6 x 9
257 pages
Personal Quests & Quandaries: Coming of Age in the 21st Century
Carol W. Hotchkiss
Today's teens live in a global community and are confronted with constantly changing challenges and possibilities. Personal Quests and Quandaries today demand a level of wisdom, empathy, courage, and responsibility that often place young people in uncharted territory and sometimes at risk. Affluence, the Internet, and advertising offer infinite choices and pressures. Global awareness and diversity require sophisticated levels of empathy and social responsibility. Parents and families can be isolated and uncertain, providing adolescents with less time, fewer boundaries, and vaguer guidance. The media is omnipresent, creating needs, insecurities, expectations, skepticism, and phantom relationships. Even in a time of AIDS, sex has fewer boundaries, and street drugs fleetingly promise both escape and connection. Heroes and heroines are in short supply and there are few enclaves that offer a certain sanctuary from random violence or unexpected threats. Young people today are forced to be pragmatic realists, questioning the traditional idealism and rebelliousness of previous generations of adolescents.
The stories in this book are brief self-portraits of young adults responding to their lives and making sense of today's world in wise, funny, poignant, and painful ways. For young people and for the adults with whom they live and interact, these stories give a glimpse of the extraordinary character and courage of young adults today.
Reviews
"A profound book that has the power not only to educate teenagers but to inform and influence adults as well. Reading these absorbing stories and considering Carol Hotchkiss' perceptive and penetrating questions can lead us to reevaluate our own stories and even to change our lives."
Jean Kilbourne
Author of Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel,
and creator of the film series Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women.