)

 

Kendra's father Kenny seems to be kinder, but stuck in a sort of arrested development. Not only does he still harbor latent feelings for Renée, but he also can't seem to get a good job. He's also a nicer depiction of the oft-vilified young black father. Not only does he pick Kendra up from school when she's sick/try to listen to her when she's sad, he also brings an envelope of whatever meager earnings he has every week to Nana as a sort of child support.

Kendra's best (?) friend at school is actually her aunt Adonna (Kenny's younger sister) who's just a year older than her niece. Nana disapproves of Kendra's friendship with Adonna, who is admittedly shallow and boy-crazy, but Kendra likes the fact that Adonna helps her fit in. From Kendra's description, a lot of Adonna's wild behavior has to do with the fact that her father abandoned her like Renée did Kendra.  It wasn't explained if Adonna and Kenny share the same father and thus would be Kendra's grandfather. It would have been interesting to know and possibly shed light onto why Kenny was sexually active at a young age.

 

Here's where the subplot kicks in: Adonna's got her eye on Neshawn, the hot baseball player whose locker is next to Kendra's. Kendra is initially repulsed by the cocky Neshawn. An interesting scene comes up when a teacher chastises Kendra for talking in the computer lab while ignoring the bad behavior of the charming Neshawn:

"Neshawn is still laughing and Ms. Ballinger still says nothing to him. It's not even a bit fair. Guys get away with everything. It's like the teachers don't expect any better from them....Yeah, he's cute. But in my opinion, a guy needs to have more than just a handsome face. A lot more." (pg 24)

Okay, the last half of that passage, I'll just say famous last words and let it alone for now. The first half though, is a little more interesting. I've always complained about how in a lot of minority cultures guys seem to get away with things (i.e. dating, getting lower grades, going out with friends) that girls cannot do. It's the sexist expectation that girls have to be docile; they're socialized to be nice. School seems to be the one realm that places value on those "feminine" characteristics. So it is damaging for girls to see that even there guys can get special treatment. But wait, is it really a good thing for teachers not to expect good behavior from them? No. A double dose of why sexism is bad for both sexes. Even worse, in this setting, it has a bad implication that these mostly black males aren't worth disciplining because ~they'll never amount to anything~. God this book is depressing.

Booth does the really rage inducing thing of creating a love triangle where there really doesn't need to be. From the moment the reader's introduced to the ~alluring~ Neshawn we know Kendra's going to fall for him. But there's also Darnell, the Jacob to Neshawn's abusive Edward. Darnell, the nice sweet guy from Kendra's stage crew, tells her flat out that he likes her and gives her a kiss on the cheek. He sits next to her at lunch, calls her when she's sick, and worries about her when she complains of a headache. Of course, poor guy has no sex appeal and therefore is shut down, and shut down so hard that Booth neglects to tell us how Darnell reacts to the news that Kendra's with Neshawn. All we get is a paltry scene where he looks sad/disappointed when he sees her in the hallway with Neshawn when she lied and said she was sick. What's the point of introducing the character at all? And the triangle with Adonna's enough without adding another angle to it.

Booth writes pretty frankly about how making out/hooking up/having sex make the body feel. She gives a good picture of how girls are having sex at younger ages. But I also think it's a bit unrealistic that the girl who's shy with boys feels so wrapped up in her first kiss with Neshawn that she immediately drops her panties. Literally.

The good (?-I'm ambivalent to say the least) that comes out of Booth taking on such a sensitive topic is that it covers both contraception and the possibility of abortion. When Renée and Nana learn that Kendra has been having sex, they make an appointment at the clinic for Kendra to get birth control. Unfortunately, here Booth makes a mistake of emphasizing contraception over the importance of safe sex. Let it be known that birth control ≠ contraception ≠ safe sex. Birth control includes the pill, condoms, IUDs, etc., plus abortion and the morning after pill. Contraception does not include abortion or the morning after pill. And safe sex means methods of preventing STDs, including but not limited to condoms and dental dams. I understand that Kendra doesn't think that she technically lost her virginity because she only had oral and anal sex, but Booth missed a good opportunity to show that all types of sexual activity carries risks, and a disproportionate number of straight black females have the highest infection rate among other race and sex demographics.

