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100 Books, #35: Stargirl
Jan. 5th, 2014 10:24 amFor years after I read Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl, I liked to drop small change on the ground in emulation of the heroine. Stargirl is always doing little acts of kindness: she drops change, leaves anonymous cards, keeps all her trimmed hair for birds to make nests with. Whenever one her classmates has a birthday, she sings “Happy birthday” to them on her ukelele in the crowded lunchroom.
Aside from dropping change, I haven’t copied most of Stargirl’s specific actions (certainly not the ukelele interludes!) but it’s hard to overstate how much impact the Stargirl approach had on my conception of “nice things to do.” One of the reasons the note in Untold charmed me so much is that it seemed like very Stargirl.
But rereading Stargirl this break, what strikes me is how hands-off Stargirl’s approach is. All her kindness is anonymous and from a distance. The narrator, Leo, considers this a sign of her saintliness, the fact that she has no interest in taking credit, and in a way it is - but it’s also a way of putting distance between herself and other people: of not getting involved in the nitty-gritty. When Stargirl and Leo come across an advertisement asking for a companion, Stargirl considers sending an anonymous card.
She does not, however, consider volunteering as a companion. Random acts of kindness are nice, but it’s relationships that make people truly happy, and relationships are hard.
One of the things that so appealed to me about Stargirl, I think, is that the vision of kindness it offers is very low-risk: although Stargirl has made it a full-time job, these are all things that you could do in little snippets of time. They require little emotional investment, and because they’re anonymous, they can’t be rejected. You’re unlikely to see an actual person react: you envision a little kid finding a dime or another reader seeing your note in a book, and in your mind, the other person is always pleased.
The big exception to this, of course, is Stargirl’s behavior at school: singing “Happy birthday” on the ukelele, becoming a cheerleader and then cheering for both teams. This is very loud and public and hence high-risk, and it ends badly: it alienates her classmates (because, Spinelli suggests, they have been trained for years in conformity) to the point that they shun her.
Now, on the one hand, shunning is clearly a cruel overreaction to Stargirl’s harmless quirkiness. But on the other hand, if a lot of people are disturbed and alienated by an act of kindness you are trying to commit - are, in short, not experiencing it as an act of kindness, but even as a kind of attack - then maybe it’s time to ask yourself if you don’t have an ulterior motive for the public ukelele playing. Maybe it should make them happy, but clearly it doesn’t.
For a character who is defined by her kindness, Stargirl is strangely tone deaf to other people’s feelings. I didn’t notice this when I first read the book, and it’s a little distressing to reread and see it now.
Aside from dropping change, I haven’t copied most of Stargirl’s specific actions (certainly not the ukelele interludes!) but it’s hard to overstate how much impact the Stargirl approach had on my conception of “nice things to do.” One of the reasons the note in Untold charmed me so much is that it seemed like very Stargirl.
But rereading Stargirl this break, what strikes me is how hands-off Stargirl’s approach is. All her kindness is anonymous and from a distance. The narrator, Leo, considers this a sign of her saintliness, the fact that she has no interest in taking credit, and in a way it is - but it’s also a way of putting distance between herself and other people: of not getting involved in the nitty-gritty. When Stargirl and Leo come across an advertisement asking for a companion, Stargirl considers sending an anonymous card.
She does not, however, consider volunteering as a companion. Random acts of kindness are nice, but it’s relationships that make people truly happy, and relationships are hard.
One of the things that so appealed to me about Stargirl, I think, is that the vision of kindness it offers is very low-risk: although Stargirl has made it a full-time job, these are all things that you could do in little snippets of time. They require little emotional investment, and because they’re anonymous, they can’t be rejected. You’re unlikely to see an actual person react: you envision a little kid finding a dime or another reader seeing your note in a book, and in your mind, the other person is always pleased.
The big exception to this, of course, is Stargirl’s behavior at school: singing “Happy birthday” on the ukelele, becoming a cheerleader and then cheering for both teams. This is very loud and public and hence high-risk, and it ends badly: it alienates her classmates (because, Spinelli suggests, they have been trained for years in conformity) to the point that they shun her.
Now, on the one hand, shunning is clearly a cruel overreaction to Stargirl’s harmless quirkiness. But on the other hand, if a lot of people are disturbed and alienated by an act of kindness you are trying to commit - are, in short, not experiencing it as an act of kindness, but even as a kind of attack - then maybe it’s time to ask yourself if you don’t have an ulterior motive for the public ukelele playing. Maybe it should make them happy, but clearly it doesn’t.
For a character who is defined by her kindness, Stargirl is strangely tone deaf to other people’s feelings. I didn’t notice this when I first read the book, and it’s a little distressing to reread and see it now.
