Walter Dean Myers - Reviews

Fallen Angels

Walter Dean Myers
Scholastic
Fiction, YA Action/Historical Fiction
Themes: Cross-Genre, Diversity, Soldier Stories
****

Description

Perry was never supposed to be in Vietnam at all, let alone on the front lines. He had a bad knee from a basketball injury, and was told that he'd be given a desk job for his year of military service, the Harlem boy's only option when his college prospects fell through. But a paperwork mix-up led to him being sent overseas - for a desk job, he's assured, just until his medical profile catches up to him and he's returned stateside. Yet somehow he finds himself in a "hooch" - barracks - with the rest of the soldiers, issued a weapon, and sent on patrols. Rumors keep insisting that the war's nearly over anyway, so Perry shouldn't see much, if any, action. If that's true, someone forgot to tell the Vietcong...

Review

Another frequently challenged and banned book, Fallen Angels dives straight into the nightmare experience that was Vietnam. For all the talk and propaganda about patriotism and honor and justified force, for those with boots on the ground and blood on their hands, war is hell.
Perry just wanted to go to college and become a writer or even a philosopher, but when college plans fell through, the army seemed like a not-bad option for an income and life experience. He's told, more than once, that his profile will keep him out of harm's way, and learns the hard way that recruiters and superiors sometimes lie, just as countries lie to their own citizens, the first of many harsh lessons. Indeed, Perry ends up learning more about life, death, honor, cowardice, himself, and the world in his tour than he ever imagined, starting the moment he arrives in Vietnam; a fellow green recruit is killed right in front of him before they even reach the barracks, an early warning that death is all around, at all times, and can come for anybody at any time. From this inauspicious start, Perry's experience only gets grimmer. Even his own superiors can be at least as much of a threat as the enemy - and the enemy is often nebulous and seemingly ubiquitous. Efforts to win the favor of a local village by a goodwill visit one day transition almost seamlessly into a firefight in the same village's streets shortly afterwards, a whiplash that borders on the surreal but which is just another day in the madness of the war.
More than once, Perry must ask himself what he's doing here and why he's fighting; the answers he comes up with never seem adequate to justify the horrors he sees and the death he deals to total strangers. His bonds with his bunkmates keep him sane, if just barely at times, bonds that don't spare the rough, dark humor and crudity of soldiers in high-stress situations. None of them are perfect men, and none are any more guaranteed survival than Perry himself is, especially as numbers dwindle and his unit finds itself on a suspicious number of dangerous assignments, particularly the non-white members of the unit; racism is alive and well in the ranks. Some grumble about protesters back home, especially as the flow of new recruits to fill empty bunks slows to a trickle, but the longer the war drags on (despite peace being perpetually just a few weeks away) and the higher the body count (a body count that American news somehow never mentions when it talks about the war at all), the more Perry and the others start to wonder whether they have a point. The end result is a brutal, visceral look at the true face of war, an ugly thing even when necessary and worse when the reasoning is (generously described as) ambiguous.

Monster

Walter Dean Myers
Amistad
Fiction, YA Crime/Suspense
Themes: Cross-Genre, Diversity, Institutions, Urban Tales
****

Description

Sixteen-year-old Steve knows just how he'd film his life if it were a movie. He tries to keep thinking of it that way, as a movie, because the reality - sitting in prison, on trial for felony murder, facing the very real possibility of life in jail or even the death penalty - is just too much to bear. The law says everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but even his own defense attorney seems to have doubts, and half the jury probably took one look at the Black kid at the defense table and made up their minds on the spot. As the trial unfolds, testimony and flashbacks fill in the story of how Steve found himself here, with his fate resting on the competence of a lawyer and the judgement of twelve strangers and a system that has sent so many other young Black men away.

Review

As one might expect from the title alone, let alone the description, this is a harrowing and often bleak tale of a young future gone awry - not just in a single fateful moment, but in the many steps leading up to that moment, for all that Steve himself never touched a gun or pulled a trigger. Using the ongoing film script format to show his current life moving between the courtroom and prison and the past that led up to the incident in question, he may not be an entirely reliable narrator in a story where there are few absolute villains or heroes. Society itself has failed on some level, for this to be happening at all, but society itself is not on trial: Steve and a co-defendant are, for the robbery that turned into a murder. What emerges is a stark picture of the dehumanizing nature of the incarceration system, and the slender, imperfect promise of the justice system that decides guilt and punishment with a less than impartial hand. Guilty or not, Steve will never be the same boy he was before, indelibly marked by his experiences. Once in a while, the interrogations, and particularly the summations, in the trial room felt a little long, but overall it's a powerful and unflinching look at a part of modern society many would prefer not to examine.