fufuakaspeechless

The Alphabet Challenge is the story of a future world in which political correctness has been taken to an extreme level. Everyone has to be careful not to offend anyone else. PeopleCare helps makes this possible, by passing laws that cater to all groups--some of which include People for the Right to Wear Fur If It's Cold And They Feel Like It, Individuals of Different Abilities, and Single Mothers Whose Wealthy Lovers Try to Squelch Their Fiercely Independent Spirit. When one man decides he needs to make some money, he invites people to join the Alphabet Challenge, a group designed for people with "oppressive" names. They fall for it, and pay him money in the process. This book is an excellent satire. In this day and age people are constantly worrying about ensuring rights for everyone, always wondering if someone might be offended by various terms. Yes, it is important to care for others, but sometimes it makes you wonder: how far can it go? The Alphabet Challenge answers that question, making for an insightful and entertaining read.

SarahRae

Olga Gardner Galvin’s The Alphabet Challenge depicts our world’s future as one that has transcended discrimination of all kinds, becoming compassionate and overly sensitive to the needs of the population. It is the PeopleCare organization that has acquired a monopoly on care activism and that runs the business of caring. It has possibly more control over laws regarding fair and non-discriminatory practices than the national four-party political system. PeopleCare works to level the playing field so that every group of people has an equal access to life and happiness. However, while it works to create diane faupprogress for groups like “People for Free Orange Juice for Everyone,” it must also assist the needs of “People Against Citrus Fruit.” Gardner Galvin’s novel points out the absurdity of caring for everyone, attempting to bring advances to different groups of people who have conflicting goals. It also makes explicit the horrors of assuming a group identity over an individualistic one. The “group” becomes more important than the individual within it, therefore resulting in the needs of the person being neglected. After all, red meat cannot be made legal simply for one “uncaring” individual in society. Such an occurrence would deeply offend those groups of people opposed to eating meat. It is bad enough that chicken, although socially stigmatized, can still be legally acquired. This hilarious, satirical, and eye-opening novel is witty and engaging. At a time when we are also working to combat social injustice and all forms of discrimination, Gardner Galvin’s work reminds us that while, of course, we must not overlook the needs of our neighbors, we must also not be afraid to have a dissenting opinion. It also reminds us that life, in general, is not fair, and it is close to impossible to protect everyone. We simply have to persevere and work for what we need in life as an individual. A powerful message, The Alphabet Challenge also insists that we cannot wait for someone else to do the work for us. I read this book in just a few days. It was easy to love the characters and impossible to put down. It continually surprised the reader with the ridiculous ways in which “caring” has turned into: tattle-taling non-recyclers into jail, thriving in the black-market sales of sugar and butter, and pushing smokers towards designated smoking areas at the very edges of society. The people of this world must walk on eggshells to ensure that their actions do not offend others, and they must do so by giving up their own personal freedoms.

bibleeohfile

I've spent the past week reading The Alphabet Challenge by Olga Gardner Galvin and found it completely brilliant. From the publisher's website: Set several decades in the future, the nearly unrecognizable Manhattan is made kinder and gentler by PeopleCare, an umbrella organization of myriad victims’ rights groups whose members work their fingers to the bone to make caring, compassion, and lowest-common-denominator equality a federal law, now that they have already fought for and won their campaigns for federal prohibition on smoking and obesity, among other unhealthy things. Enter entrepreneur Howell Langston Toland, who has learned absolutely nothing in the seven years he’d spent in jail for failure to recycle empty bottles. To cash in on the prevailing zeitgeist, he creates a new category of victimization, which encompasses the broadest audience yet. Threatened by the brazen invasion of its turf and the sudden popularity of the new cause, PeopleCare mounts a counterattack against the upstart. Toland, meanwhile, succumbs to the more natural for him entrepreneurial mode of thinking, urging his annoying followers to become self-reliant so that he may cut them loose. Vicious politics ensue . . . One word: hysterical. Totally and completely hysterical. And I mean that in both the “haha, can’t stop laughing” and the “unmanageable fear” sort of way that my Merriam Webster describes. In this future, people care. They care so much that you can’t do anything for yourself anymore, and why should you? You don’t know how to take care of yourself, but that’s OK, because that’s what PeopleCare is for. They’re there to make all your decisions and totally control every aspect of your life. Think people who eat meat are insane? There’s a group for that (People for Complete Coexistence with Animals). Think you should be allowed to steal, beat, and rape? There’s a group for you (People with Different Moral and Ethical Values). Think recycling should be a choice? Sorry, that’ll get you five years in lock up. Think you should be allowed to park where you want, eat red meat, or educate your own children? Sorry, but no, you can’t do that anymore. It’s not fair to everyone else. It hurts them and the way they want to live. You’ll have to give up all of your wants and needs and personal rights for the greater good. It’s OK though, because PeopleCare cares for people. (In that future, I totally want to be their ad writer.) Howell Langston Toland has finally had enough. Sentenced to a group home (Adjusted Environment Home) because his parents decided to home school him, and then sentenced to seven years in jail for not recycling and committing grievous bodily harm (tired of being robbed, Howell put cement on a window sill and stuck broken glass in it; poor thief cut himself trying to break in and immediately turned Howell in for his crimes), he decides that it’s time he gets his and starts the ABChallenge, a support group for those who have spent their entire lives being treated like lesser beings because their names start with a letter between N and Z. He’ll collect a small donation from everyone who has ever been treated unfairly because of where they fall in the alphabetical queue, make a fortune, and then run off to live in Australia, where it’s still legal to sunbathe, eat read meat, and have an opinion of your own. I know, it’s got to be a joke, right? Not in this future world, it isn’t. Most of America has been brainwashed into believing that it’s not their fault, no it’s the other guy’s fault and dammit, laws need to be passed against them so that you can have a fair shake. No matter that it’s asinine and stupid, it’s the way it has to be so that everything is equal. As ridiculous as this novel is (and I mean that in a good way!), it’s frightening when you think about how things are changing here, now, ever so slightly starting to resemble things in The Alphabet Challenge. True, we can still make most of our own choices, but look at what’s going on in the food and restaurant industries. Health care. Education. Exercise. I’m not saying that I think all of the changes are for the bad, but I do think it’s a slippery slope we’re on and satire or not, this book has a point. The day I wake up in America and find out chocolate has been outlawed, or God forbid, salt, I am totally moving to Europe, where they’ll still be allowing such hedonistic, evil, unfair things. Read The Alphabet Challenge. Then join me in my consumption of chocolate and salt. At the same time. (They're totally delicious together.)