political – Diario de una Aventurera

“They’re Killing Us”: Paro Nacional and Witnessing a Human Rights Crisis

Pode ser uma imagem de uma ou mais pessoas e texto que diz "LAWMARTINEZR NOS QUIE REN SACAR LOS OJOS PORQUE SABEN QUE YA LOS ABRIMOS"

The heat has been suffocating in the “City of the Holy Kings.” Since yesterday, we’ve been under a perpetual veil of heavy clouds and humid heat. Last night, I thought for sure that the sky would finally break open and rain would wash the streets clean.

Instead, the heat and dimness continue. The only thing that washed the streets of Valledupar last night was the blood of civilians protesting. The explosion came, but not in the form of rain, thunder, or lightning. The tension caused by the chaos that seized the march and the detention of protestors is palpable and unrelenting.

Social media has given us the gift of reaching people from around the world in a matter of moments. Tears wet my cheeks as I read through and watch video after video of a horror that seems to have happened over night. If only. Imagine, if social media had existed in the 80’s when farms were actively being gassed or during the Segovia massacre of 1988. The past 30 years have been marked by the slaughter of union leaders, farmers, campesinos, indigenous people, sympathizers of certain political parties, and anyone with the gall to demand that their human rights be respected.

As someone that studied Latin American history and politics, I felt stirred by these facts and narratives having only been able to experience them dead on the page. I didn’t imagine that I might actually be in the middle of one of these historical and devastating moments. I didn’t realize just how sadly entrenched they are in the human experience of people living under oppression in communities all over the world.

There have been dozens of videos circulating of people running through the streets, tanks filling the city, teargas shrouding the air, the sound of weapons firing, children screaming as their anguished faces are washed with milk, the cries for justice even as the police deny the right to protest, deny that they themselves are acting with cruel impunity. As they throw teargas bombs into buses full of civilians. As they gather around the people, non-binary, men, women, elderly, children, and grab them, threaten them, punch them, force them into corners, and carry them off on motorcycles.

I’ve always wondered about these ESMAD characters. They’re supposed to be brave defenders of the public. An anti-riot branch of the Colombian police force. They’re supposed to be these pillars of justice that go to protests to dissuade violence and looting. In fact, it’s ironic to see them in their heavy armor carrying their huge weapons as they tower over and surround – unarmed young people that look defenseless by comparison – and incite violence. And we are supposed to believe they are protecting the community from the protestors they mercilessly intimidate?

Everyone I know is against this tax reform and supporting the constitutional rights of Colombians to protest. Except, astonishingly, for the members of the military I’ve met. According to statistics circulating, around 80% of the Colombian population are against the tax overhaul reform that’s supposed to respond to the economic crisis the country is facing. How does it propose to solve the crisis? By taxing and subsidizing. The main issue that people are expressing with this method is that the crisis being faced in Colombia – unemployment, increasing poverty, a poor and slowly executed vaccination process – is not going to be fixed by raising taxes and adding new ones. True, part of the taxing would only apply to the wealthier sectors of society, but it would also include the struggling middle class or middle class-aspiring sector.

And all to be able to provide an 80.000 pesos (that’s only around $22 USD!) monthly subsidy for people living in extreme poverty. What will that do? Oh, so much if you ask the richest sector of Colombian society who perhaps could afford to do just a little bit more. But that would require that money stop being stolen from public works budgets, equally inflated in importance but never producing the promised result.

People are skeptical. People are scared. Who could possibly blame them, when the stakes are this high and everything they’ve experienced from the authorities so far has resulted in lies and more lies.

And now, to top it off, it takes marches for the president to call for a “reworking” of the reform. It takes the documenting of at least 21 murders by the military and the police, 940 cases of police brutality, 672 arbitrary arrests of civilians, and 4 victims of sexual violence (that we know of) for people to take notice of what has been a history soaked in blood. That’s why, in solidarity, as a sign of resistance, Colombians use the flag as their icon, upside down, placing the red blood of the patriots who fought for freedom at the top.

