Review: "Name Me Nobody"
[content warnings: heavy spoilers and discussions of eating disorders, homophobia, and sexual assault.]
Name Me Nobody was written by Lois-Ann Yamanaka and published in 1999. Yamanaka's work can be classified as a problem novel. For those unaware, during the days before the Harry Potter series took storm, problem novels dominated young adult literature. They addressed a wide range of topics including divorce, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, etc. Two well known examples are Go Ask Alice and Speak. Name Me Nobody can be considered a problematic problem novel.
The synopsis on the book suggests to the reader that this will be a coming of age story. Emi-Lou is an overweight Japanese girl living in Hawaii. Because she doesn't know who her father is and her mother is in California, Emi-Lou lives with her grandmother. The only real person Emi-Lou can count on is her best friend Von.
Von is a softball star. Emi-Lou is not. However, Von won't join the softball team without Emi-Lou. Emi-Lou is overweight which translates to not being able to play well. Her weight is the source of being bullied by everyone. Von pushes near- starvation, diet pills, and laxatives on her friend. Emi-Lou loses the weight in less than twenty pages. There's a few mentions of dizzy sensations and hungry, but that's not the focus. The weight loss and anorexia is not handled well. It's seen more as a positive.
You see, Von is a lesbian and this book is published in 1999. In the book, it's portrayed as if the problem is that Emi-Lou's conflict with Von stems with the relationship with one of the softball players and not the forced eating disorder. There is no realization that Von is a terrible friend for pushing an eating disorder onto Emi-Lou. There is no dawning that everyone is a garbage bag for being shitty towards because of her weight.
In addition to the two previous problems that the problem novel addresses, Emi-Lou also experiences sexual assault. Thankfully, her teammates make the would-be rapist get lost. However, speaking as someone who's been through several sexually traumatic experiences and as someone who's interacted fellow survivors, Emi-Lou displays no behavior that would indicate that she went through a traumatic experience. In addition, her assaulter is never addressed and the assault is never brought up again.
In short, the novel fails to recognize actual problems and creates new ones. Name Me Nobody sends a horrible message to its audience, and I shudder to think what influence it may have had previously.
Resources
Eating disorder help:
www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/find-help-support
Bullying help:
www.teenhealthandwellness.com/static/hotlines#Bullying
LGBT+ outreach:
www.glbthotline.org/
www.thetrevorproject.org/
Sexual assault help:
https://ohl.rainn.org/online/
