Chicken Soup for the Soul

A long time ago, in 1993, Chicken Soup for the Soul, an anthology of stories compiled by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, was published. They chose the included tales based on their inspirational and motivational value, and they chose the book's title for the reputation of chicken soup as a rejuvenating home remedy for various ills and for the desire to market the book as being chicken soup's counterpart for the soul. Chicken Soup for the Soul was a great success to the point where it became the #1 New York Times bestseller. Its popularity then inspired multiple spin-off anthologies, all listed on an entire page, courtesy of The Other Wiki.

Tropes used in Chicken Soup for the Soul include:

• Coming Out Story
• Driven to Suicide: A great many of the contributors, but given that they survived to write about it, they are usually …
  • Happily-Failed Suicide and
  • Interrupted Suicide
• Drugs Are Bad
• Inspirationally Disadvantaged: A lot of the stories are inspirational memoirs written by disabled people, or by people without disabilities who were taught a Very Special Lesson by a disabled person.
• Littlest Cancer Patient: Quite a few Chicken Soup stories involve one of these.
• Teen Pregnancy: One story was written by a woman who got pregnant at 15 and gave the baby up for adoption. Another involves a teenage boy deciding to participate in True Love Waits to avoid this fate, which his parents unfortunately suffered.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth