When organ transplants are in fashion

Neal Shusterman's Unwind brings up a lot of issues on pro-life versus pro-choice debate. It's a riveting young adult novel, despite this very controversial theme. In the future where Unwind is set, parents and adults can decide whether 13-year-olds have the talent, the intelligence, and the capability to go on living in society. If not, these children are set scheduled for unwinding -- a gruesome concept wherein their organs are harvested for other people. They still don't call unwinding killing though; they just say that these children will go on living, but in their separate body parts that end up in different people.

Unwind is chilling, and I loved it. Shusterman imagines a world where the government has proposed a compromise between pro-life and pro-choice advocates. Instead of allowing abortion and to pacify the pro-lifers, people are required to bring up babies until they are 13, and at this time, they decide whether they sign them up for unwinding or not. At the center of all this are three characters who have been chosen for unwinding: Connor, a street-smart 16-year-old who has been signed up for unwinding by his parents because of his unruly behavior; Risa, an orphan who is up for unwinding because of budget cuts in her state-operated home; and Lev, a 13-year-old, is a tithe, someone who has been brought up by his overly religious parents solely to be unwound.

I'd like to think of myself as neither pro-life nor pro-choice. But after reading Unwind, I realized that there's nothing good that can come out of ending the life of an unborn. Yes, people may say that abortion may be the best thing, rather than giving birth to unwanted individuals in a very harsh world, growing up bitter, angry, poor, and unloved. I think that's beside the point. We'll never know how these unwanted children would turn out. Yes, a mistake has been made by irresponsible individuals, but we can never correct that mistake by committing another through abortion, right?

I usually don't express my stand on certain issues here in this blog. But after reading Unwind, I can't help not to. Unwind is the perfect read for young adults to take a stand on this sensitive topic. Perhaps we've been too caught up in deciding whether abortion should or shouldn't be legal. Maybe what we can focus on is instilling responsibility to our children -- tell them what the consequences of their actions are. In Unwind, irresponsible parenthood is somewhat tolerated. Mothers can simply leave their unwanted babies on the front door of strangers' houses. This is called storking. When people are storked, they're forced to bring up the babies as if they were their own.

Shusterman's wonderful characters and how they change throughout the novel had me up all night reading. When I think about it, the concept of unwinding, while it may be barbaric, can become a possibility. Unwinding is a perfect compromise if you think about it, and it benefits people who need organ transplants as well. After all, wasn't it just 60 years ago when people were killing millions of helpless persons just because of their religious beliefs? People have done f**cked up things before, and we don't know if we'll screw up things again soon.

Read Unwind. It's a touching, heartbreaking, and well-written page-turner. Shusterman's writing is crisp and wonderfully nuanced. Connor, Risa, and Lev are multi-dimensional characters; I'm sure you'll recognize a facet of your personality in any of them. And when you get to the part where the process of unwinding is being done to one of the characters, you'll experience a whole gamut of emotions -- horror, pity, and anger. I guarantee you that it's something you haven't read before.

Read this book if:

1. You feel very passionate about the pro-life and pro-choice debate.
2. You love YA books that tackle controversial issues.
3. You signed up for organ donation.

By the way, Neal Shusterman is also the author of one of my favorite novels of all time, The Schwa Was Here. You might want to check that out too.