imagine_stars's Full Review: Virginia Euwer Wolff - Make Lemonade
When life gives you lemons...
Find a job, get an education, pull yourself out of your pit, make lemonade, and pour full glasses for everyone around you. That's what LaVaughn decides. At fourteen years old, she's already seen what it's like to live in poverty, and she vows to study at college and get a real job, have a real life, with a decent house and enough money to feed her kids. Her determination leads her to a babysitting job for seventeen-year-old Jolly, the mother of baby Jilly and two-year-old Jeremy. LaVaughn's mother isn't thrilled about her daughter spending so much time in a crusty apartment, so she makes the stipulation that the job ends if LaVaughn's grades slip.
LaVaughn is no slacker. Despite the cockroaches, the dirty diapers, the "yuck" lodged in every crack, and the poor wages, LaVaughn is determined to make things work. "I don't know why I kept going back," she says at one point, "But once, one night, Jeremy woke screaming in a bad dream and when I held him close he shut up for a minute but then he started again."
Jolly also tries hard, but dropping out of high school only enrolled her in life's school of hard knocks. She comes home bleeding one day, and on another, she loses her job for reporting her harrassing coworker. LaVaughn suggests that she get on welfare, go back to school, but Jolly insists that welfare will take her babies, school won't help. Still, LaVaughn is persistent, pursuing information for Jolly until Jolly finally agrees to go back to school.
But school isn't an instant reform. Jobless Jolly can't afford to pay LaVaughn, and LaVaughn's not sure whether free babysitting will help or hurt Jolly's journey to overcome her circumstances. Besides, to ask for money from a hurting person just so you won't end up hurting like her in the future--it's taking advantage. So she struggles to do what's right while Jolly struggles with writing a simple letter. They fight: with each other, with the system. They despise: the fathers that left, the people who make them feel like crap. They love: Jilly, Jeremy, the hope that maybe things will get better.
You make lemonade, that's what you do. Little Jeremy planted lemon seeds in a cup of dirt, and they're never going to grow, and Jolly yells at LaVaughn for breaking his heart. But maybe, maybe, those seeds will poke up through the ground, even just a little. Together, the girls laugh, cry, and scrape up money to buy diapers and shoes, all the while being attacked by life and learning how to keep going.
Make Lemonade is a sad but beautiful story in the hands of Virginia Euwer Wolff, a story about fighting and dealing and not giving up. Perhaps the most unique thing about this book is the way it's written: in verse, not regular prose. It's a stream-of-consciousness style, but not in the broken-up way you might see in other stories. LaVaughn narrates, but instead of hearing the story as if it's in the past, we get her thoughts as soon as she thinks them. Her train of thought never seems forced or unnatural; it's very rhythmic. Struggling readers may have some difficulty, as LaVaughn's word structure is all over the place. Some writers try too hard to make their dialogue sound real. This distorted syntax sounds normal.
Here's one example:
And like they say in Steam Class:
One good thing you do in a day for somebody else
don't cost you.
But then they go on about you have to find the good thing
that ain't the wrong good thing,
like for somebody going to abuse you,
or like you expect some big banquet of thanks for it
which you ain't going to get.
They make you give examples of both kinds.
So I end up not knowing
after I thought about it
no more than I did
in the first place.
The characters feel so real, I could reach through the pages and pet their hair. LaVaughn is a strong protagonist. I enjoy her because she's honest and hardworking without being unrealistic. She's also determined: her vision of college and getting out of the dump drives her to succeed, and while she can't be a model student, she's doing the best she can. Also, LaVaughn is impressively responsible, willing to try even the worst jobs if necessary. My favorite thing about her, though, is her sense of hope. Bad situations put her in despair for awhile, but she never thinks, "Fine. I can't do anything about it. I'm done." She gets frustrated, sad, mad, but doesn't take out her emotions on other people. We can see that her struggles to do the right thing. She doesn't know all the answers. She doesn't want to always do what's best. But she still handles her world maturely. Completely unpretentious.
Jolly, too, is a lovable character in a different way. It's not that she tries to let things go. She just doesn't know the way things work. When she misses class because Jeremy gets sick, she doesn't realize that she should have informed someone. Life spins around Jolly, and she can't hear the beat that would draw her into the dance. Instead, she's fumbling around, fighting the world and praying that it won't fight back. She tries. She doesn't always know what to try, but she tries.
Rather than screaming about the horror of poverty, Make Lemonade softly whispers truth. The book is filled with grim concepts--teenage motherhood, dirty counters, inability to write simple letters, fear. While addressed as cruel realities, they're also shown as objects which can be defeated by hard work and determination.
The plot isn't always exciting. Mostly, it lingers in Jolly's living room, while LaVaughn tells us that Jilly threw up again and she's not sure if asking Jolly for a paycheck is okay and she's making another phone call to the teacher and the lemon seeds aren't growing yet. In LaVaughn's poetic voice, even the mundane events are lovely. Wolff does an excellent job crafting words that pull us through all the little details to get to the larger point.
The book contains a few questionable concepts, but Wolff handles them gently. For instance, when Jolly describes how the coworker was feeling her up, we know exactly what's going on without her being explicit. Later, as LaVaughn changes Jilly's diaper, she tells her "that part is hers, it's precious and she don't let nobody, not anybody, ever go near her privacy till she knows he loves her to stay with her her whole life." It's not glossed over. It's presented in a way that eliminates discomfort. Appropriate for middle school readers.
Make Lemonade drudges up questions, hard questions, good questions. LaVaughn shares her thoughts about everything, whether it's being capable or not having a father or doing well when you don't feel like it, and it's easy for readers to identify, even readers who aren't in her exact situation. For example, Jolly refuses to turn in the boss, even though it's right, because she knows that the system will turn against her and keep her from getting another job. How many of us have refused to speak up against something for fear of retaliation? How many have not done the right thing because it good bad before it got good again? Tough questions, tough situations. There's even advice sprinkled around: [Mom's] motto is Bootstraps go in 2 directions, either up or down. You choose and you remember you chose.
Everything is layered with meaning. Jeremy plants lemon seeds, and LaVaughn tells him, "If you want something to grow and be so beautiful you could have a nice day just from looking at it, you have to wait." Does that apply just to his plant? Didn't think so.
Even though it took me awhile to really get into the book, I loved it once I finished. There's no Disney-esque ending, no immediate solutions, but there's hope. Wolff has done a great job breathing life into one girl's story, one simple story that probably matches hundreds of real-life stories. Make Lemonade is happy and disturbing and tragic and lovely and five stars for you, Ms. Wolff, and your stinkin' wonderful poetry.
An award-winning novel about growing up and making choicesViginia Euwer Wolff's groundbreaking novel, written in free verse, tells the story of fourte...More at HotBookSale
When she answers a babysitting ad, 14-year-old LaVaughn meets Jolly, a 17-year-old single mother with two kids by different fathers. As she helps Joll...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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