Top Ten Tuesday: Characters who have triumphed despite parental neglect or addiction

 Today's Top Ten Tuesday topic: Characters Who _____ (are musically inclined, have lost someone, have depression, who grow up poor, etc.). I decided to select a tough subject.

YA novels that feature characters who have triumphed despite parental neglect or addiction.

1. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexis
 (Junior sees the effects of alcoholism everywhere he looks near his home on the Spokane Indian  Reservation.)

“What's the difference between bulimics and anorexics?" I ask. "Anorexics are anorexics all the time," she says, "I'm only bulimic when I'm throwing up." Wow. She sounds just like my dad! "I'm only an alcoholic when I get drunk." There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. Penelope gorges on her pain and then throws it up and flushes it away. My dad drinks his pain away.”

 2. Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes
(After Karl's father's death, his mother abdicates her responsibilities as a parent, choosing instead drink and other men. Karl must make his own way and be the rock for his other friends in the Madman Underground.)

“I always liked that time of day, when people were shutting up their shops, putting the town to bed for the night, going home to do normal stuff with their normal families. I wonder if they got to enjoy being normal, to know just how terrific it was, or whether it was just invisible to them like air? Sometimes I got so pissed off at how easy the normal people had it that I just wanted to walk down the street shaking them and screaming into their squishy self-satisfied faces.”

3. Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach
(Felton just wants to be a normal high school boy but how can he when his mother disappears into her wine glass and his brother dresses like a storybook character?)

“Have you ever noticed you can't get away from yourself? There is no way to get away from oneself. You're always there with you.” 

4. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
(Francis' father, an Irish immigrant, is an alcoholic but she loves him. She discovers within herself a true strength.)

 “[t]he child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing things too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination.”

5. Sorta Like a Rock Star by Matthew Quick
(Amber Appleton remains upbeat even though she lives on a school bus with her alcoholic mother until circumstances threaten to swamp her.)

 “As I pedal, I start to get a bad feeling. I start to feel like I have everything all wrong, and that everyone else is right, and all my hopefulness is just childish bull-crap.”

6. How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford
(Beatrice wants to help Jonah whose family is abusive and neglectful before he disappears within himself.)

"There is a separation between parents and children that shouldn't be breached when the children are young. The parents' adult follies are private. They're disturbing and hard to understand. But eventually the kids wise up, the follies start leaking out, and the parents are revealed in all their flawed humanity. Dad and I were about to cross that boundary for good.”

7. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher
(Sarah Brynes' father was abusive. Her friends and a school counselor step in to help.)

“It's a scary thing, moving on. Part of me wishes life were more predictable and part of me is excited that it's not. I think it's impossible to tell the good things from the bad things while they're happening. Once I thought being a fat kid was the worst thing that could possibly be, but if I hadn't been fat I would never have known Sarah Byrnes--I mean Sarah--and that would have been a true tragedy in my life. And what is a worse thing than living like she lived for all those years? Nothing I can think of, but someday some kid in a group home somewhere in Kansas--chronicled in LIFE magazine more than five years ago--may be touched by her courage, and I guarantee that will change his or her life forever.”

 8. Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen
(Ruby is abandoned by her alcoholic mother. She lives with her sister and must make her way in the world.)

“What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. We had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, and the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You can't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build your world from it.”

9. Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick
(The main character feels all alone in the world. His parents are neglectful by their absence emotionally. A teacher steps in and pays attention to the symptoms that Leonard is displaying.) 

“I can tell you get it -- you're different. And I know how hard being different can be. But I also know how powerful a weapon being different can be. How the world needs such weapons. Gandhi was different. All great people are. And unique people such as you and me need to seek out other unique people who understand -- so we don't get too lonely and end up where you did tonight.”

10. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (NONFICTION)
(The author, Jeannette Walls, grew up in a very dysfunctional family brought on my alcoholism and mental illness. Yet Walls thrived and is now a renown author.)

“One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Mom frowned at me. "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.”