Well, turns out they were all fake.
I was a freshman in college when it came out that the Anonymous editor, Beatrice Sparks, had actually written each and every single one of these journals. For nearly 40 years, the general public believed these journals were written by real teenagers struggling with real issues. I was 13 when I first found a copy of Go Ask Alice. I absolutely devoured the traumatic diary of a teenage drug fiend. I still am absolutely obsessed with crisis lit, and if it's told in a diary format.....even better.
Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson is the a nonfiction counterpart to the Anonymous Collection. It delves into the fraud of a woman, Beatrice Sparks, not a doctor, not a youth counselor, not an advocate for young adults. But a woman who created her own success by exploiting those who believed in her work.
The bulk of this book focuses on Jay's Journal, mainly because his family is one of the only families to come forward saying Beatrice Sparks is a fraud. Marcella Barrett contacted her after the death of her son, Alden. She handed Alden's journals over in the hopes that other suicidal teens may find solace in her son's words. But instead, Sparks took that journal and twisted it into a story of witchcraft, sacrifice, and ritualistic deaths......it was released at the beginning of the Satanic Panic.
My jaw dropped several times while reading Unmask Alice because it's just insane the amount of people who just blindly followed Beatrice Sparks and allowed her to "recreate" the journals of the teens she supposedly was working with. This was honestly one of the best books I've read this year.
I do still love the Anonymous Series, and I plan on re-reading them with this new information in mind. Regardless of if they are real journals or not, many teenagers struggle with issues found within the pages. It doesn't discredit the story in my eyes. I am appalled at the exploitation, but if you take these stories and read them as fiction, they are still compelling stories.
Looking for the Anonymous Collection?
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