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Wide Awake Now - Hardcover

Levithan, David

 
9780593706978: Wide Awake Now
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593706978 ISBN 13: 9780593706978
Verlag: Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

From the New York Times bestselling author of Every Day, this is a queer love story set against the backdrop of the 2024 presidential election, in a reimagining of David Levithan’s 2004 novel Wide Awake.

When David Levithan published Wide Awake in 2004, he set it in an imagined 2024, where a gay Jewish man had just been elected president of the United States, until a governor decides that some election results in his state are invalid, awarding crucial votes to the other candidate and his fellow party member. What follows is the story of teens Jimmy and Duncan as they explore their relationship, their politics, and their country.

In Wide Awake Now, David Levithan is flipping the script and rewriting Jimmy and Duncan’s story in the real 2024, rather than his imagined version. This is a protest novel for today.

Once again, David Levithan proves the critical importance of standing up for what you believe in and the cost of apathy in today’s political climate.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Levithan is the author of several books for young adults, including Lambda Literary Award winner Two Boys Kissing; Every Day; Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist and Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares (co-authored with Rachel Cohn); Will Grayson, Will Grayson (co-authored with John Green); and Boy Meets Boy. In 2016, David received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for his significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature.

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one


“I can’t believe there’s going to be a gay Jewish president.”

As my mother said this, she looked at my father, who was still staring at the screen. They were shocked, barely comprehending.

Me?

I sat there and beamed.


two


I think it was the Jesus Freaks who were the happiest the next day at school. Most of the morning papers were saying that Stein’s victory wouldn’t have been possible without the Jesus Revolution, and I don’t think Mandy or Janna or any of the other members of The God Squad would’ve argued. Mandy was wearing their jesus is love T-shirt, while Janna had a love thy neighbor button on her bag, right above the stein for president sticker. When they saw me walk through the door, they cheered and ran over, bouncing me into a jubilant hug. I wasn’t the only gay Jew they knew, but I was the one they knew best, and we’d all been volunteers on the Stein/Martinez campaign together. After the hugging was done, we stood there for a moment and looked at one another with utter astonishment. We’d done it. Even though we wouldn’t be able to vote for another two years, we’d helped to make this a reality. It was the most amazing feeling in the world, to know that something right had happened, and to know that it had happened not through luck or command but simply because enough people had understood it was right.

Some of our fellow students walked by us and smiled. Others scoffed or scowled--there were plenty of people in our school who would’ve been happy to shove our celebration into a locker and keep it there for four years.

“It was only by one state,” one of them grunted. “Only seventy-six thousand votes in Kansas.”

“Yeah, but who got the popular vote?” Mandy challenged.

The guy just spat on the ground and moved on.

“Did he really just spit?” Janna asked. “Ew.”

I was looking everywhere for Jimmy. As soon as the results had been announced, I’d gone to my room to call him.

“Can you believe it?” I’d asked.

“I am so so so happy,” he’d answered.

And I was so so so happy, too. Not only because of the election but because Jimmy was around to share it with. I had two things to believe in now, and in a way they felt related. After years of questioning whether the world was only going to get worse, I believed in the future, and in our future.

“I love you,” he’d said at the end of the call, his voice bleary from the hour but sweetened by the news.

“I love you, too,” I’d replied. “Good night.”

“A very good night.”

Now I wanted the continuation, the kiss that would seal it. Stein had triumphed, the electoral college was secure, and I was in love with a boy who was in love with me.

“Somewhere Jesus is smiling,” Janna said.

“Praise be,” Mandy chimed in.

Keisha and Mira joined us in the halls, fingers entwined. They looked beamy, too.

“Not a bad day for gay Jew boys, huh?” Keisha said to me.

“Not a bad day for Afro-Chinese lesbians, either,” I pointed out.

Keisha nodded. “You know it’s the truth.”

We had all skipped school the previous two days to get out the vote. Since most of us weren’t old enough to drive, we acted as dispatchers, fielding calls from Kennedy-conscious old-age-home residents and angry-enough agoraphobic liberals, making sure the buses came to take them to the polls. Other kids, like Jimmy, had been at the polling places themselves, getting water and food for people as they waited hours for their turn to vote. (Our state hadn’t made it illegal to give people water and food, like some other states.)

I felt that history was happening. Not like a natural disaster or New Year’s Eve. No, this was human-made history, and here I was, an infinitesimally small part of it. We all were.

Suddenly I felt two arms wrap around me from behind, the two palms coming to rest at the center of my chest. Two very familiar hands--the chewed-up fingernails, the dark skin a little darker at the knuckles, the wire-thin pinkie ring, the bright red watch. The bracelet with two beads on it, jade for him and agate for me. I wore one just like it.

I smiled then--the same way I smiled every time I saw Jimmy. Part of my happiness lived wherever he was.

“Beautiful day,” he said to me.

“Beautiful day,” I agreed, then turned in his arms to sanctify the morning with our this is real kiss.

The first bell rang. I still had to run to my locker before homeroom.

“Everything feels a little different today, doesn’t it?” Jimmy asked. We kissed again, then parted. But his words echoed with me. I was too young to remember when the Supreme Court upheld the rights of gay Americans, and all the weddings started happening. But I imagined that day felt a lot like today. I’d heard so many older people talk about it, about what it meant to know you had the same right as everyone else. I wasn’t alive when Obama was elected, either, and instead came to consciousness at a time when there was a bigot on the megaphone, dividing the country further and shoving us right into a pandemic. I spent sixth grade at home, barely learning and never seeing my friends. Even when the bigot with the megaphone lost his election, things didn’t get much better. We were still in a pandemic. People yelled at each other more and more, in no small part because they could yell from their bedrooms instead of having to actually leave the house to do it face to face. This past election was absolutely brutal. But the brutality of it was an issue itself, and I think finally enough people were like, This is not how we should be. Enough of us believed we had to unplug the hate machine before it destroyed us all.

I understood that now that Stein had won, he was likely to become more moderate to get along with Congress, especially since we’d only won by the margin of Kansas. But still . . . everything did feel a little different. Yes, the kids walking the halls around me were the same kids who’d been there yesterday. The books in my locker were piled just the way I’d left them. Mr. Farnsworth, my homeroom teacher, waited impatiently by his door, just like he always did. But it was like someone had upped the wattage of all the lights by a dozen watts. Someone had made the air two shades easier to breathe.

I knew this feeling wouldn’t last. As soon as I realized it was euphoria, I knew it couldn’t last. I couldn’t even hold on to it. I could only ride within it as far as it would carry me.

The second bell rang. I sprinted into class, and Mr. Farnsworth closed the door.

“I expect to see you standing today,” he said to me.

This was the deal we had: If Stein won the Presidency, I would stand for the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time since elementary school. Even back then, I hated the way it seemed to be something rote and indoctrinated--most people saying the words emptily, without understanding them. To me, the whole notion that we had to pledge allegiance seemed antithetical to the notion of freedom of speech. Mr. Farnsworth told me that the whole “project of America” was about navigating seeming contradictions--in this case, finding a way to show allegiance to the idea of freedom without it imposing on that freedom.

“It’s called a pledge,” he said, “but the most important part is that nobody’s keeping track of who...

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Verlag
Knopf Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593706978
ISBN 13 
9780593706978
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
272
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