Youth

Ever since I caught the fiction-reading bug, I’ve gravitated toward the coming-of-age story—the bildung narrative in all genres and formats. As a teen I eagerly lock-armed with near-peer protagonists to co-experience their exhilarating adventures of self-formation: the orphan Pip’s hunger uneasy path to finding a sense of belonging; Saleem Sinai’s coming-of-age in and through all cultural, religious, and political post-partition India tectonic shifts and fractures; Ellison’s unnamed and underground protagonist’s self reflections and self discoveries living in a society that dehumanizes and obliterates into thin air young Black men; the privileged and entitled Holden Caulfield as he finds his way to chord compassion and complexity as expressed in his relationship with younger sister, Phoebe. These narratives shaped my understanding of how stories could capture the tumultuous experience of becoming, of forming an identity in dialogue with—and often in resistance to—the world around us.