Pamela W. Hollander is associate professor in the education department at Worcester State University in Massachusetts.
Description
Introduction: Gen X "Brings It" to Adulthood By Pam Hollander Chapter 1: Cobra Kai: Flipping the Script and Finding Intergenerational Balance By Jim Deys Chapter 2: The Countercultural Legacy of Generation X in Twin Peaks By Damon Franke Chapter 3: So Different Yet So Similar: Two Black Generation X Professors Discuss Life at the Half Century Mark By Elwood Watson & Zebulon Miletsky Chapter 4: The Revisionist 3Rs: Revolutionize your Revolutions around the Sun By Sarah Parker Chapter 5: The New Adult: A Media Comparison of Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z By Lee Okan Chapter 6: From Latchkey Kid to Granny Nanny: How Gen X Shaped the Modern Family By Melissa Vosen Callens Chapter 7: Crimes of Trust: Middle-Aged Gen Xers In Ozark By Marty Rapp Chapter 8: "I Didn't Feel a Thing": The Gen X Trauma and Alternative Families in My Golden Days By Helena Gurfinkel Chapter 9: The Aging Dilemma in Forever: Generation X Asks What It Means to Live By Kellie Deys Appendix: Personal Essays on Generation X at Middle Age
Reviews
This powerful collection of essays frames Gen X, once seen as disaffected, lost and alienated, as a transforming force, working to understand what it means to be alive in a complex and ever-changing world. All of this is framed within popular culture, from the counterculture legacy of Gen X in Twin Peaks to the music of Pearl Jam. Hollander has gathered engaging voices, personal and academic, that raise questions about legacy, revolution, adulting, and aging. This is a timely collection that will sharpen the reader's understanding of generational identities, and Gen X's particular role as an agent of creative change.--Emily Miller Mlcak, Life Coach and Former Faculty Associate, Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking A thoughtful collection which follows real and fictional Gen Xers, represented in music, film, tv, and life, from the Karate Kid to Jay-Z - through marriages, children, careers, even into the afterlife - as they figure out how, or even whether, to grow up.--Jeffrey Halprin, Professor Emeritus, Nichols College A window into our preoccupations as a generation, Hollander's perceptive book provides Gen Xers (and those who study them) a way to make sense of our distinctive histories: as a group whose parents essentially left us to our own devices, for better or for worse. It comes as a relief and a revelation to learn where we fit in and what marks us as a tribe.--Meg Tyler, Boston University