Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything: A Memoir

“I spent the next ten years of my childhood stifling abuse under a picture-perfect facade. By seventeen, my body couldn’t uphold the lie anymore. Fifteen pounds underweight, I collapsed on the floor in a cold sweat and admitted myself to a rehab center for teens.”

Alyson Stoner begins their memoir in media res, opening with an anecdote from their adolescence, by which point they’d been immersed in the entertainment industry for many years. By starting with the image of themselves “collapsing on the floor in a cold sweat” and “admitting themselves to rehab,” they establish how child stardom would endanger their mental and physical well-being, introducing the theme of Navigating the Dangers of Child Stardom. Meanwhile, Stoner’s reflective yet assertive voice ushers the reader into the memoir.

“I wished her good luck, but on the inside, insecurity bubbled up. Was she better than me in the competitions? She is gorgeous. How could they not like her? It’s not that I didn’t want her to win; I wanted everyone to succeed. But I needed to show Margaret that it wasn’t a mistake to bring me here. She’d made an exception, because I was special. My body shuddered at the thought of failure.”

Stoner writes from their adult, retrospective point of view but here channels their childhood perspective through the use of internal monologue. This conveys how their youthful insecurity impacted their foray into the entertainment industry. The italicized questions invite the reader into Stoner’s raw, emotional state as a seven-year-old. Such moments pervade the memoir, implicitly asking readers to empathize with Stoner’s child self.

“Internally, I feared that the whole divorce was my fault. I overheard Mom and Dad arguing one night that I was an ‘accident’ and that I wasn’t part of the original plan. If that were true, I wanted to do whatever I possibly could to prove they wouldn’t regret their mistake. I’ll be the best mistake ever.”

Stoner’s incorporation of episodes from their home and family life into their wider Hollywood story furthers the memoir’s theme of