Diversity in All Forms! discussion

Author's Pick: Fallout (Crank, #3) by Ellen Hopkins

I'm currently reading this book!

Anyone else? I'd love to discuss it. I'm getting a little loss when I read from the daughters' perspectives. Like I keep forgetting who I'm reading.

WAIT!! Is there actually 5 children instead of just the 3 that the book covers?

Yeah, I wondered about how many real kids too.

I started this book today.

: )

I just finished the book today. I wasn’t a huge fan. It was “meh” to me.

So was this book based off of a true story?

This is from Ellen Hopkins personal website:

"The book is written from the points of view of her three oldest children, now teens in the book, and dealing with their own lives, which are shaped by the choices she made when she was their age. At the time I write this description, the real “Hunter” is thirteen, but I write him at nineteen in Fallout. Which means I’ve written the future. Please remember it’s only one possible future, created from how I see these children’s lives now. And also please remember that, while these books are rooted in our real life, they are largely fiction."

"I chose to write from her children’s POVs to give them a voice, and to give a voice to my readers who struggle with their own parents’ addictions. There are many. But I also believe the ultimate hope of these stories lies here, with the generation that can choose to break this cycle. You will get “the rest of Kristina’s story,” through different lenses because “the monster” doesn’t only destroy the addict. It tries to destroy everyone who loves him or her. Parents. Children. Partners. Spouses. Friends. If this describes you, stay strong. Get help if you need it. You might find a sense of peace and community in an organization like Al-Anon. You are not alone."

Thank you so much for sharing that! Did you find the book hard to follow?

I saw that the different kids were shown narrating in different fonts. So, each kid was assigned a print font! Even so, yes, flipping back was necessary. The fonts were not different enough, I thought. I had to look closely, and re-remember each one's backstory if I stopped reading for awhile.

The message was clear, though, about the effects of addiction on the next generation. I am the daughter of a chronic alcoholic. The social hassles and resource deprivations definitely roll down and drown addicts' kids! My mom's time, energies and money all went to getting alcohol and drinking and being drunk. She forgot or didn't care she had kids. School stuff? She couldn't be bothered. It interrupted her in being drunk 24/7. She didn't bother herself with anything requiring her attention except running out of beer.

I am going on a king-size rant! Warning....

"Anger is a valid emotion. It's only
bad when it takes control and makes
you do things you don't want to do."

I chose to read a lot of books, exercise (bike riding, swimming, etc.), concentrate on my education) when I was angry, abused, neglected. My bike was semi-broken, given me by a neighbor. Books came from the library, where I was safe as well.

What has mystified me, but I have to accept because it appears the majority of kids act out by getting even more drunk and high, messed up with authority, school, unplanned pregnancies with the wrong people, etc. Why? It never entered my head to go that self-harm route.

I realize I am in a very small minute minority. I was definitely angry as hellfire, wanting to kill my parents. Since I couldn't do that, I decided to escape through books and studying hard. Plus, I wanted to figure out why my parents were like lowlife scum, but other parents were giving and easygoing with Parenthood, why God ignored my parents (this is why I am an atheist). I checked out books on psychology, history, sociology, religion and addiction. I cannot understand rage with parents that results in hurting one's own body!

This series explains to me how addiction grips people in its claws once they begin using - need of the drug of choice, sickness if one doesn't get it, brain begins to silo and concentrate only on thoughts of how to get the next fix while everything else becomes unimportant and faraway (including babies, jobs, friends). For some reason, what makes me physically sick after trying once (puking, dizzy, nauseous, diarrhea, slurring, stumbling about, embarrassed) turns these folks on. They don't care about the physical destruction of their bodies, while I am always careful of my back, knees, brain, etc.

Frankly, I absolutely do not understand this extending a use of a substance which messes up one's brain and comprehension and functioning at all, but clearly I am in the minority. As usual when I see all around me a reaction to emotional pain which is WAY beyond my ability to understand on any level of MY being, I have to accept it is the common one.

From the evidence of the street, and my personal family/friends, and collected statistics, once people become addicted, they almost never are cured for the rest of their shortened miserable lives. Some live as long as twenty years after becoming addicted, but most much less. Of those who are convinced to try to quit, about 30%, or in other words, most of them go back to their addiction three more times before quitting. Expensive as hell for relatives and maybe social organizations! Plus, the personal degradation! Unable to hold down jobs, the scorn/horror/pity/dislike from everyone who sees the wreckage of their bodies, their squats and borrowed broken down apartments or abandoned buildings, their smelly filthy bodies, their dirty clothes, the strewn-about stinky garbage where rats and cockroaches crawl etc.

And their poor poor children! Most addicts proclaim "I love my kids!" My parents did. Yet we starved, got cold, went without clean clothes, food, shoes, baths, having no clean cheerful colorful environment, never went on trips to museums, aquariums, hikes in woods or parks, sport events, fairs, and other fun kid events sponsored by many local districts, businesses, and schools. We children of addicted parents are not picked up and loved, put to bed, fed with treats - we are barely thought of unless we are being beaten for being hungry, needy for hugs, needing clean clothes, attention and regular hot meals. Yet, addicted parents say, 'I love my kids!"

From what I can see, authorities and family rarely challenge this "love" of addicted parents. Even when somebody says something or does something, foster care is truly a very poor replacement for decent non-addicted parents. However, it is a crap shoot in foster care. Some foster parents are excellent. Addicted and mentally-ill parents just plain suck 100%.

It appears to me the only cures are never getting started, and making abortions easily available. I'm serious. As a child of addicted and abusive parents ("but I LOVE my kids!" so my parents always said), these novels in describing the horrors of addiction do not begin to touch the physically living through it, the being of a helpless kid in the company of addicted and mentally-ill parents.

Abused and neglected children grow up in lowlife crap all of their childhood, and start having kids when they are still kids (rape, partying), guaranteeing another generation of lowlife crappy childhoods. In my opinion, we need to put these kids in pre-school as soon as possible. Abortion must be available.

I do not see ANY advantage to keep unwanted, abused and neglected kids with their parents, based on my own experience, and the 15-30% success rate of addicts to quit. I do not believe in "hoping". Involuntary commitments to mental health facilities will at least save more kids from being born to suffer such awful terrible "loving" parents.