Author: Nancy Garden
Country: United States
Genre: young adult, romance, lesbian
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date of Publication: 1982
As they become closer, conflicts arise. Lisa, being the student body president, has to think of ways to raise funds so that her school would remain open. One of her friends made a poorly planned fund raiser , an ear-piercing event. That incident had her suspended for three days due to poor judgment on allowing the event to happen and had one student's ears become swollen because of poor sanitation. Her suspension coincided with the coming Spring Break so she had a lot of free time until classes resume. During her vacation, they grew closer and intense feelings developed among them. They had their first kiss and Annie admits that she's gay to Lisa. Also, during their vacation, Lisa had to take a part time job by taking care of her teachers' home and feeding the cats. Her two female teachers live together. Lisa took Annie to her teachers' home. They sort of made the house their "love nest", probably practicing living in together. They didn't have any intimate activities yet but each and everyday they are together in that house, sexual tensions get stronger and stronger. One day, they went to the bedroom and discovered reading materials related to homosexuality. They both learned that the teachers were gay.
They made love in the bedroom when suddenly someone came knocking on the main door. Lisa knew that the teachers won't be home yet. It was Lisa's principal knocking and she caught Lisa and Annie in a bad light. The teachers also arrived home unexpectedly and also saw them. The principal has just confirmed the two teachers having an "illegal" relationship and thus were in the brink of getting fired in school. The principal accused the teachers as being bad examples to students and allowing their house to become a "lesbian love nest". Lisa was also at the brink of explusion and when classes resumed, she had a "trial" together with the school board officials. The two teachers were fired from the school while Lisa got away and graduated high school. Right after graduation, both the girls pursued college apart.
My Commentary:
The book is very easy to read, I actually finished it in just a few days. Finding this book really is a pain in the ass because all the the bookstores I went to for the past year would always say that it's out of stock. The moment I saw this book at the shelf, I immediately grabbed it. This book is one of the must-reads if you are starting to read lesbian literature.
In 1993, one lesbigay group in the US called Project 21, donated gays books to the Kansas City high schools as part of their project of eliminating homophobia. Annie on my Mind was one of them and some parents didn't like the idea of this book, specifically gays books, being easily available to teenagers. They burned the copies of Annie on Mind which were donated and even the books that were already in the library for several years. After a year of battling to return the book into the shelves again paid off. It was proven as blatant discrimination.
There was also a play based on this novel which was staged at Kansas City in 1994. The play was entitled "Banned Book Theater".