Carrie Jones: The Bully Pulpit
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-- School Library Journal, 05/19/2010
Deeply affected by the bullying and subsequent suicide of 15-year-old Massachusetts student Phoebe Prince last January, young adult authors Carrie Jones and Megan Kelley Hall launched a Facebook page to help others who might be victims. Tagged "Young Adult Authors Against Bullying," the page has galvanized thousands of writers, educators, and students to connect and search for ways to end bullying. We caught up with Jones at her home in Maine to ask why she believes these attacks hurt not just victims but also witnesses and perpetrators.
Why did Phoebe’s story affect you so strongly?
There’s an essay she wrote for an assignment, and it was so poignant and so incredibly good for someone so young, that just reading her own words made it more personal. She had so much potential, and she was such a creative soul. Bullying happens all the time. And we think about it as a generic thing. But when we read people’s words and realize they won’t be able to express themselves anymore, it makes that loss so much more painful. Everyone who gets hurt from bullying is a real person. And I think that’s what bullies do, they dehumanize people.
Why did you and Megan choose Facebook as your way to launch your mission?
I think it’s just a natural easy way to gather up a lot of people. When you live in Maine, and it’s not a big metropolitan place, Facebook and blogs are a good way of gathering up our fans and our writing friends. It seemed like a no-brainer. Both Megan and I have a couple of thousand friends on Facebook and we just asked them to be a part of it. And then it grew, and that makes me so happy.
What do you hope the page accomplishes?
It's the first step in our efforts to show kids that they aren't alone. A lot of authors have been bullied and come through it, albeit some with scars, but have made it to adulthood despite the horrors they went through as kids. Our hope is that by sharing our own stories through the Facebook page, websites and an anthology, kids will see that and be empowered by it, especially if they learn that some of their favorite authors went through it too. It's also a resource-gathering place where authors and readers and parents and teachers and librarians can share information about how to cope, or news items, or ideas about what we can do.
Have you heard from any students who are being bullied now?
We’re getting a lot of messages from kids 12- to 14-years-old, and from 17-years-old and early college kids who have just made it out of high school, even mothers and fathers. And some of it’s so heartbreaking, to see how it’s affected their adult life. People internalize bullying, and it becomes part of their identity, the negative voice they hear, and the pain that continues to happen. We’ve gotten a couple of essays from people who bullied, and they talked about why they did, how they felt guilty, and how their self esteem was impacted, even when they didn’t do anything but saw someone else doing it, or participated in [bullying]. Those are the really brave essays.
Were you ever bullied?
I was bullied more as a younger kid. I slur my S's and when I was in first grade I was so harassed about it that I just stopped talking. Really. My mother went in to parent-teacher conferences and came out crying because the teacher said they thought something had to be wrong with me because I never spoke. I couldn't get rid of my slur, but I did get rid of this bizarre accent I'd picked up from listening to my grandparents talk. So I started trying to find ways to get kids to like me and not tease anymore. I gave the poor kids who never had snack, my snack. I'd share my lunch. I'd remember that Timmy Moran loved peanut butter crackers and always saved them for him. Eventually, those kids stood up for me, and the bullying slowed down so that it wasn't every day, so it didn't involve hair pulling.
Did it ever happen again as you got older?
When I was in seventh grade, after years of speech therapy, one of my teachers kept me after class and told me that I'd never become anything because of those S's. He said, "Nobody will ever listen to you. Nobody will ever take you seriously. You will be a failure all your life if you talk like that." He'd made fun of my S's in class too, in front of the other kids. That pretty much killed me. Sometimes I still hear his words echo in my head.
Do you believe adults can stop young people from bullying?
I've seen a couple comments on blogs that say things like, "Kids will never stop bullying. It's human nature." Honestly, this drives me crazy. There's nothing like giving up before you try. Humans aren't all bad. We share. We love. We feel pain for others. We try to alleviate that pain. By focusing on only the negative aspects of human nature we give ourselves the ability to fail, to not try. That's just crazy. If the 3,000 of us on that Facebook page right now can stop one kid from bullying or help one kid who has been bullied then all the effort is absolutely worth it.
