Coming of Age; Young Adult Literature; Parable
This book most definitely falls in the genre of "coming of age"—it has all the hallmarks of adolescent conflict: insecurity, social cliques, dating, the lure of illicit behavior, the quest to define one's identity, and a character who needs to make mistakes to learn from them.
In the same vein, Go Ask Alice is young adult literature because that's the audience it was specifically geared toward. Nowadays YA lit is pretty universal—Harry Potter really opened the doors for people to read "children's books" no matter what their age—but in 1971 (when our book was written) that wasn't really the case. This was written for YA readers pretty exclusively.
If you dig a bit deeper, Go Ask Alice can be loosely deemed a parable because, by definition, a parable is a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson—and we think anti-drug propaganda fits that description pretty well. Even the title hints at the fact that if you doubt that drugs are dangerous, all you need to do is go ask Alice to understand just how wrong you are. Dun dun dun…