The Rebellious Reader

Allison Spangenberg

Excerpt from original article

3 year-old Goldilocks has her arms full of picture books and a scowl on her face.  As her mother vacuums, Goldilocks stomps close behind, tossing books at her back, yelling, “Storytime!”  That was me.  I’d toss Little Golden Books, Clifford, Dr. Seuss, Where the Wild Things Are, The Polar Express and The Mitten. 

            After 5 minutes of “time out”, my mom would read to me, letting me see the pages as she did so.  I’d match the letters to the sounds, until I began to recognize words.  I desperately wanted to learn how to read, so I’d never have to wait for storytime again.  By the time Kindergarten rolled around, I could read my favorite books all by myself. 

            I carried my love of reading with me through childhood, which is when reading became a tool for exploration, much like the bicycle I’d use to explore my sub-division.  I was a curious kid, constantly bugging adults with questions like, “How do spaceships work?” and “Where’s Spain?”  I devoured children’s non-fiction books about nature, science and world cultures.  I used reading as a lens to explore the creatures I couldn’t find in my backyard and the people I wouldn’t see at the supermarket.  I wanted to learn facts: to know exactly what the Red-eyed Tree Frog ate or what happens at a Japanese cherry blossom festival.

I’d also read scary books, an RL Stine Goosebumps or one by Lois Duncan.  They were tales of normal kids faced with mummys, monsters and haunted clocks.  Or kids who witnessed a crime and were being stalked by hit men.  These books were hyper-real and could bring my imagination to a place of fear that not even Nightmare on Elm Street could touch.

            In junior high, I read fashion magazines and quickly became fed up with them.  After flipping through an issue of one, I always felt like I was too fat, too shy and wearing last year’s lipstick shade.  Why was I reading magazines that made me feel like worthless?

A few years ago, my family had just bought its first computer with internet access.  I scoured the budding World Wide Web for something better to read.  I weeded through the nonsense and pornography and discovered online zines.  Either posted on a website, or sent through e-mail, these zines featured personal experience stories, reviews of music and movies and advice columns.  They were put together by girls like me, who felt bored with and insulted by mainstream magazines.

I began my own online zine, called GKB (Girls Kick Butt).  For each issue, I wrote editorials about burning issues, like whether or not the Spice Girls were degrading toward women and published submissions from other young writers.  I sent out GKB through e-mail, every Friday for a few years.  At its peak, GKB had over 800 subscribers.

            I grew into an angry, green-haired high schooler, determined to bring hell to my Chicago suburban home town, to avenge the uprightness and boredom.  I spent half my Saturdays in detention usually for something ridiculous like wearing my underwear on my head or yelling obscenities during a school assembly. 

            Reading was just one more form of rebellion, for me.  I wanted a philosophical excuse for my bad behavior, a deeper mission behind my rage.  So I read Marx and declared myself a member of the oppressed “working class” (although I’d never held a job).  I read Nietzsche and declared myself an Ubermensch, above the law, which in my mind, gave me permission to pick fights and egg houses.  I found excuses for a paranoid world view from Aldous Huxley and an excuse to be apathetic and moody from Camus.

            I liked fiction that dealt with journeys, like Kerouac’s On the Road and of course, JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.  My English teachers prescribed Shakespeare and Homer, but in such a boring way.  There wasn’t much class discussion.  The teacher would merely read the text aloud, in a droning voice.  I still cringe whenever The Oddessy is still mentioned.

            I was a fiction writing major at Columbia College in Chicago.  The department used a specialized teaching method, called the Story Workshop.  In my classes, I learned to read as a writer, to analyze structure, voice, language and characters.  I learned how to “steal” what was working and apply it to my own work.  We read published work and other students’ work aloud, then discussed what was working and what was unclear.  The assigned reading included novels by the likes of Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, Dostoyevsky, Ray Bradbury and Columbia faculty members Joe Meno and Don DeGrazia.  Other assignments inlcuded stories from the department’s literary magazine, Hair Trigger.

Reading has become my precious escape.  Currently, during my 40 minutes of lunch, I use books to transport me out of the dull office break room.  I read things that I didn’t have time for in college.  I read independent zines and comix, small press novels, lit journals, poetry and (don’t laugh) self-help books.