Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul

Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul is a 1997 self-help guide for teenagers by Mark Victor Hansen. It consists of 101 stories drawn from both the author’s lived experiences and those of many celebrity guest authors, including A.J. Langer, Jennie Garth, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Bill Cosby. Intended to inspire its audience to press on through teenage life despite the many unfamiliar obstacles it introduces, the collection of stories provides a fast-paced, episodic survey of many different features of teenage life. These topics include romantic relationships, friendship, suicide, family dysfunction, eating disorders, sexual assault, and drug addiction.

Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul is broken into eight sections. “On Relationships” profiles different perspectives, giving advice on the kinds of relationships that begin to emerge in adolescence. The section transitions to a related topic, “On Friendship.” Next, “On Family” discusses the complexities of family life as one loses one’s innocence. The next section, “On Love and Kindness,” vindicates the pursuit of ego loss and emotional expression. “On Learning” provides several stories where the speakers grappled with strife in order to build a better future. “Tough Stuff” contains some of the darker stories, touching on issues such as suicide, eating disorders, drug abuse, and rape. The final two sections, “Making A Difference” and “Going for It,” both try to inspire readers to be the best people they can be and to see value in everything about the unique lives that they have.

Rather than paint flat characterizations and rely on platitudes about growing up, the stories always suggest underlying complexity, acknowledging the huge gaps in understanding that exist in everyday life. For example, in one story called “Dangerous Depression,” an eighteen-year-old girl named Rosie lives through a school shooting. She reflects on how she had relied on the assumption that since the shooter was quiet and reserved, he must not have a deep emotional life. The book also emphasizes the importance of love and compassion: in one story, a brother stays alongside his hospitalized sister every single day as she receives treatment for a brain tumor.



Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul gets its narrative power not from having a cohesive story, but rather out of its multitude of voices. No human life will ever contain every sorrow and joy that is to be experienced, but through the writers’ gifts of storytelling, readers can empathize with stories outside their range of experience.