As an expat living in Colombia I’ve learned that even though I may never understand what it’s like to have grown up in extreme poverty, living on $100 or less a month working every day of the year with zero paid vacation time, in a country in civil war where tanks and fully armed soldiers can be seen patrolling the streets for no known reason except to “maintain order” – I stand. I stand with the people that are sick of living in fear.

Just as any US American should. This is just as much our fight. After all, our country funded all of this military equipment. Our country provided the resources to militarize the police force. Our country supported the “paraco hpta” of Uribe as it has countless right-wing military dictators. Our country benefited by keeping so many countries impoverished and suppressed.

And now? We’re finally starting realize that these actions and choices have consequences. Allowing corruption to exist in other places to benefit businesses in “first world” countries is like setting your house on fire to warm your own room during the winter. Now, the countries that have dealt with the brunt of colonization and foreign intervention and neo-liberalism have governments corrupted at every level, and this corruption leads to the same economic crisis happening in Colombia. And with a global pandemic? Full hospitals, under-paid medical workers, non-existent relief packages, non-existent state aid for the nearly 40% of the population living below the poverty line, and a population in which only 1 859 657 out of 51,321,307 people have been vaccinated so far.* And the list goes on and on…

Yet the conversation remains divided along economic lines. Just like in the US, here we have people feebly and some even passionately decrying vandalism and chiding those brave enough to protest. In spite of the fact that the protestors have stopped and even prevented and returned looted goods, there is always a portion of the population which demonizes all protestors as criminals who want the government to “give them everything.”

No, not everything. Just the human right to a life of dignity. Just a transparent government with a clear record on its budgets and military maneuvers. A stand against corruption. The right to demonstrate. The right to a future where children cannot be killed and gassed by the police and face zero consequences.

I know. It’s overwhelming. So much is happening in the world right now. And then there’s this. But these are just the consequences of history. If we don’t learn our history and see how we are all connected by it, we will never escape the domino effect we’ve been locked into. We are all facing one global struggle. If we cannot come together, if we cannot care about our neighbors, then we’re screwing ourselves over just as much.

While all of this is going on, I’m teaching classes online from my apartment in Valledupar. I’m living my dream life, and yet nothing could feel more upsetting and wrong.

To relieve some stress, I order a snack. I walk down the stairs out to meet the delivery man. He’s lost, and for a good reason. My apartment building has gone ghostly silent. All of the corridors are dark. I haven’t been outside today, but if what I’ve been watching online is any indicator, the sense of abandonment and fearfulness is real. Just the other day, Uribe posted on his twitter condoning the use of violence and force to suppress protestors out of “self-defense” against “terrorism.” With leaders like this with all of their shady, violent histories and absent morals, yet somehow untouched by international authorities – it’s easy for me to comprehend this silence. Plus, my apartment is somewhat removed from the heart of the city. But I can imagine that the silence there is just as heavy. Silence like a paperweight, a reminder of what’s happened and what’s to come.

I sense that this is only the calm in the eye of the storm. Many have posted warning against false fliers calling for protestors to meet tonight. They say this is a tactic that is used to round up the protestors and slaughter them all at once. Protesting will resume tomorrow, though, and I plan to be there.

This might not be my fight, but I am here and I will be there in spirit and in body to make sure that I can be some part of the change I have been dreaming about seeing in the world. As so many have said before me, including the current president of the United States: “Our silence is complicity.” And I refuse to choose silence.

Our power is in our voices, our platforms, our identities. Do not underestimate your power and ability to fight injustice.

*Meanwhile, in the US over 105 million people have already been vaccinated; Colombia continues to be in its “2nd phase” in which only medical workers and people between 60-79 years old are eligible to be vaccinated. Global inequality is real.

