Please Stop
Laughing at Me (Adams, $12.95) a New York Times bestseller, is
a powerful account of one woman's look back in time. For Jodee Blanco, the
target of daily bullying by her classmates, the ridicule she describes defined
her early years. In Las Vegas, with the arrest of nine high school youths
calling themselves the 311 Boyz and accused of beating classmates for the
sport of it, Blanco's book is timely.
At home, Blanco's
parents argued about who caused their daughter to be a social misfit. They
sent her to a psychiatrist, who put her on drugs and told her that bullying
was a part of growing up and not to take it so seriously. Blanco felt even
more alienated.
But on a family trip to
the Greek island of Santorini, Blanco began to feel acceptance. "Ten thousand
miles away, in an exotic, foreign land," she writes, "I have discovered the
simple joys of being a normal, happy teenager. Whenever things get too tough
for me at Samuels [school], I'm going to close my eyes and imagine that I am
back here, sipping Greek coffee with [a new friend]. ..."
Once back home,
however, reality sunk in; the taunting persisted and the memory of Blanco's
trip faded. She still had to face the bullies who regularly pummeled her with
stones and threw spit wads at her. Blanco, with her no-nonsense narrative
style, describes when the taunting began at her Midwestern grade school and
subsided during her last year of high school, after she was chosen to attend a
two-week writing conference where she met kids like her. Thus began the
process of coming into her own. After years of torment, Blanco finally learned
that there was life away from school, that she was not defined by her
mean-spirited classmates. She began sticking up for herself and, as a result,
gaining self-respect.
Jodee Blanco rose above
the years of bullying to become a leading public-relations specialist in the
book publishing and entertainment worlds. "I would not wish my early life on
anyone," Blanco writes, "but it is my life. It's a large part of who I am
now."
Please Stop Laughing
at Me offers hope to kids, parents and teachers forced to deal with
bullies.
