Annie on My Mind discussion

Garden, Nancy. Annie on My Mind. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1982.

Characters: Liza Winthrop, 17-year-old private school student; Annie Kenyon, 17-year-old public school student; Ms. Stevenson, art teacher; Ms. Widmer, writing teacher; Ms. Baxter, administrative secretary; Mrs. Poindexter, headmistress; and Sally Jarrell, Liza’s classmate.

Setting: Early 1980’s Brooklyn Heights, New York.

Theme: love is love; prejudice and fear and difficulty can be overcome

Assignment tags: CSULB 545 Class 1: Seminal Classic - YA [coming of age, romance, LGBT]

Golden quote: “What matters is the truth of loving, of two people finding each other” (229).

Plot/Summary: Similar in some respect to the opening structure of The Outsiders, Annie on My Mind opens in the form of a letter, beginning after a major event that shifted characters’ perspectives and relationships. Liza, now in college at MIT, is trying to find a way back to her girlfriend, Annie, but the emotional path eludes her until she works through all the events of the past year, the narrative reverting periodically back to one unfinished letter to Annie after another. At seventeen Liza met Annie, free spirited, imaginative, and beautiful, at the Met and though for some time convention and uncertainty cause them to push back against it, the girls fall in love and begin a romantic and then sexual relationship. When the girls are intruded upon by a catty, small-minded faculty member, of Liza’s private school, Liza is brought before a disciplinary panel to answer to her administrator, the board of trustees and her parents for her relationship with Annie.
Target Audience: grades 8-12, primarily female
Curriculum ties: gender studies, civil rights

Awards: An ALA "Best of the Best Books for Young Adults". On School Library Journal’s list of the 100 most influential books of the 20th century. 1982, Booklist Reviewer's Choice. 1982, ALA’s “Best Books”, and the ALA “Best of the Best” list (1970–1983). 2003, YALSA Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Personal/Critical response: Annie on My Mind gently tells the story of first love. The story of two young women finding themselves through finding one another, and discovering that there is nothing shameful or wrong in sex that stems from love is dignifying and universal. Though the characters encounter hindrances it is wrongful characters acting against them, not society itself. The text is an affirmation of self, and while a seminal classic in YA lesbian literature, offers a powerful and ultimately uplifting message for all readers.