Apr 29

Apr 29 The Anxious Generation

You don’t need to be a social psychologist to recognize the social crisis of modernity. It seems particularly visible among the generation currently coming-of-age with record high levels of mental illness and increasing instances of “failure to launch.” If you happen to be a social psychologist, however, you might find yourself better equipped to unpack the underlying reasons for the generational shift. In The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2024), Jonathon Haidt, famous for previous books like The Righteous Mind (2012) and The Coddling of the American (2018, see previous review), zooms in on the questions of why Gen Z faces such unique challenges.

Mar 13

Mar 13 Wellness

Chris Mathers Jackson

Contemporary Fiction

Nathan Hill’s new novel, Wellness (2023), peals the onion of modern, middle-aged life. It nails so many truisms about contemporary life in terms of fitness, AI, health trends, Facebook wars, married life, love, polyamory, mindfulness groups, parenting in the digital age, careers in academia, and urban gentrification, to name a few. Many of the contemporary elements are laugh-out-loud funny, others are crushingly depressing. Woven into the pre-pandemic age of twenty-teens Chicago contemporary storyline are a number of backstory character-driven vignettes. These reach back in time to highlight traumas and generational family dysfunction with which the main characters live, whether they are conscious of that fact or not. Many read almost as stand-alone pieces, but together they create the patchwork of Hill’s characters’ lives. Wellness is witty and poignant, delightful and difficult

Oct 2

Oct 2 Fruit of the Drunken Tree

Chris Mathers Jackson

Contemporary Fiction

Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s debut novel The Fruit of the Drunken Tree (2018) is a powerful articulation of life in Colombia in the 1980s and 90s and is a wonderful example of Own Voices narrative. Told predominately from young Chula’s perspective as she looks back on her comfortable life in a gated community in Bogotá, from the refugee life she comes to inhabit in LA, this story shines light on the traumas many immigrant families veil in silence once they arrive on American soil.

Hi.