Hopepunk

Hopepunk

YA fiction
"At the very bottom corner, scribbled in thick black Sharpie,
practically faded, someone had written 'Faith was here.' It read like
a metaphor. The power of past tense. Faith was here but no longer."
Hope, narrator of Preston Norton's Hopepunk, is the middle of a
trinity of girls born into a strictly religious family. The kind who
accepts the Bible as the literal and unchanging Word of God, even when
it instructs them that if their right hand offends they should cut it
off. Nothing is to stand in the way of salvation. The girls have
adapted to their family legacy in very different ways.
Little sister Charity is the one who buys into the parental
beliefs.
"...She gobbled up anything any pastor ever said, no questions
asked. Jesus was her first love, her one true love, and even when she
got married, her husband would have to accept that he was number two."
She believes that anything other than heteronormativity is cardinal
sin. So when a friend of hers sees her older sister, Faith, kissing
her girlfriend, Mavis, she rats her out to their parents...
...who basically go ballistic, especially their mother. She
grounds Faith and goes through all her belongings, confiscating
anything she considers even potentially sinful. When that doesn't
work she enrolls Faith in a conversion camp called Change Through Grace.
"...Satan wants us to think we can be born a certain way, that
we can't change, but that's simply not true. Faith's eternal destiny
is to be a wife, a mother like me, and to start a family just like
ours. She may not know it, but someday she's going to meet some
handsome young man who will make her heart flutter, and together they
will make the one thing that threatens Satan's kingdom more than
anything else: a righteous, God-loving family."
Except maybe not. The morning Faith is supposed to be delivered
to the conversion facility she disappears without a trace. Not even
Mavis has a clue where she could be. Hope, who considers Faith to be
her best friend, is devastated. Determined to find her, she refuses
to believe that Faith has given up on life.
Then Hope's long time crush, Danny, comes out as gay and is
kicked out of his home. At least she can do something to help him.
She invites him to live in her home in Faith's room. Miraculously her
parents don't veto his moving in, even when pressured to do so by
Charity.
As she searches for Faith, Hope finds herself doing things she'd
never imagined and becoming an advocate not only for Faith and Danny,
but for all people who are shunned for who they are and/or converted
by clueless families and churches Her highly engaging voyage of
discovery and allyship makes Hopepunk a must read for anyone who has
been or loves anyone who has been marginalized or shunned by righteous
right families and/or churches.
On a purrrsonal note, when I came back to Clean Sweep we were all out
working to get the sale purrrfect before we opened the doors on
Friday. Much of Wednesday was devoted to sorting clothes. Mountains
of clothes. Thursday was organizing the items on different tables
like kitchenware and lights and cleaning supplies. We also sorted the
donated food from all kinds of random bags and boxes into bins with
lids to haul to Black Bear Exchange. Funny how a lot of candy ended
up in my bag. People got started on pricing. Friday morning we
finished the pricing. Then we opened the doors and...
...I'll save that for my next review... (Jules).
She's also been bringing home lots of clothes and other cool stuff.
(Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to the Clean Sweep crew.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway


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