Sunday reading: the envy of teenagers | the new yorker

In 1978, Jamaica Kincaid published an alternate short story in the new yorker entitled “Daughter.” Composed of a long sentence, the story offers a brief but illuminating portrait of the life of its young subject. “This is how a man intimidates you; this is how to love a man,” Kincaid writes, “this is how to spit in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to act fast so he doesn’t fall on you; this is how to make ends meet. The play is brief but piercing, offering increasingly compelling instructions on how a young woman should act, should be seen, should be heard. It is a miniature masterpiece of storytelling that shows an intimate knowledge of the often narrow boundaries of youth.

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This week, we bring you a selection of articles on adolescence and adolescent nostalgia. In “The Madison Avenue Shit-KickersLillian Ross explores the world of Upper East Side private school teenagers. “Each member of the group participates in lighting the cigarette, striking the match, keeping the flame… The lit cigarette goes from mouth to mouth. They all inhale, the girls twist their mouths like tough pros, exhale the smoke from a small corner opening on one side of the lips.”) In “Evening with a gifted childfrom 1940, Joseph Mitchell describes a visit to a piano prodigy living in Harlem. In “Just like children leading a normal life‘, burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee reflects on her life as a school-age entertainer. In “Tavi says”, from 2010, Lizzie Widdicombe examines the intriguing work of young blogger and fashion editor Tavi Gevinson. “Although the fashion world is accustomed to both youthfulness and eccentricity, Tavi is a rare sight. Seeing her move through the fray backstage at a fashion show, lavishly costumed and surrounded by of paparazzi, evokes a religious procession involving a Buddhist child deity.”) In “The cherubim are roaring, Walter Bernstein considers the ups and downs in the life of teenage gang members in Brooklyn. In “The gangstersby Colson Whitehead, an adult narrator recounts his summers among a group of black teenagers on Long Island. Finally, in “Tamaraby Vladimir Nabokov, published six years before the release oflolitaa man recalls a teenage romance with a teenage girl he met in Russia. “That peaceful July afternoon,” writes Nabokov, “when I discovered her motionless in the emerald light of a birch grove (only her eyes were moving), she seemed to have been spontaneously generated there, among those saplings vigilant, with the silent fullness of a mythological manifestation.

Erin Overbey, Archive Editor


“That’s how you love a man, and if that doesn’t work, there are other ways.”


Someone sitting on a bench, rolling their socks high

“Seen through the carefully wiped lenses of time, the beauty of her face is closer than ever and just as radiant.”


Photograph of students outside a school
The Madison Avenue Shit-Kickers

The Rituals of Upper East Side Private School Teenagers.


Philippa Duke Schuyler
Evening with a gifted child

Child prodigy Philippa Duke Schuyler reads Plutarch on train journeys, eats raw steaks and writes poems in honor of her dolls.


Tavi Gevinson

Fashion dictates from a fourteen-year-old girl.


Children in costumes dancing on stage
Just like children leading a normal life

Touring the country as a vaudeville kid.


A young child crossing his arms under an illustrated halo

“To the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses.”


Image may contain: clothing, clothing, human, person, face and pants

A dance club with a street gang of teenagers.

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