The book Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight is a frighteningly realistic book about a girl who deals with many societal issues. The book is written logically, but out of order, going between Amelias perspective when she is still alive and her mother, Kates, perspective once Amelia is dead. Nobody knows if Amelia jumped of the roof of her school to kill herself or if someone pushed her. By going through Amelias texts, emails, room, interviewing classmates and hiring a detective, Kate, unravels Amelia's life and what was truly going on inside her head. Amelia deals with a crazy amount of societal issues everyday that are eating at her.
One issue that Amelia is dealing with is bullying. Amelia is bullied by many people including a club at her school that call themselves “the maggies”. The maggies send her anonymous text messages saying terrible and mean things to her about her sexual preference and her family situation. . Another example of Amelia being bullied is one of the maggies, Zadie, snuck into Amelias house and filmed her sleeping with Amelias girlfriend and sent it to the whole school. This is an example of bullying because it ruined Amelias social status immediately. This one person had a vulnerable moment on tape and sent it to the whole school in order to make Amelia feel upset. People were giving Amelia looks and making Amelia feel unaccepted.
Another societal issue that Amelia deals with is peer pressure. The maggies are basically just a group that peer pressures girls into objectifying themselves and doing things that they would otherwise never do. An example of something the maggies do to peer pressure people is they make people in the group post half naked pictures of themselves online. No one has a choice and the maggies actually make it into a game. Whoever gets the most likes on their picture wins. This is an example of peer pressure because these girls are getting forced to put themselves on the internet and if they don't, their social status is ruined. It is really terrible that in order to be cool at Amelias school, you have to reveal parts of yourself that may be uncomfortable to reveal. When Amelia was chosen to join the maggies, although she didn't want to post these pictures online, she felt pressured to do it because she didn't know what was going to happen if she didnt.
All in all, Amelia deals with many issues on an everyday basis that are making her feel uncomfortable and like she doesn’t belong. Most teenagers also deal with issues like this, making them societal issues. It has to do with our society and what makes our society so difficult for teens to live in. These issues ruin many peoples lives, including Amelias. Bullying and peer pressure can lead to depression and suicide. Amelia died in this book due to the competition and bullying she faced and I can’t help to wonder how much better our society would be if everyone stopped adding to these issues, but not bullying and being nice. I know that will never happen, but I think that societal issues are hurting kids more than some people may think.
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