| Articles: Lanky Lizards! A Real Goddess If Ever There Was One | ||
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| Source: Cathy Young |
| by Cathy Young Francesca Lia Block slam-danced her way into my heart the moment I picked up her first novel Weetzie Bat. The author's wry, lyrical tone transported me to another world--the place she calls Shangri-L.A., the place I used to call Hell-A, and the place the map calls Los Angeles, California. To be truthful, though, it was the very first line of the book that hooked me. All the way down to my toes, wiggling in tattered Birkenstocks, I felt affirmed when I read these words: "The reason Weetzie Bat hated high school was because no one understood." Ahhh! I know that feeling! I fell in love with Weetzie then and dove head first into Francesca Lia Block's enchanted landscape. In the five Weetzie Bat books--Weetzie Bat, Witch Baby, Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys, Missing Angel Juan, and Baby Be-Bop--the fun never seemed to stop. Weetzie had a bunch of friends with groovy names: Duck, Dirk, Secret Agent Lover Man, Witch Baby, Charlie Bat, and Grandma Fifi. They took their dogs, Slinkster Dog and Go-Go Girl, on midnight rides through the canyon into Hollywood. They ate turkey platters at the Tic Toc Tea Room. Weetzie gave her rubber chicken a wig to make it happier. In paragraphs that read more like poetry than prose, Block tells the story of all of these crazy, wonderful people--how they love, what they're searching for, how the L.A. landscape and mythos shapes them, and how they create a chosen family or community together. Block herself makes her home in the City of Angels. She grew up with a filmmaker-turned-painter for a father and a poet for a mother, and these creative influences have had an obvious effect on Block's artistic, poetic, highly visual writing style. When Secret Agent Lover Man kisses Weetzie, it's "A kiss about apple pie à la mode with the vanilla creaminess melting in the pie heat. A kiss about chocolate, when you haven't eaten chocolate in a year ... A kiss about spotlights fanning the sky and the swollen sea spilling like tears all over your legs." Francesca Lia Block has an uncanny way of getting under a reader's skin. Perhaps it's the rhythm and melody of her words. Maybe it's due to the fairy tale-like structure of some of her novels. Mostly, I think her power to provoke readers comes from her fearlessness in talking about love--the thing we all yearn for yet often struggle to let into our lives. She writes about people who aren't afraid to admit out loud that they want to love and be loved. Her characters aren't just friends with each other, they live as a family, loving and supporting one another through the years. The importance of loving oneself is the theme that echoes most loudly in Block's most recent book Girl Goddess #9--a collection of short stories about girls of different ages, shapes, and sizes, all learning to accept and love themselves. In "Blue," Block writes about a little girl named La who is so devastated by the death of her mother that she creates an imaginary friend named Blue. Blue helps La understand that, even though her mother is gone, the love between them will never disappear because it lives inside La's heart. In the title story, "Girl Goddess #9," two extremely cool and wickedly smart teens create a 'zine to immortalize the rock god they adore. When they finally meet him in person, they realize he's just another strung-out guy with an ego. What's really intense, wonderful, and worthy of worship, they discover, are they themselves: girl goddesses in their own ways--'zinesters, music lovers, writers, and girls who aren't afraid to shout about and publish words about the things they love. That gets to the heart of the whole hot-pink rubber chicken, doesn't it? Francesca Lia Block's books are so empowering because we, as readers, get the sense that Block herself celebrates exuberance and inner strength the same way her characters do. She's not afraid to write about--or shout about--the things she holds dear: love, kindness, creativity, and the courage to face the truth. In her slinkster-cool way, Francesca Lia Block is a goddess herself. Writer and Internet consultant Cathy Young runs the Grouchy Cafe, a young-adult "bookstop" on the Web. Amazon.com |
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