Go Ask Alice

Anonymous. Go ask Alice. (1971).New York: Simon & Schuster Inc.

Genre: Non-fiction, Memoir because it is a series of diary entries written by one person about the events occurring in her life.

Age Level: 15 and up

Go Ask Alice is a very captivating memoir. It is a memoir composed entirely of diary entries that have been published, written by a young girl of about 15. The young girl remains nameless throughout the book, and chronicles her experience with drugs and trying to become a non-addict. I was immediately drawn to this book once I started reading it because I knew that it was a true story and I knew that I was reading the inner-most thoughts of its author. Hard to read at times, this book is a very real and emotional story. Because of this book’s raw details, I would recommend this book to only the most mature of high-school readers. The theme of this book is not to teach, but to tell the truth about the society in which we live.

This book begins with a note from the editors, telling readers that we are about to read about a 15 year old girl’s addiction and struggle with drugs. The story automatically begins with a diary entry for September 16^th. The diary entries serve as chapters, and are short and tell of mundane events of the day until her life spins out of control after someone puts LSD into her drink at a party. We truly become acquainted with the main character through her thoughts and what she chooses to write in her diary. Occurrences in her life when she is not writing in her diary, we do not know, so readers can only know what happens when she chooses to write about it. That was one thing that was interesting about the book: after a hiatus from writing, the reader can piece together what is happening in the author’s life. She is not writing for others, only herself, so we must read between the lines to infer about what might have happened while she was not writing. We see that she is a very complex individual who has many inner demons to fight. The conflict in the book ranges from person-against-self, to person-against-person. The main character is constantly fighting against herself to gain confidence and to stay off of drugs. She must also fight with herself to feel that she is worthy of being accepted by others: the main root (I believe) of her initial drug experiment. She must also fight against those who try to push her over the edge and start taking drugs again after she becomes clean.

If I were to use this book in the classroom, I would use it in the context of social science because it is a great book to begin discussion on our society and the role that drugs plays in it. Drugs are such a negative impact on our society and this book is an excellent example of how everyone and anyone can be affected by them. This book can be a bit frightening at times, so as a teacher, I would need to be sensitive to the needs of my students. Students who read the book could use bookmarks to mark those places that they find worthy of sharing with the rest of the class and spark discussion. Big questions that I would ask my students are:

The main character is a regular girl from a middle-class family, who becomes affected by drugs. Do you think that we are all invincible from drug-use, or are we all affected by it in one way or another? How did this book teach us that drugs can affect everyone, even kids from “good” families?