Finding the courage to question

On Veteran's Day, at 6pm, there will be a random drawing for a set of 10 copies of ANYTHING BUT OKAY for your classroom or book club. You'll get an entry for retweeting this post (please tag me @sarahdarerlitt and hashtag #anythingbutokay) and additional entries for retweeting each of the posts between now and Veteran's Day. Rachel Alpine wrote a great teaching/reading guide, which you can download from my website.


For over 14 years, I wrote political opinion columns - for the Hearst CT papers (Greenwich Time/Stamford Advocate) and then for CTNewsJunkie. I stopped writing regularly in mid-2017, because the toxicity of being a woman writing opinion online was starting to affect my ability to write fiction. Getting sent rape threats and pictures of concentration camps can do that to a person. I had to preserve the mental space and creativity to write what actually pays my bills.

It wasn't a decision I felt good about, because in allowing my voice to be silenced, it felt like letting the trolls win. But not entirely, as it turns out, because ANYTHING BUT OKAY turned out to be one of the most political books I've ever written.

One of the questions I was determined to explore in this book was "What is a patriot?" It's one I've been pondering for a long time, because I have been called unpatriotic so many times as a journalist, merely for asking questions about government policy. I wrote about that in this column dated July 8th, 2008. (click here for full size PDF for easier reading.)

A few days later, this Letter to the Editor appeared in the paper, written by a Greenwich resident and WWII veteran named Richard P. Petrizzi.

To the editor:
I am a veteran of World War II (U.S. Army).I have many friends who are veterans who have never worn a flag on their lapels or flow flags in front of their homes.

Yet these same people went to war to fight the dictators who were trying to conquer the world. We fought at that time to preserve our freedoms, including freedom of speech.

I urge Sarah Darer Littman to keep writing her column and standing up for what democracy is really all about.

Richard P. Petrizzi, Greenwich

His words meant so much to me. I cut that letter out and pinned it above my desk. Whenever I felt like giving up, or people warned me to be careful about pissing off too many powerful people, I'd look up at his letter and keep going. I wish, more than anything, I'd written to him at the time to tell him how much what he said meant to me, and how his words gave me courage. Unfortunately, by the time I tried to contact him he had already passed.


There's a lesson here: Don't wait to tell people when they've influenced your life for good.

But more than that, there's the idea that patriotism isn't about outward trappings. It's not about how big of a flag you wave, or simply calling yourself a patriot in your Twitter handle and then sending hate speech to everyone who doesn't agree with you. It's not about "My Country - Right or Wrong." Rather it's about what Senator Carl Schurz said in a speech on October 17th, 1899:

“I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves … too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: ‘Our country, right or wrong!’ They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: ‘Our country—when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.’”—Schurz, “The Policy of Imperialism,” Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, vol. 6, pp. 119–20 (1913).

Stella, the main character in ANYTHING BUT OKAY wonders about patriotism - what it is and who gets to define it. Her parents both served in the first Gulf War, and her older brother is an Afghanistan vet. She asks some of her parents' veteran friends how they define being a patriot.

Here's one of the answers:

To me, being a patriot means not being afraid to asks questions. Questioning doesn't mean a lack of love for one's country. It means the exact opposite.

ANYTHING BUT OKAY pre-order giveaway

My latest YA Novel, ANYTHING BUT OKAY, comes out from Scholastic Press on October 9th.

I'm really excited for this book to come out in the world, and to encourage you to pre-order, I will send you a signed bookmark, a personalized bookplate, and these awesome temporary tattoos to sport when you get involved (and VOTE, if you're old enough!) in the mid-term elections. Unfortunately, I have to make this US and Canada only. Sorry international readers... Pre-order giveaway ends on October 8th.

The temporary tattoos read:

If that's not enough to convince you, for each pre-order entry, I'll make a donation of 5% of your cost of purchase to your choice of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, The League of Women Voters or HIAS.

But wait — there's more! All pre-orders will be entered into a raffle to win copies of IN CASE YOU MISSED IT and BACKLASH.

How do you get this swag? It's easy! Just email me at sdlgiveaways@gmail.com with a proof of purchase and your mailing address.



As with most of my books, the idea for ANYTHING BUT OKAY started with questions that were knocking around my brain.

The first one was inspired by my friend Rob Jordan, a USAF veteran.

Back in December 2014, Rob made a post on Facebook about the problems he had getting disability for the health issues he'd developed as a result of serving in Afghanistan, at bases where there were burn pits. His post made me angry about the way we treat our veterans - I wrote about it here.

Seeing Rob and so many other of our veterans struggle to get help from the Veteran’s Administration after having served our country with pride got me wondering: Why is our country so quick to send troops off to war regardless of the cost, but when our vets come home struggling with the emotional and physical costs of fighting it, the focus is suddenly switched to reducing taxes and a deficit swollen by the costs of prosecuting that war?

I had a write a novel to work that one out, and it's dedicated to Rob.

The second question was “What is a patriot?” and the related question of who gets to define that. I spent fourteen years writing political opinion columns,. and count George Orwell as one of my major influences. Hearing our government using the euphemism “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” for torture was a perfect example of what Orwell warned of in his essay, Politics and the English Language: “Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” Yet because of the views expressed in my 650-word columns, I was called un-American, and a terrorist lover, which was confusing because I thought I was doing my job as a journalist and my duty as an American.

