The Miseducation of Cameron Post: Literary Quality YA

The film The Miseducation of Cameron Post based on the  YA novel of the same name won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Festival. I’m naive enough about the judgment of critics to think that this meant they would all like it. So I was sorry to see that a few of my trusted review sites didn’t like the film . (Rolling Stone review and New Yorker review.)

I was also glad to see on Rotten Tomatoes that those reviewers were not in the majority—most of the reviewers liked the film, both for performances and storyline.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VEdngvMGjg0

A Thoughtful Lesbian Protagonist

The real reason I want people to like the film is so that they will read the book. It’s a good chance to experience a lesbian protagonist who is able to hang on to her self-esteem and sense of person despite some lousy odds. Several years ago,  I gave a book talk to our school’s Gay-Straight Alliance about the history of LGBT YA lit. I chatted up several of the books I’d enjoyed. One of the girls in attendance said she wished there were more LGBT YA novels with female protagonists. I hadn’t thought about that, so I went back to look over our collection, and the male protagonists appeared about twice as often as female, so the student certainly had a point. Cameron Post was a welcome addition.

The release of the film reminds me to go back to the novel now and offer some advice to YA writers—if you haven’t read this book, do it. It’s a wonderful example of YA lit that is quality literature. The writing is excellent. While I love YA fiction in general, I can’t say that most of the novels contained top notch writing. The Miseducation of Cameron Post shows a YA writer what is possible.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is Quality YA Literature

I reviewed the novel on School Library Lady in 2014 when I first read it.  Following is what I had to say about it–today I might think less about younger readers as things change:

Cameron Post and Irene Klauson have always been best friends. They do everything together including all those things they shouldn’t do, like shoplift. And there’s always been an edge to their relationship because they compete with one another. So when they are twelve years old and they decide to practice kissing, there’s nothing particularly strange about that. But what they both discover is that they like their kisses and want more. Cameron Post is realizing that she is a lesbian, and it seems that Irene is too. They are already thinking about being careful, keeping it a secret, and looking for an

opportunity to do it again.

The night following their discovery, Cameron is staying at Irene’s house. Irene’s father wakes her up in the middle of the night and tells her that he has to take her home. Have the girls been discovered? They are so worried. But, unfortunately, the news is much worse than that. Cam’s parents have been killed in a car accident at Quake Lake in Montana. Ironically, this very lake was created in an earthquake decades before, and Cam’s mom had just coincidentally escaped it.

Cameron’s life is pulled apart. Although she still has her much-beloved, oddball grandmother (mother of her father) to help take care of her, her mother’s sister, a recently reborn Christian, gives up her own life to take care of Cam. And worst of all is the thought that keeps running through Cam’s head—she’s glad that her parents will never know about her kiss with Irene. And she believes that the kiss itself may have been the cause of her parents’ death—a punishment. And so the guilt begins.

As Cameron grows into her teen life, she also grows more distant from Irene, who has become wealthy and leaves for private school. She hangs out with mostly guys, who dare one another to do dangerous things and spend a lot of time smoking dope. She now has Lindsey, a girl from Seattle, that she competes against in swimming. Lindsey is openly gay and much more knowledgeable than Cam. She makes Cam feel the stultifying nature of her life in eastern Montana and in the Gates of Praise church (which is always shortened to the acronym GOP—and, yes, I was amused). At GOP, Cam often hears sermons against homosexuality. She’s surprised one day when she hears her aunt having sex with her boyfriend—after all, that’s one of the sins on the GOP list. Why are the standards for the two different?

With Cam exploring and working out her sexuality, you can pretty much figure she’s going to get caught. Her downfall is a beautiful girl of her dreams, the super popular Coley, who is also a member of the GOP church. A girl with a boyfriend, one who is either secretly bisexual or at least is exploring. When the two are caught, Coley hurls all of the blame on Cameron; her betrayal, as we see it later, is breathtaking.

Once caught, Cam’s life is again turned upside down. She is sent away to God’s Promise, a conversion therapy school/camp. Up to this point, the novel has been very good. But at God’s Promise, it soars. There Cam has no privileges until she earns them. She has to deal with her roommate ‘Viking Erin,’ who wants her conversion to work. But she also makes a few great friends and still manages to get up to no good.

Guilt is a major theme of this novel, beginning with that first kiss between twelve-year olds. The big question that hangs over all the ‘disciples’ (students) at God’s promise is whether their conversation therapy will work. There’s no evidence that it does and the psychic price that the students pay is high—even tragic in some cases.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post in the High School 

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a literary-quality novel. The characters are well drawn—no stick figures here, including Cam’s Aunt Ruth who does love her, feels that Cam’s ‘problem’ may be as much her fault as it is Cam’s, and who truly believes that she is helping Cam by sending her to God’s Promise.

I did worry a bit reading the book because Cam is such a pothead and has several other bad traits to boot. Obviously, I’m not someone to promote drug use, but I think that with all the issues in Cam’s life, her behavior is pretty realistic. The intimate and sexual scene are well done. They aren’t gratuitous nor are they pornographic. Nevertheless, this is a book for mature readers, and I think high school rather than younger YA readers are the audience.