Hip Deep:
Opinion, Essays, and Vision from American Teenagers

"You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair—the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page."—Stephen King

Teenage commentators straddle an interesting line. On the one hand—whether they use print or the Internet, podium or airwaves as their medium—they have little to gain or lose. They don't have to protect an agenda or public position. Their opinions are not motivated by financial rewards. They can write and speak with integrity about what they see, and not limit their idealism about what is possible. They can tell new stories.

On the other hand, as teenagers they are gaining or losing every day. Their lives are significantly influenced by changes in education funding, health care, national policy, and international events. Youth are at the epicenter of our society; the struggles of a heterogeneous nation converge in their lives.

When WKCD and Next Generation Press set out a year ago to gather and create an anthology of compelling social commentary by adolescents across the country, we were unprepared for the diversity and depth of the voices we found. The more than fifty young writers featured in Hip Deep: Opinion, Essays, and Vision from American Teenagers come from villages in Alaska and slums in Alabama, suburbs in Baltimore and high-rises in Los Angeles. Whether the children of elected officials and children of minimum-wage workers, their views and stories are deeply personal. They touch on larger issues of our culture and time. Sometimes that touch is feather-light; other times, it's a direct bulls-eye.

"A good writing teacher invests in relationships. To work with a piece of writing over and over again until it's right—rather than putting a comment on it and calling it a day—is investing in a relationship." Read an interview with WKCD writer and editor, Abe Louise Young, about helping teens write their lives.

William Harvey tells of playing his violin for soldiers digging through Ground Zero. Eric Green writes a moving account of struggling to succeed in high school despite his fetal alcohol syndrome. Telvi Alitimirano, a fifteen-year-old Latina from Texas, contributes a sassy manifesto about her choice to remain a virgin, standing her ground with style against "all those little boys who try to hit me up." Matan Prilletinsky gives a scathing analysis of the juvenile death penalty. Juliana Partridge examines her biracial identity: "I am the taste of daybreak, the initiator of a new world."

Other writers take on international politics, gay marriage, divorce, religious and cultural freedom, poverty, sports, and many other subjects.

To Hip Deep's readers, its teenage contributors offer not just their views but also several messages. To young people: Write, speak, take any venue available to you—the Web, the radio, poetry slams, the copy machine. Publish in the original sense of the word: Make your views public. Don't let anyone discourage you from expression. To teachers: Invite students' raw life material in the writing process. Inspire students to write from their own experience. Show teenagers, through their own words, that writing matters. To other adults: Seek a place at the table with youth, recognizing that youth are already at the table, bursting with urgent ideas. They have courage, not cynicism. They are ready to be valued and included in decision-making. To all: Open your heart, expand your brain. It's hip to care about what happens in our country, our community, our planet, and our minds. It's deep to ask hard questions, to share real stories, and to listen.

"THE SUMMER MY DAD LEFT it was hot as hell and I picked cherry tomatoes with him in our garden, seeds running down my face. The tomatoes were practically bursting already from the heat and if you touched them a little too hard they would explode before you could even get them to your mouth.... He always loved the first frost and could predict it the night before from the smell.... His silvery hair and icy blue eyes seemed to wait all year long for the cold to come. I sometimes think he went crazy that summer from the humidity and all, but that's probably ridiculous, blaming my parent's downfall on the weather." —from "August" by Della Jenkins Click here to download (PDF) excerpts from Hip Deep

To order a copy of Hip Deep, see www.nextgenerationpress.org.

Return to "It's hip to be deep: Making writing essential to teens' lives."