Pode ser uma imagem de 1 pessoa, em pé e ao ar livre — Credit to: @bryanbeltran_ph (https://instagram.com/bryanbeltran_ph?igshid=cpxlbgzr2ohu)

Some useful sources:

COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker: How Many People Have Been Vaccinated In The U.S.? : Shots – Health News : NPR

covid-19-data/Colombia.csv at master · owid/covid-19-data · GitHub

Vacunación contra la COVID-19 en Colombia – Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

Colombian Tax Reform and International Tax Law – Universidad Externado de Colombia (uexternado.edu.co)

Reforma tributaria 2021: esto es lo que deben saber los colombianos – El Espectador – YouTube

In Colombia, 19 Are Killed in Pandemic-Related Protests – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Petition to involve the UN:

Petición · Que la ONU Intervenga YA para detener el genocidio que promueve el gobierno en Colombia · Change.org

Addendum: Favorite Quotes from 1984

Something I love to do when reading is underlining my favorite quotes. Sometimes they inspire big thoughts along the lines of their content, thoughts I would like to share.

Here are some of my favorite insights and quotes from 1984:

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.”

Wow. What a fucking quote. These are the sorts of moments when you wonder what would have happened if someone had told Orwell to dial back and leave it on the cutting room floor. Frankly, every line and loop and contradiction does exactly what it’s supposed to do – it draws the reader into the maze of doublethink. It leads you to questioning: does this really happen? Are there people that do this now, that brainwash themselves in order to maintain tacit ties of loyalty to specific groups? I would say, the answer is a resounding yes. I think of my racist grandparents. (Prejudice in general seems rife with this “doublethink” business) Both would love to blame people of other ethnicities for their problems, for the troubles with the US economy, with crime and the dissolution of American moral values or what have you. Yet they love and respect several people that fit within the exact category they hold contempt for by justifying it within their heads, by effectively making concessions that contradict their absolutist mentality.

Now maybe it’s the absolutism of not questioning a very narrow set of beliefs which actually leads to these sorts of conundrums. Hmmm…

The book within the book holds a number of really compelling gems of text.

“…the object of waging war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.”

How true that was, especially in the post Great War era. This statement still holds water today, as it is what our perpetual warring state is basically striving for from all angles (even in wars that have nothing to do with it).

“The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.”

Imagine: War for war’s sake. But not just for war’s sake, but for the sake of turning a profit. Sound familiar? One of those things that makes Orwell’s writing stand the test of time – exhibit A!

“The older kind of Socialist, who had been trained to fight against something called ‘class privilege,’ assumed that what is not hereditary cannot be permanent. He did not see that the continuity of an oligarchy need not be physical, nor did he pause to reflect that hereditary aristocracies have always been short-lived, whereas adoptive organizations such as the Catholic Church have sometimes lasted for hundreds or thousands of years. The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living.”

The merge of religion and secular party doctrine made me realize how a party and a religious organization could serve the same purpose using the same tools to lull and buffer the masses, mostly by having them accept and inculcate beliefs which contradict themselves and go against the rational welfare of those same masses. As someone that leans towards socialism and radicalism, I totally reject this use of the term as anything other than an example of the perversion of the ideals the term “Socialism” represents by those who know full well that ain’t socialism. But the devil is in the details. That exact logical contradiction and confusion is what could make the masses rally around something that innately does not benefit more than a minority.

Furthermore, this shows the self-sustaining and preservationist attitude of capitalists, even as the system of capitalism is at times unpredictable and haphazard depending on the general economic boom of the moment. Regardless, it’s not about who holds the power but how they are able to obtain and maintain their position. Which is what makes charity and trickle-down thinking useless and most benevolent acts within this system ill-fatedly self-serving, no matter the intention.

“And the people under the sky were also very much the same – everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same – people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world. If there was hope, it lay in the proles!”

So much good. We are all the consumers, really. The proles described in the novel. The ones that have limited means of production yet are forced to do most of the labor, that go off and die in wars that mean nothing to them based on ideals that have been fed to or sometimes beat into them. And we are all the same. This system is not an isolated one. It has no borders. Yet we are taught to hate based on those imaginary divisions. And as long as we accept we are taught and hate, we fail to see just how same and united we are. And if we, the proles, realize how strong we are when we are united, we would bring an end to the very system that we feed, the one that oppresses us.

