My Favorite Book

Editor’s note: As part of the third annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, The Times and LA Youth, a non-profit, county-wide, teen-written newspaper published six times a year, sponsored an essay contest for high school students throughout Southern California. More than 500 students participated. Here are the winning essays.

ULISSES HERMANO / FAHRENHEIT 451. By Ray Bradbury

Imagine a world so twisted and chaotic that knowledge has had limits set to it. Philosophical thinking has been illegalized and new ideas to better oneself are a thing of the past. Books are a violation of the law and must be burned.

It’s called “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury, and boy, was it a twisted adventure. It takes place in the future in an insane world where thinking and learning have boundaries. The title signifies the temperature at which books are engulfed into flames. A career which firefighters take pride in doing.

The whole world has been manipulated into thinking that idealistic books and authors such as Socrates, Edgar Allan Poe and Ernest Hemingway are on a road which leads into unhappiness, confusion and death if you’re caught reading them. Certainly a challenge to sanity.

The characters are portrayed very vividly and imaginatively as narrow-minded, zombie-like individuals who are fed thoughts through a lifelike four-walled television. It engulfs one’s mind as the book is being read and fills one with horror as to a fantasy that can become reality. The main character faces a struggle within himself and society that he battles throughout the book as to whether or not to give in to what seems right and what seems wrong.

The book is a challenge to one’s imagination and questions society and the morality of society as a whole. A book everyone who knows how to read should read. Because, remember, in a world where fire is stronger than books and books are stronger than guns, anything can happen.

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Ulisses Hermano is a student at Valley Alternative Magnet School in Van Nuys. He is in the 12th grade.

AZADEH SAGHIAN / THE GRAPES OF WRATH. By John Steinbeck

The history of America is the history of brave people. Since its discovery in the late 15th century, courageous men and women have left their homes and sought a better life in America. From the celebrated Puritans, who left their native country to escape religious persecution, to the countless millions of immigrants from China, Japan and Eastern Europe who migrated here in the 19th and 20th centuries to escape war, persecution or economic stagnation, we find the intrepid people who make the United States the unique melting pot that we know it to be.

Not only are immigrants foreigners to the United States, but there have been periods in the history of this nation when migrations have taken place within the states. Such a period was during the Great Depression of the 1930s, in which many families from the Midwest were forced to leave behind their homes, their land, their way of life. . . . Thus comes the celebrated and prestigious book that describes the feelings of these immigrants: John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”

“The Grapes of Wrath” holds a special place in my heart because it conveys in accurate detail the feelings of a family that is forced to leave its home. As I read about the Joad family, which departs from its home in Oklahoma and makes a harsh trip west, I cannot help but remember the feelings I had upon leaving my native country. I feel a deep connection to the characters in this book, for they are impelled to move to a different part of the world without a choice; I, too, was compelled to move to another part of the world without a choice.

There exists an ineffable tie between immigrants from all over the world. The emotions of helplessness and confusion one feels upon entering a new location for life is universal. Thus, when reading this book, I felt Steinbeck’s words transcend the bounds of time and reach over from decades past to eloquently state what I had experienced during my life.

“The Grapes of Wrath” is the story of all the audacious people who have left their country for a better life in America. Its pages describe the omnipresent sentiments of those who leave all they have known in their lives to face the unknown. It speaks on behalf of the valiant men, women and children who have brought their unique cultures and styles of life into this great hodgepodge of a country. Thus I feel that “The Grapes of Wrath” has a cosmic meaning that every person who has ever taken a risk, faced a challenge or given up the familiar for a chance at something better can relate to.

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Azadeh Saghian is a student at Beverly Hills High School. She is in the 11th grade.

PATRICIA FARRIER / MY BROTHER. By Jamaica Kincaid

After I read “My Brother” by Jamaica Kincaid, it became one of my most favorite books. The author of the book writes about her brother’s death, which leads her beyond rage. In my opinion, the book is sad, emotional, absorbing and well-written.

The story she wrote is simple: Her brother Devon Drew died of complications from AIDS in 1996 at the age of 33. The event was far from unique, of course. Kincaid wasn’t even close to her brother Drew. He was the youngest of her three younger brothers, each with a father different from Kincaid’s. Although Drew was sharp and curious as a boy, he threw away his talents and made a fatal decision to glide through life on charm alone. After Kincaid moved away, he grew up to become an irresponsible, pot-head Rastafarian and a gardener who toyed with becoming a singer and gave himself the stage name “Sugar.” But one of the themes of “My Brother” is the overpowering gravitational pull of families--even if an individual’s family is so sick and doomed that they leave the country like Kincaid. For example, when Kincaid finds out that Drew is ill, she flies to Antigua to visit him and to offer help. She decides that her feelings for him are rather intense but probably smaller than love.

“My Brother” reads a little like a lyrical mystery novel. It’s clear from the first sentence that Drew is going to die, and what follows is Kincaid’s attempt to figure out what led to such a waste of life. She picks through childhood memories for a foreshadowing of what is to come. An example is the incident shortly after Drew was born, when he was lying in the arms of their mother, who was asleep, and red ants crawled in through the window and nearly ate him alive. And Kincaid adds a plot to her unfolding understanding of what happened to Drew the adult. She plants clues--encounters with acquaintances of Drew’s whose significance she doesn’t grasp until a hundred pages later.

