Synopsis
For the first time, America's much-discussed but little-understood "twenty-somethings" reveal their true face--their dreams, their fears, their anger, their faith, their wit--in this lively and intelligent anthology of sixteen personal essays by American writers aged 24 to 32. National radio.

Reviews and Commentary

From The Publisher: 
Who really are the "twentysomething" Americans? In this anthology of lively and intelligent, original personal essays, sixteen diverse and talented writers aged 24 to 32 cut through the stereotypes and reveal through their own stories the true face of their generation. Humorous, ironic, satiric, or angry, the eight men and eight women contributors grapple with how coming of age in the uncertain America of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s has affected their lives and world views. Some have written widely; others publish here their first piece of extended prose. Their variety of opinions and personalities defies the image of America's younger generation as materialistic, self-pitying, and apathetic. Brought together in this collection by a commitment to thoughtfulness, these writers provide both their fellow "twentysomethings" and their elders a deeper understanding of what forces are shaping America's future. Many of the writers explore the fallout of their parents' cultural revolt of the 1960s and 1970s. The growth in divorce and family instability, writes Elizabeth Wurtzel, has produced an epidemic of depression in her generation and a need among friends to cling together in extended family groups well into adulthood. Another subject is how the loss of heroes for this generation has contributed to its cynicism. Many of the writers tell what it is like coming of age amid more open divisions of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation than faced by any previous generation. New York hip-hop poet Paul Beatty wittily navigates the post-civil rights era's "acceptable shades of blackness," as he learned it growing up in Los Angeles and then moving east. Another essayist comments on the irony of being a successful black conservative. Lalo Lopez, co-founder of the East L.A. comedy troupe Chicano Secret Service, declares the boisterous arrival of "Generation Mex," while editor Eric Liu affirms a different view that second-generation immigrants still can have faith in American i
 
From Jeffrey Bloom - Commentary: 
{Eric Liu's} contributors, he announces, are 'individuals, not archetypes.' . . . Not unexpectedly, this claim turns out to be an exaggeration. . . . Virtually all of them are blandly secular, and virtually all of them are blithely nostalgic for the 1960's they never knew. . . . Still, they are worth listening to, if only because they will dominate the op-ed pages of the future. . .. In an odd sense, the Next anthology does go beyond the media stereotypes about Generation X: when one hears the X-ers in their own 'unfiltered' voices, they sound, if anything, even worse off than advertised. Still, to judge by these essays, for at least some of them there may now, at long last, be nowhere to go but up.
 
From Jeffrey Bloom - The Economist: 
{This} is a smoothly crafted examination of this much-advertised section of modern youth. Its editor, Eric Liu, who at 25 has already written speechesfor Bill Clinton, asked 16 cohort-mates with suitably diverse backgrounds to ponder the aspirations and anxieties of their generation. The only requests he made of them were to eschew fancy graphics in favour of good, old-fashioned prose, and not to risk over-broad generalisations. The latter, alas, was morethan some of them could manage. Yet on the whole they avoided turning the exercise into a whine-fest. . . . With one or two exceptions, the tone is sober, the style intelligent and the discussion of their own limitations earnest. . .. These writers are shrewd beyond their years, perhaps, but they do not seem too big for their britches.
 
From Publisher's Weekly - Publishers Weekly: 
Most of the writers collected here fall deep into muddy generalizations such as those in David Greenberg's idyll to his own halcyon version of the '60s: ``They had communes; we get Melrose Place. They had the Pill; we get AIDS.'' One wonders, has he heard of Vietnam? Greenberg isn't the only 20-something writer who muffles his voice by burying it under the pillow of the past. Ian Williams starts his selection by telling how much he hates ``ain't-we-kids-got-angst'' generalizations and then proceeds to rant for 10 pages against the baby boomers. Eric Liu, the book's editor doesn't fare much better in his ``A Chinaman's Chance: Reflections on the American Dream.'' He chews the cud with phrases like ``national creed,'' ``freedom and opportunity'' and ``common responsibility.'' Surely we can expect more from ``Young Writers.'' Aren't they supposed to have new phrases that are combustible and arch? Not all the selections are dim. The good pieces are like Lalo Lopez's ``Generation Mex,'' in which the author views the generic subject as a sidebar to his own idiosyncratic story, beginning with a defiant glossary: ``vendido (ven-dee-doh) Sell out, see Hispanic. `Lalo wrote that essay for that gringo book. What a vendido!' '' Perhaps the best is Ted Kleine's ``Living the Lansing Dream.'' Unlike some of his co-contributors, his style is detail-rich so the result is a great story about a uniquely rendered trilogy--Kleine, Lansing and the '90s. Anthologies are the relay races of the literary world; in them, a team of writers hand off a topic like some sort of baton. Unfortunately, the baton in Next is a bit too big for most of the writers to carry. (May)
 

Table of Contents

	Preface
	Larger than Life	3
	AIDS and the Apocalyptic Imagination	17
	"What Set You from, Fool?"	38
	Mixed like Me	59
	In the Shadow of the Sixties	69
	My "Bourgeois" Brand of Feminism	81
	Living the Lansing Dream	95
	Flirting with Courtship	110
	A Chinaman's Chance	120
	Generation Mex	131
	How Dirty Pictures Changed My Life	146
	Daughters of the Revolution	164
	Trash That Baby Boom	174
	The Rites of Sisterhood	187
	Parental Guidance Suggested	196
	Keeping Women Weak	217
	Notes on Contributors	231

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