Class consciousness, people. This is straight out of Marx. And I quote:

“Where there is equality there can be sanity. Sooner or later, it would happen: strength would change into consciousness.”

“‘Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.'”

I feel this speaks for itself. The idea of re-writing the past to benefit the party that happens to hold power at the time is an old one. Orwell saw it happening in his day, and we can easily pick it out today. It starts with the way children’s history books frame things, always in favor of white, nationalist America, the victors of the World Wars and the sponsors of many others. Those who hold the power write the history books and tell the stories and control the media. They control the present and the past, and that’s what shapes our grim-looking future.

“‘We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.'”

Imagine a politician standing up to give their speech, to sway the masses and promote themselves and their world view as they often do–imagine them saying this. That would, of course, be cognitively dissonant as it would go against everything it means to be a politician. In effect, this is the ugly truth. Power is what those capable of obtaining it seek. It is one of the strongest drugs as it impacts an entire society.

“‘Reality is inside the skull. …Invisibility, levitation–anything. I could float off this floor like a soap buble if I wished to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-centry ideas about the laws of nature. We make the laws of nature.”

Anti-intellectualism is another theme that appears in 1984. There’s a whole rant towards the end of the book, an argument between Winston and a powerful member of the party about the state of reality. If records are altered and nobody officially “remembers” an event, did it really happen? Does it really exist? Of course, Winston’s answer is yes, as is the answer of any rational person. But the answer of those controlling the masses via media and spreading lies to a subconscious level of acceptance is a self-assured “no.” The reality of people on a mass scale can be altered and led astray. However, as Winston asserts, that doesn’t make the facts any less apparent to a rational human being.

To quote outside of the book, the themes of 1984 call to mind the song “Savages” by Marina and the Diamonds and its description of the brutality of human nature. “I’m not afraid of God. I’m afraid of man,” she states in the bridge. The endless wars. The extremes we are able to go to in order to merely survive. And not only to survive, but to dominate that which we call home, the very Earth, with our every whim. This too is the essence of 1984. Bureaucracy, party-worship, roles that we play do not mask some of our most base features. It points to a fact which is often overlooked even though it has happened from culture to culture and throughout disparate contexts in history: we invented the gods to benefit us, not the other way around.

And yet, we are also rational beings capable of distinguishing logic from falsehood. Given the right amount of assessment, as Winston’s inability to suppress his own logical rejection of doublethink suggests, human’s are able to understand innately and articulate via education and exposure the lies that are fed to them. That being said, one must first have the education and exposure to think critically. It is a learned rather than innate skill, so it is quite conceivable that a society that wishes to stamp critical thought out could simply try to mold generation across generation not to question anything, to focus on the world painted by the media and dressed up by celebrity.

Orwell had an incredible way of writing about these Political and Social Science themes. He made them both accessible to a casual, curious reader and completely analytical and inspiring for those familiar with the theories they are based around. His style is clear and concise yet layered with history and truth.

Do you have a favorite quote from one of Orwell’s works? I would love to hear it and discuss any analysis of it or the concepts discussed that it inspired as well.

A Book Review: 1984

Now, I realize this is supposedly a travel blog, or at least, like, a traveling teacher blog. But I’m rather proud of the fact that I finally finished reading a book in spite of my “busy schedule” (which, yes, I know is a sorry excuse for not being able to finish books most days, but bear with me). I also happen to be a literary enthusiast, albeit a lazy one. So, in short, my book review of 1984.

Let me just go ahead and admit it. I came late to the 1984 party. Most of my friends had to read it in high school. After finally reading it, at my 25 humble years, I must say it both makes a perfect and at once absolutely inappropriate book for a high school audience. On one hand, the concepts with which it deals are important and necessary for the budding highschooler intellect, and far be it from me to say that highschoolers aren’t capable of wrapping their heads around the irony of such party slogans as WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS ~~BLISS~~ STRENGTH. But on the other hand, I can’t help but think that as a result of the importance of exposing this often banned book to young people it almost gets cast off as just another YA classic must-read. Classic and must-read it is. YA, though? Far from it.

