Today's Young Woman

If you had asked me, say, last Friday, what books I was planning to read next, I would not have said "Black, White and Jewish" and "Love My Rifle More Than You". In large part, this would have been because I had never heard of either of them. But I picked up a copy of "Black, White and Jewish" at the State Department book sale on Saturday, and last night I attended a book signing by the author of "Love My Rifle".

The two authors have the following in common: they are both young women in their late twenties, who come from mixed-up broken home backgrounds, who fell in with the wrong people at various times in their young lives, and who have experimented (if that is the word) with drugs and sex, but have since straightened themselves out or matured to a great extent.

Rebecca Walker, who is "Black, White and Jewish" is the daughter of novelist Alice Walker (Black) and civil rights lawyer Mel Levanthal (White and Jewish), who divorced when she was eight. Her mother moved to San Francisco, living the artistic life, and her father married a White, Jewish woman, had a second family, and wound up in Larchmont, NY. Their custody arrangement was to share their daughter, having her move every two years. So, Rebecca went to several schools in the Bay Area, and several in the Bronx and Westchester, making and losing friends, always being "other".

Kayla Williams, of "Love My Rifle" was the daughter of a Republican mother and Hippie father, who separated shortly after her birth, and who grew up in the rural south, becoming a "punk", hanging out with "punks, goths, and even neo-Nazis".

But Walker and Williams were both bright enough to go to college and do well there. Walker's book ends with her high school graduation, so except that I knew that she went to Yale, and now she works for a San Francisco non-profit and writes, I don't know much about her after her 19th birthday. Williams, on the other hand, decided to join the army, and became an Arabic specialist (two years in Monterey Language School) and went to Iraq as a Military Intelligence NCO assigned to the 101st Airborne Division. Walker writes about her youth and adolescence, and Williams runs through that period, but concentrates on her 12 months in Iraq as a female soldier, who speaks Arabic.

What is interesting (disturbing?) about both books is how openly the authors talk about their extensive drug and sexual histories, both of which for each began at a very early age (like 12, maybe), and they do it without any apologies, shame, etc. Perhaps this is good; I really don't know. But when I was growing up, books like this were not written, and young women did not talk about such things. I don't think they were experiencing these things, either. I know in my suburban high school, drugs (and sex) were pretty much unheard of, and were never heard about. And, in fact, although boys talked big among boys, I never heard a girl, throughout all of high school, even say anything off color. (I remember, when I was in college, hearing a female college freshman describing someone as a bastard, and I was astounded and wondered what kind of an upbringing she had.)

I also am not sure that young men write this way, even today. This may be a female style, at least predominantly. And these are obviously not the only books of this type; I remember Kate Roiphe's "Last Night in Paradise" that I read a few years ago with much the same reaction.

OK, readers. What do you think? Am I reflecting things accurately? Is the trend good, bad, or neutral?