The book Teenage Wasteland, by Donna Gaines ventures into the heart of a small suburban town in New Jersey to find out what the real sociological reasons were behind a suicide pact between four teenagers. The story made headlines across the country and the ideas behind the story were socially constructed through media and other areas of society. What was originally said in headlines as a reason that these teens did commit suicide were mental problems, drugs and alcohol. Author Donna Gaines looked deeper into what really happened. This was a completely different approach than what others did to construct what happened and why. Gaines looked at these suicides on a much broader level than most. “From the beginning, I believed that the Bergenfield suicides symbolized a tragic defeat for young people” she writes. This was much more than just the lives of teens in Bergenfield, but everywhere else kids were getting blamed and labeled. What Gaines did to look into the heart of the real problem was much more valid than any other way anyone has researched what happened. Was this truly the best way to discover what really happened to these kids that could cause them to react in such an unusual manner? Author Donna Gaines starts out by remembering her life as a teenager and how it was for her. She remembers what life was like in her teenage years and how it was for her. Gaines talks about being a young adult started after recovering from her average teenage life of drugs, family problems, and problems with the law like most other teens go through. She then tried to help out kids that had problems like she did. She first worked as a big sister for troubled kids in a junior high school. Then Gaines worked on a suicide-prevention hot-line. Eventually she became a social worker and did a lot of work to help out troubled teens and such dealing with abuse and welfare problems. Eventually she went back to her home town and worked as a “street worker.” She would work the streets of the town helping the kids out in rough times when they needed her under their terms. “We were there for the kids-like an older friend there to walk them through their wasted years.” As a street worker she would talk with teenagers that had problems and had no where to turn but for help.
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