I want to start by saying I disagree with many reviews claiming that this is merely (or primarily) a bleak projection of the future (now-present/past). I say merely because just as this book has been pigeonholed a bit for its controversial political nature, I think it also has been reduced ideologically to a simple black-and-white warning.

More accurately, it is a sort of road map for how exactly totalitarian governments function and by what means it takes to subdue and stupefy an entire population. Does this happen in many forms today? Yes. Is it building into some dark-future climax of which 1984 is the inevitable result? Not likely, as this book proves that these sorts of horrendous thought-control (or brainwashing) systems have been at work in any number of governments for the past century, and beyond, if not on such an extreme and absolute scale. So, in that way, limiting it to a narrative revolving around fantasies of a specific futurescape is too narrow for what it was intended, while it also seems too narrow to define it strictly as a book speaking of the trials of its time in hyperbole.

Which is, of course, the exact balance that makes 1984 a timeless classic. (and TL;DR: Erich Fromm basically discusses this in depth in the excellent Afterword of my Signet Classics edition of the novel)

To steal from that afterword, “Orwell…is not a prophet of disaster. He wants to warn and awaken us.”

Moving on to my actual review. This book does an enormous amount of world building in a brief amount of time. It manages to maintain an absurd yet convincing projection of the sort of world that could exist if the systems already in place became powerful enough to subdue all rational thought.

1984 was published in 1949, and so, in that sense, was one of the earliest novels to discuss a specific image of society set in the not-so-distant future based around social ills that were novel and terrifying during its conception (even alluding to the threat of nuclear war, which at the time, had not happened yet, although the bombs were in their early test stages). As both dystopian and social science fiction, it takes the cake for its crisp, developed image of a world in which thinking about the very words freedom and equality is a crime punishable by torture and death because of its “unorthodox” nature. It basically carries the desire to make a group of people submit to their oppressor absolutely and willingly to a logical extreme which could and does in fact (if more subtly) happen. After all, who hasn’t met a strong right-wing nationalist that doesn’t tend to doublethink (meaning holding two contradicting beliefs, one based on rational, concrete fact and one on irrational, fear-driven vitriol and choosing to believe the other at all costs)? There’s a reason the language of this book has found its way in our modern lexicon.

And on that note, one of the most fascinating aspects of this novel for me as a linguist was its explanation of a language developed solely to limit the range of thought. This speaks to Orwell’s brilliance as a linguist and language enthusiast (fun fact: Orwell became fluent in Burmese while policing in Burma–Burmese!). It appears that “Politics and the English Language,” in which he talks about the use of language and writing to manipulate the masses, is going on my to-read list.

Logically, this concept plays a crucial role in 1984 as Orwell developed “Newspeak” for the novel in order to show how government establishments like his fictional Ingsoc* could use language in order to alter the thought patterns and thereby limit the perceptions and ability for critical thought of its citizens across the generations. Andrew N. Rubin sums it up thusly: “Orwell claimed that we should be attentive to how the use of language has limited our capacity for critical thought just as we should be equally concerned with the ways in which dominant modes of thinking have reshaped the very language that we use.”

This “Newspeak” is not to be mistaken for “Netspeak”; however, I will say that there are some striking similarities which would lend them to comparison or unconscious association. The shortening and concision of words to convey basic meanings, not to mention the use of emojis in our current era to convey messages without words. Still, let’s not confuse ourselves: the purpose of netspeak has expanded and evolved outside of the rules of some militant single-party system and actually adds words to its vocabulary at an incredible rate and to serve a diverse number of purposes. Newspeak, on the other hand, was established and continuously developed by the party to eliminate “problematic, heretical/unorthodox” words from the English language, as a process of control rather than of free expression.

In the book, Orwell dedicates a whole appendix to this very subject, explaining 3 different types of vocabulary developed and implemented in written form using Newspeak and how it ties into the ideology of the Party. Linguistics, y’all. I’m in love.