Finally, the most memorable part of the book is the way she wrote her emotional state about her brother. For instance, on a break from the bedside vigil, she returns to her family in Vermont and wonders how she actually feels about her brother: “Love always feels much better than not love, and that is why everybody always wants to have love: because it feels much better, so much better,” says Kincaid.

“My Brother” is a good book. And yet, although Kincaid never says this so grandly, I sensed that Drew’s death prompted her to look at life differently. She wondered what life would be like if she were in Drew’s position, and also what her life would be like if she had not been so cold and ruthless in regard to her family. I recommend this book to those who enjoy emotional and absorbing nonfiction stories.

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Patricia Farrier is a student at Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies. She is in the 12th grade.

CAROLYN DUNCAN / THE GREAT GATSBY. By F. Scott Fitzgerald

I admire Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” for many reasons, such as his crafting of a character such as Gatsby, and his capturing at times a sense of romantic nostalgia that stands out against his portrayal of a stark, materialistic, wasteland world. Above all, though, what impresses me most in reading his work is not just what he writes about, but how he writes: his luminescent, glimmering prose, which makes this created world alike to an orb lit up, that we as readers look into.

Gatsby, we learn through Nick’s narration, is a man possessed by a dream that in reality has become mere ashes, that of a love for a woman named Daisy, his old sweetheart, now married and of a different world. Gatsby seems to have recognized from the beginning of the pursuit how improbable the whole thing was. “He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast. . . . [H]e knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.” Yet Gatsby’s hope would not let his dream die. This bittersweet wistfulness is captured in this depiction of Gatsby haunting where Daisy may have been on her honeymoon, in the same way that his dream is haunting him. We grasp the sad desperateness beneath Gatsby’s determination, in a way that is more sympathetic than pitiable. Here Fitzgerald’s prose shows its craft in this novel, creating its enigma we unravel in reading: the mystery of his character Gatsby, and the motivation of his singular dream.

“There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” In two sentences, Fitzgerald manages to capture something of beauty in the materialistic, empty world he portrays throughout his novel, whose last romantic thread found in Gatsby, the “blue gardens” of his dreams. We see how fleeting this romantic world is that Gatsby symbolizes the remnants of, how it, too, is like these “moths” that flit within a bleaker world, drawn to the last light in a darkness they do not even comprehend. At the end of his novel, Fitzgerald captures the same sense of dreams caught in the inevitabilities of time. “Gatsby believed in the green light. . . . It eluded us then, but that’s no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further. . . . So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Here, Fitzgerald captures the essence of Gatsby. Gatsby is ever-reaching for tomorrow, but may be selling his todays for dreams that may never come to fruition.

There is something eerily true in Fitzgerald’s astute capturing of the quality of hope, though. It seems we are either like Gatsby--full of vitality, yet whose dreams may yet overwhelm reality--or cold and practical, like Tom and Daisy, and without any sense of life at all. All of us who dream, the “we,” not just Gatsby, are “boats beating against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.” To dream, one must fight for a future that may never be had, against the currents of time that may inevitably find the dream a mere illusion. Thus, Fitzgerald captures through his tale of Gatsby the nature and need of humanity to hope. Like Sisyphus, it is that struggle, the desire and hope, that inevitably gives humankind nobility even in the most tragic of dreams.

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Carolyn Duncan is a student at Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies. She is in the 12th grade.

TRITIA NISHIKAWA / THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET. By Sandra Cisneros

In kindergarten, our short fingers would wrap around tiny paper cups of grape juice. As drops of condensation would collect around the sides of the cups, we would gently lick them as if to savor the moment. The vignettes that playfully frolic across the pages of Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street” remind me of sipping grape juice under the shade of tall orange-flowered trees as a child.

Her book, like life itself, is a collection of moments that make up the childhood of Esperanza, a young Latina living in a poor Chicago neighborhood. It is a book about the growing up of a girl who is constantly exposed to the unkept hopes and tragic endings of women in her neighborhood. Even so, we watch Esperanza wage her own battle against the typical female role as she leaves the table without clearing her dishes or refusing to believe she is too old to play games.

Cisneros writes from the heart of a child--bluntly and truthfully. She tells it as it is with descriptions that are vividly colorful and oftentimes comical. For example, Esperanza and her sisters are jump-roping and all the sudden the discussion of hips comes up. “You need them to dance. . . . [I]f you don’t get them you may turn into a man. . . . [T]hey bloom like roses. . . . [T]he bones just one day open. . . . [B]ut don’t have too many or your behind will spread,” say the characters.

Everyone needs this book. Everyone needs to remember what it was like to be a child, whose most powerful gifts are a carefree attitude and optimism. Too often we drown ourselves in the quicksand phrase “but I don’t have. . . .” Esperanza shows us that despite her ragged shoes and crumbling brick house, she can enjoy life’s little moments. She can play hide-and-seek in an abandoned garden; she can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky; she can run around in high heels twice her size feeling beautiful.

We have forgotten how to breathe in the air, drink in the sunlight and just say, “Gosh! Today is a gorgeous day!” Esperanza reminds us that we must sip the grape juice slowly and savor the moment.

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Tritia Nishikawa is a student at Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies. She is in the 12th grade.