Spelling Bees: Adult market.
I was going to get cutesy and spell the post title out, but all those hyphens made my eyes cross.
Anyway, due to all of the news about this year’s Scripps Bee—and the amazingness of this year’s winner, Zaila Avant-garde—I have been seriously rabbit-holing about spelling bees. The history of spelling bees (surprise, surprise, there is a racist history), novels about spelling bees, movies and documentaries and television episodes and more.
Why does my brain do this?
Nonfiction:
M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A: Poems, by A. Van Jordan
Whatever Happened to MacNolia Cox?, by Georgia Lee Gay
Two books about MacNolia Cox, the first Black American finalist at the National Spelling Bee, who competed in 1936.
American Bee: The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of Word Nerds: The Lives of Five Top Spellers as They Compete for Glory and Fame, by James Maguire
For all of us who need to know more, more, more about the ins and outs of the Scripps Bee, here’s some adult market narrative nonfiction.
Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal About Generation Z's New Path to Success, by Shalini Shankar
More nonfiction, but this one’s more recent—and by an anthropologist, which has my interest Seriously Piqued.
Fiction:
Two Across, by Jeffrey Bartsch:
Rom-com about Stanley and Vera, who tie for first place at a National Spelling Bee, and then—from what I understand from the publisher description—get married (?) for the money (?) so that Stanley can get out from under his mother’s thumb and indulge in his true love: crossword puzzle creation (?). But! Vera is secretly in love with him, so there are Hard Feelings.
And then they start communicating via crossword puzzles??
It sounds, honestly, like it could be—depending on your tastes—absolutely delightful, twee af, or (depending a whole lot on how Stanley is written) completely intolerable? Let me know if you’ve read it, I’m so curious.
Bee Season, by Myla Goldberg:
A coming of age story about a 9-year-old contending with the implosion of her family WHILE heading her way to the National Spelling Bee.
APPARENTLY I READ THIS A MILLION YEARS AGO??
The Killing Bee: a Jacob Burns Mystery, by Matt Witten:
Fourth in a series, this one involves a high school principal who gets bludgeoned to death with a spelling bee trophy. Heh.
More briefly:
Spelling Bee, a somewhat hateful essay by Neil Steinberg, from the book Complete & Utter Failure:
Here’s a taste:
I struggle to find meaning, some utility in this vast expenditure of effort. A child could learn to play the violin in the studying time it takes to get to the national bee. The best rationalization I can come up with is that the contestants are preparing themselves to be grilled by Senate sub-committees. The lights, the sombre judges, the give-and-take of pro forma questioning, the lob of the word, the return of the correct spelling.
Thanks, I hated it.
On the absolute polar opposite of things—in other words, I LOVED IT—there’s a chapter in Beverly Cleary’s memoir A Girl From Yamhill called Love and the Spelling Bee, in which she writes about her difficult relationship with her mother, her first love letter, piano lessons, a vacation at the beach, and VERY BRIEFLY, a spelling bee that she bombed—and how she retaliated in the face of her mother’s anger:
Mother was so cross with me that I became angry. Without letting her know, I decided to do something bad, something really terrible. I decided to go a whole week without washing my face. That would show her, I thought, not exactly sure what would be shown, except a dirty face. Not washing my face that week gave me great satisfaction, except for one thing: not one noticed, not even Mother.
I only read the one chapter, but there’s so much here that clearly made its way into her books—how adults act like children have no feelings; her embarrassment over being forced to wear woolen underwear; learning embroidery—and it’s SO DELIGHTFUL and I can’t BELIEVE I’ve never read this and I’m SO EXCITED that I have the whole thing ahead of me. SO! EXCITED!