Additional to language and vivid 3rd person accounts of the world that offer a window into how this world works, the government itself is fleshed-out via internal prose and the limited 3rd person perspective of the narrator who works within (and against) this system. It details an intricate layer of self-contradicting Ministries (of Peace (War), Love (torture), Truth (falsifications), and Plenty (rations)) and a Party-centered class system** that lend an otherwise distorted world its solidity and credibility – its relevance across time. The extreme nature of these manifestations proves how a society like the one Winston Smith lives in could come to exist and flourish. Plus, the irony can be appreciated by anyone aware of our own version of each ministry in the US (not to mention *cough* fake news).

The main character, Winston Smith, is not exactly your every man. In a way, that is what makes him so appealing. He is hapless, yes, and inevitably doomed (but don’t worry, if you’re like me and still late to this party, I won’t spoil that ending for you!). His crime? Loving to fornicate, keeping a journal, and possessing a smidge of human curiosity and rational thought. In every other way, he is exceedingly unextraordinary and even unlikeably, disturbingly human – paranoid, weak, and withdrawn. In a single word, grotesque. These traits create a relateable, truthful character trying to take some type of action in a cold, systematic world, so even though he’s not the sort of person I would generally root for, his perceptions and desires are real enough to bring me close enough to truly examine the twisted world he inhabits.

Relating back to why I don’t exactly consider this teen-appropriate***, the novel really takes you there as far as delivering on the violence of thought and action that living in a supremely fascist society would produce. On one hand, shocking details like that of the protagonist imagining raping and murdering a woman (that later becomes his quite unromantic love-interest) and scenes which expose the reader to torture in detail that even made me cringe seem like a lot to delve into without the right emotional maturity. But I suppose that’s what makes it a challenging and important read, and more so because these aspects highlight what a society of humans stripped of their humanity could look like – as well as the how and why.

1984 is not one of those books you can rank. Of course, we all have our preferences. But for the content, the message and how it is put across, the characterization, the writing style (crisp, sharp, and solid), and the linguistic and historical depth and analysis without being too pedantic – well, frankly, I give it 5/5 stars and approval as certainly not overrated. It continues to be relevant. And as long as the Capitalist machine functions, with bureaucracy and warfare in high demand, it will continue to be relevant, showing that it is not simply alien situations (relative to the “Western world”) like that of the Soviets, the Nazis, the WWII era Japanese and Chinese and North Korea which have sought to control and decimate its populations into mere bodies, party placeholders to uphold their regimes unknowing of the part they play in the machine.

Perhaps this work is so poignant because it holds up a mirror to the Imperial West and global warfare by placing it in a country called “Oceania,” including the United States and the United Kingdom. By bringing this system close to home and using a sort of parody and hyperbole, Orwell causes the Western reader to take a good, hard look at who the true enemies of “freedom” are and who they are not.

My final reflection left by this novel was this: if thought is so threatening for a totalitarian society, what would the world be like if those thoughts actually became actions? If we all exercised our freedom to express? Many of use sit from the convenience of our homes (myself included) mulling over the issues plaguing our world. Like Winston, we feel the limits of the society we live in and the enormity of the system we are up against – imperialism, capitalism, patriarchy, the intersections of them all. In the end, also like Winston, we may try to fight back, but we do very little. Many joke by saying “Thinking isn’t a crime yet,” but the next logical step, just as Winston concluded with the proles is to turn those thoughts into actions. To mobilize. The last thing every human being is left with is the ability to think rationally. Let’s not forget to act on those thoughts, too.

*Newspeak for English Socialism, the idea produced to show an England following models witnessed in Stalinist “socialism” and more presently, in North Korea
**Three classes are strictly defined as unalterable but undefined along race, gender, or monetary lines: the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the proles; each has different rules of conduct and luxuries, with the Inner Party having the greatest amount of luxuries and the greatest restrictions on conduct, and the proles having the fewest of both and being thought of as animals with no real power of class consciousness.
***Not to be a stiff; I read a ton of books in high school that were dark and gritty, but mostly its just that the themes are far darker than I personally would have expected to be relegated to this age group.