It made me feel so sad and so alive and so lucky.
Picture Us in the Light is a beautiful book about a lot of things.
It’s a story about a boy who is in love with his best friend, who also happens to be a boy. Though a main character of color who is also LGBT is great for diversity, the fact that Danny is attracted to other men isn’t really a point of contention in this book. Although there is clearly still a need and a place for coming out stories in YA literature, this one wasn’t about that. It’s just about someone who’s afraid to tell the person he cares about most his true feelings, regardless of what it means about his or the other person’s sexuality. That was nice.
"And I still haven’t said anything to him. What would happen if I just never do? I’ll regret it forever, I know that. My life will radiate out and out from this moment and I’ll always wish I could have it back to do over.
But then won’t I feel that too, if I tell him and it ruins everything?"
This is a story about a boy whose family has buried terrible secrets in order to keep their son safe. Danny’s parents are supportive of his art career, especially in contrast to his classmates who have set impossibly high expectations for their children. But they’re also overprotective to the point that Danny has to lie in order to go on school field trips. They don’t address or talk about the mental illness(es) that affect both mother and father. And they carry baggage from the past, baggage that crosses the ocean back to their homeland of China. Baggage that threatens to tear down everything that Danny has built for himself.
"I should’ve recognized sooner how intimately [my parents] understand guilt and how it’s shaped them and shaped me, too, both the choices they’ve had to make and the stories they tell themselves. I’ve lived my whole life inside their guilt."
And it’s about how the pressures of high school and college acceptance can weigh on vulnerable students. It’s about how not to handle a student suicide and how not to treat her friends who haven’t been given a chance to mourn her. It’s about how the choices we make affect people and their well-being, and how their reactions to those choices shape us as well.
"That’s what I can do here. I can give form and shape to what everyone’s feeling, a picture of her that feels as true as anything else has this past year. Maybe that’s the only way you heal.
Or maybe that isn’t quite true, either – you never quite heal. But at least you get to say you’re sorry."
This is a beautifully written book. The insights that Danny has are numerous and of much more a depth that I wouldn’t really expect from a high schooler, and it did feel very heavy at times. This definitely isn’t a light read. But it is wonderful. It made me feel so sad and so alive and so lucky.
Thank you to the author and BookishFirst for my free copy in exchange for an honest review.
It’s a story about a boy who is in love with his best friend, who also happens to be a boy. Though a main character of color who is also LGBT is great for diversity, the fact that Danny is attracted to other men isn’t really a point of contention in this book. Although there is clearly still a need and a place for coming out stories in YA literature, this one wasn’t about that. It’s just about someone who’s afraid to tell the person he cares about most his true feelings, regardless of what it means about his or the other person’s sexuality. That was nice.
"And I still haven’t said anything to him. What would happen if I just never do? I’ll regret it forever, I know that. My life will radiate out and out from this moment and I’ll always wish I could have it back to do over.
But then won’t I feel that too, if I tell him and it ruins everything?"
This is a story about a boy whose family has buried terrible secrets in order to keep their son safe. Danny’s parents are supportive of his art career, especially in contrast to his classmates who have set impossibly high expectations for their children. But they’re also overprotective to the point that Danny has to lie in order to go on school field trips. They don’t address or talk about the mental illness(es) that affect both mother and father. And they carry baggage from the past, baggage that crosses the ocean back to their homeland of China. Baggage that threatens to tear down everything that Danny has built for himself.
"I should’ve recognized sooner how intimately [my parents] understand guilt and how it’s shaped them and shaped me, too, both the choices they’ve had to make and the stories they tell themselves. I’ve lived my whole life inside their guilt."
And it’s about how the pressures of high school and college acceptance can weigh on vulnerable students. It’s about how not to handle a student suicide and how not to treat her friends who haven’t been given a chance to mourn her. It’s about how the choices we make affect people and their well-being, and how their reactions to those choices shape us as well.
"That’s what I can do here. I can give form and shape to what everyone’s feeling, a picture of her that feels as true as anything else has this past year. Maybe that’s the only way you heal.
Or maybe that isn’t quite true, either – you never quite heal. But at least you get to say you’re sorry."
This is a beautifully written book. The insights that Danny has are numerous and of much more a depth that I wouldn’t really expect from a high schooler, and it did feel very heavy at times. This definitely isn’t a light read. But it is wonderful. It made me feel so sad and so alive and so lucky.
Thank you to the author and BookishFirst for my free copy in exchange for an honest review.