Annie on My Mind (1982)

Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden is number 42 on the list of the most banned / challenged books and according to the description on the 1992 reissue, it was even burned in Kansas City. For all of that publicity, it's an absolutely charming story of love.

The book opens with Liza in college writing a lengthy letter to Annie. The letter is the segue into a number of flashbacks about how Liza and Annie met. Just as Claudia (From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konisburg) finds herself through her adventures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Liza finds Annie.

Although both young ladies are in high school, they like to partake in roll playing and other childish behavior. While it may strike some readers as quaint or unrealistic, it struck a chord with me. My then boyfriend (now husband) once pretended to be Robin Hood to woo me. We were in college at the time — only a year or two removed from Liza and Annie.

As far as the romance goes, it's a pretty tame book. There's one mostly hinted at scene near the end. What is more shocking and saddening (because of its continued timeliness in some parts of the country) is the bigotry Liza faces at her private school.

I read the novel on a BART ride to and from San Francisco. It made an hour and a half round trip journey go by quickly. I plan to check out more of Nancy Garden's novels as I have time. ( )

I heard about this several times in my Young Adult Literature class, and am glad I hunted it down. It's relatively undated (i.e. not out of date, although it was first published in 1982), and this copy has an interview with the author.

Annie On My Mind is the story of Annie and Liza, told from Liza's point of view; the two girls have different backgrounds but slowly fall in love. (As the author emphasizes in the interview, the book is a love story at its core.) The narrative alternates between the recent past - the girls' senior year of high school, told in first person - and the present, their first semester at college (MIT for Liza, UC Berkeley for Annie), told in the third person.

Unlike David Levithan's more modern LGBTQ fiction (Boy Meets Boy; Wide Awake), Nancy Garden writes about a more realistic and less welcoming world for gay teens. However, though some at Liza's school are outraged/offended/disgusted by homosexuality, Liza's parents and some teachers are supportive - overall, it seems like a fairly accurate depiction of the likely mix of reactions at the time it was written (and, to some extent, today).

"This is the thing to remember: the very worst thing...would be to be separated from each other...Anything else..."
"Anything else is just bad," said Ms. Widmer. "But no worse than bad. Bad things can always be overcome."
...
"If you two remember nothing else from all this," Ms. Widmer said, "remember that. Please. Don't - don't punish yourselves for people's ignorant reactions to what we all are."
"Don't let ignorance win," said Ms. Stevenson. "Let love." (p. 232) ( )

I picked this book up a while back, but I never actually got around to reading it. I started it, then set it aside, not because it wasn't good, but because it wasn't the right book for me at the given time. I don't remember what I decided to read instead, but I've been meaning to finish this one for a while now. So, I decided to pick this back up again, and I'm glad that I did, because it was lovely and touching.

Annie On My Mind is Liza Winthrop's coming-of-age story of how she met Annie Kenyon, became friends with her, and eventually fell in love with her. Reading the story, it's not hard to understand how these two girls could love one another. They are both lively, fun and imaginative, intuitive and unique. They both are kind of loners who find in each other an understanding that each thought was impossible, or at the very least, improbable. Liza mentions how they feel as if they are two parts of a whole, and refers to Greek literature which claims that the gods made everyone with two halves in all combinations (male/female, male/male, female/female), and then split them apart. Liza claims to have found her other half.

I am fully of the opinion that people should be free to live and love as they choose. I think that the arguments against homosexuality are mainly based in fear and ignorance, not to mention the utterly ridiculous, such as the "If we let gays marry, then what's next, human/animal marriages?" argument. Last I checked, gay people are able to think and communicate their wants and needs, and more importantly, enter into a legally binding, consentual contract, which is to my knowledge, something Gertie the Cow just can't do.

This book generally focuses on the religious aspect, with the characters who are offended by Liza and Annie's relationship indicating that homosexuality is immoral and an abomination, although they don't get too overtly preachy, as much as just nasty in their disgust. I am not a religious person, as most people who know me by know are aware of, and I admit that it baffles me how people who are against homosexuality cherry-pick this one biblical "law" to follow, when so many other tenets of the bible are outdated and abhorrent, like requiring death for working on the Sabbath, as one example.

My least favorite character in the book was definitely Liza's friend Sally. She, more than anyone else, made me angry, because she couldn't even claim to have her own opinions on the matter, and just let herself be herded into the opinion that it was wrong, and just blindly accepted that was the case. She made me all the angrier for having the audacity to compare a life decision to a piddling mistake in judgement, and then condemn Liza, and homosexuality itself, as being a mental illness. This kind of attitude really makes me angry, since we have come so far toward tolerance of different ways of life, and yet still have so very far to go.

I really liked both Annie and Liza, and could identify with their feelings, even though I have never experienced that type of situation before. I thought that Nancy Garden did a fantastic job in portraying the newness and uncertainty of their relationship. It was certainly awkward, and as much as things progressed kind of naturally from Point A to Point B to Point C, as it would in any relationship, it held that extra bit of uncertainty and fear due to the stigma of their being two girls, rather than a traditional boy/girl couple.

I love how they tested the waters together, found that there were waves and a strong current, but still found the courage to keep swimming. This is definitely a book that every young person, or, really every person should read. It is a very personal, and intimate look at the way we can find who we are when we least expect it, and how we must be brave and trust in ourselves once we do. ( )

I completely understand why this book is still important and relevant to those searching for answers about love in an L/G relationship, esp. as a 'coming of age' story. The description of the emotional intensity of the two girls' feelings for each other, how they connect so quickly, and how they deal with the different stages of the relationship - they all ring so true that reading the book felt at times like reliving some of those wonderful 'first moments' in different relationships. ( )

Quite good, though I think it shows that this was written in 1982. ( )