The abortion part, too, is interesting. I guess I have low standards when it comes to media exploration of the issue because I'm willing to take a judgmental, depressing scene about it over avoiding the topic entirely. Renée all but admits that if she knew then what she knows now, she wouldn't have had Kendra at all. I shall take that to mean that she would have aborted instead of given her up for adoption because the latter would mean she'd still have to be pregnant, and judging by the fact that she didn't have a single photo of herself while pregnant, I'd say she would not want to put up with all of that discomfort just to give the baby away to an entirely new family.

And now for the completely rageworthy. One huge, gigantic problem I had was with all the violence in the book. A freshman gets jumped in the schoolyard, and later, when Adonna finds out Kendra was with Neshawn before he asked Adonna out,  Adonna jumps Kendra. Bad enough that the kids jump each other, but I draw the line at adults doing it. Adonna tries to confront Kendra about being jealous that she's going on a date with Neshawn, and Nana, who's been spending the entire book spying on Kendra, finally hears what she's been dreading all along: her granddaughter is sexually active. So Nana does the mature, sensible thing and rushes into the room to start beating Kendra's face and back of the head so hard that the towel she's wearing falls off. Kendra gets off with a scratched and swollen face but there's no lasting psychological damage. I haven't watched 15 years worth of Maury and Jerry Springer to not recognize domestic violence when I see it. Nobody calls the cops. Nobody cares. And another instance of DV is normalized.

The other problem I had was the Neshawn storyline. Yet again in YA we have an abusive relationship depicted as twu wuv. The way Neshawn tries to manipulate sex leads to, if not borderline rape scenes, at least mentally abusive acts. The first time the two are together, he manipulates her into giving him a blow job after she says that she can't have sex:

 

"But that don't stop him for a second. He's breathing heavy in my ear and says, 'I need a blow job.' And he picks me up off the table." (pg 98)

 

If all it takes to convince Kendra to do what he says is a bit of breathing, she  should hear what Godney has to say about that. 

 

After the encounter, Kendra feels ashamed and dirty, neither of which I am told are normal reactions to one's first sexual encounter. And she gets physically ill--she has the flu. Whether that's coincidental or psychosomatic I'm not sure, but it's not kosher to me. What bugs me is that nearly every time thereafter that Neshawn tries to get Kendra to meet him in the halls to hookup, she follows him! Seriously, if the only place he wants to do it is in the hallways in your high school, run away honey, run far, far away.

Well, I shouldn't say that. Neshawn does take her to his place once. He shows her the dirty house where he's staying with his mom's boyfriend until she returns. And they have anal sex there, hinted at only obliquely so I guess it flies over the head of some readers. But what bugs me isn't that they have sex, it's that he provides her beer before they do it. And yet he does not drink. It seems like the old frat boy-date rapist trick: ply the girl with alcohol so her resistance is lowered while you stand there sober, calculating the exact moment you can prey on her so that she thinks she gave you full legal consent.

Remember the thing Kendra said in the beginning about how she needs more than a pretty face in a guy to make her fall for him? Toooootally proven false as she gets together with Neshawn in the end, and the only things she knows about him aside from the size of his penis is the fact that he reads a lot (or at least owns a lot of books) and his mother is serving overseas and he's afraid for her safety. That's right kiddos, aside from his good looks and supposed dazzle charm, Edward Neshawn doesn't show any other reason for the reader to want the two of them to get together!

In fact, there's barely a satisfying conclusion at all; the entire book falls apart in the end. The language in this book is very accurate to the characters, but the attitudes shown by the characters about really important themes like sex, safety, and motherhood are so troubling I'd have a hard time recommending this book to any young readers. And it's a shame because there are so few writers willing to tackle subjects like these in the first place.