The news was another inspiration for ANYTHING BUT OKAY. Watching politicians use rhetoric to portray different groups as “animals”, and working to restrict the ability of refugees to seek asylum has a disturbingly familiar ring for someone who grew up in a family with Holocaust trauma. Teachers and librarians described how that rhetoric 'trickled down' to their schools, both virtually on social media and in real life bullying. My heart broke as I heard about students in tears concerned for the safety of their families. I read the news stories about white, privileged kids from the suburbs shouting racist chants when they play teams from schools with a more diverse makeup. This made me wonder how we can help create more understanding and empathy; how we can start conversations and bridge differences. As a white woman of a certain age, I’m learning how many blind spots I have, and I hope reading about Stella and Farida’s friendship will encourage young people to think about what it means to be a good ally; to recognize that we can’t stand by in silence when we see injustice, just because it’s not happening to us personally.

Speaking of the news and how critical it is to learn media literacy skills, particularly in the Internet age, I’ve watched as the number of school librarians and media specialists has been cut by twenty percent since 2000, particularly in predominantly black and Latino districts, despite rising student populations. Technology can be a great tool, but Google will not teach our students media literacy.

I hope that this book will encourage discussion of these questions—and through those conversations enable us to find the humanity we have in common.


To read more about ANYTHING BUT OKAY, here's the link to the book on my website.

Gina Haspel nomination - revisiting The Politics of Mockingjay

Watching the politics around Gina Haspel's confirmation as CIA Director, and the reprehensible attacks from the White House directed at Senator John McCain, I've been reminded of a piece I wrote eight years ago for The Girl Who Was on Fire, an anthology of essays about Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games series. I thought about it as I was listening to different news channels while stuck in traffic on I-95 this afternoon driving back from an author talk. Two themes of the essay - what it means to be patriotic and the use of torture, seem to be as much if not more of an issue today as they were back in 2010 when I wrote this:

"In the summer of 2008, two letters from readers arrived at my paper. One, addressed to me, asked, “Can you name me an instance where you are on the United State's side on an issue?” The other, addressed to my editor at the paper, complained: “ If you're going to continue to publish the far left ramblings of Sarah Darer Littman on your editorial page, you can at least try to balance things out by having somebody else on who actually wants to see our country win the war on terrorism.”

I found myself bemused by both, because as far as I’m concerned, I’m on the United States’ side on EVERY issue. It’s because I love my country so much, because I believe so passionately in the ideals upon which it was founded, that I’m so vocal when I feel that our government and our elected officials are taking us down paths that diverge from those principles.

So what does it mean to be patriotic? What does “being on America’s side” constitute? Does it mean “My country”—or in Katniss’ case, the rebellion—“right or wrong”? Personally, I don’t believe that is the case. One of the greatest minds of all time, Albert Einstein, said, “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”

To me, it is about asking questions, fighting for what you believe in and holding our leaders accountable. It’s about making sure that making sure that they don’t take us down a path that is antithetical to what we stand for. It’s about saying “The United States does not torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our values” as President Bush declared in a speech on September 6th, 2006, but really meaning it, not coming up with rationalizations for how and why we are allowed do so.

It’s about facing the real challenges ahead of us without losing who we are as a nation, without compromising the core values and beliefs that made America the shining beacon of democracy in the world.

I have a letter to the editor from a World War II veteran, Richard P. Petrizzi, that I keep pinned above my desk. It reads ; “I have many friends who are veterans who have never worn a flag on their lapels or flown flags in front of their homes. Yet these same people went to war to fight the dictators who were trying to conquer the world. We fought at that time to preserve our freedoms, including freedom of speech. I urge Sarah Darer Littman to keep writing her column and standing up for what democracy is all about.”

Almost two thousand years ago, the poet Juvenal wrote the Satires, a series of poems highly critical of the mores and actions of his Roman contemporaries. In Satire X, he writes of the downfall of the head of the Praetorian Guard, Sejanus, and the reaction of the citizens of Rome as he is dragged through the streets to his execution. One citizen asks ”But on what charge was he condemned? Who informed against him? What was the evidence, who the witnesses, who made good the case?"

Another replies: "Nothing of the sort; a great and wordy letter came from Capri, " in other words, Sejanus had been condemned to death on the basis of a letter from the Emperor Tiberius, because he’d fallen out of favor with his former friend. “Good; I ask no more," replies the first citizen – abandoning law and order to the winds.

Juvenal rails that “the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things----Bread and Games!”

Or, in the original Latin: Panem et Circenses. The phrase originated with Juvenal and two thousand years later, it describes how much of the American public preferred to lose themselves in “reality TV” than pay attention the erosion of civil liberties during the War on Terror; “asking no more” in the way of evidence from their government when confronted by policies that so clearly contradict our laws and our national values. From warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, to the politicized hiring and firing of Department of Justice officials, from the abrogation of international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture, to leaking the name of a covert CIA agent for political purposes - the list of Bush Administration transgressions goes on. Although the Obama Administration has corrected some of the worst abuses such as the use of torture, it still hasn’t rejected the use of extraordinary rendition or closed the prison at Guantanamo Bay, despite the fact that the harsh treatment received there has motivated several released prisoners to become members of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Yet much of the American public remains too busy watching Reality TV, preferring to discuss Dancing with the Stars and Jersey Shore, and continue to accept the harsh treatment of prisoners under the guise of “national security”, without understanding the global strategic implications, let alone the immorality.

My upcoming novel ANYTHING BUT OKAY, (Scholastic, October 2018) is a further exploration of the questions I had in 2010 about what it means to be a patriot and who gets to define it. Rereading the essay from eight years ago reminds me that the seeds of our current political chaos weren't planted by Trump. Trump's election is the ugly weed that sprouted from the seeds planted years earlier. We have to recognize that in order to move forward with any vestige of a civilized society intact.