All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wond...er is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a li...ttle bit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Stupid or smart, there wasn't much choice about what was going to happen to me ... Growing up was like falling into a hole.... I m...ight not quit school, not while Mama had any say in the matter, but what difference would that make? What was I going to do in five years? Work in the textile mill? Join Mama at the diner? It all looked bleak to me. No wonder people got crazy as they grew up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging ...toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Your well-tempered guiding effort keeps your adventurous, enthusiastic, active ever-learning toddler from becoming passive, docile..., and limp, without drive, will to learn, or interest in your company. Your skillful handling keeps her from turning into a bundle of rebellion and unfocused negativism, getting her kicks out of grownups' anger rather than their pleasure and approval. And with experience and growing understanding she gradually learns how to operate relatively easily and peacefully in the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even assuming the possibility of greater knowledge among responsive young children of a mass media age, it is questionable whether... an increase in verbal knowledge and expression has much effect on the capacity for understanding in depth or on the style of behavior of children with no more than five years of living and growing behind them.... The drawings of contemporary fives are no more complex, the capacity for judgment no sharper, the feelings of helplessness when they get sick or into trouble no less painful than they have ever been, as far as we know.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It might sound a paradoxical thing to say--for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours of parental tim...e--but the truth is that we neglected you. We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms in order to avoid making those impositions on you that are in the end both the training ground and proving ground for true independence. We pronounced you strong when you were still weak in order to avoid the struggles with you that would have fed your true strength. We proclaimed you sound when you were foolish in order to avoid taking part in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling. Thus, it was no small anomaly of your growing up that while you were the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned to your own meager devices by those into whose safe-keeping you had been given.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The hatred of the youth culture for adult society is not a disinterested judgment but a terror-ridden refusal to be hooked into th...e, if you will, ecological chain of breathing, growing, and dying. It is the demand, in other words, to remain children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations And the conversation rises and slowly fades in...to silence And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most condensed format of the conversionist motif is the TV commercial, which has become essential to both network and religiou...s broadcasting. Embedded in its structure are sentiments from our religious and political heritage: salvation and choice. Newness of life can now be associated with a change of heart about politics, the purchase of a new car, or the selection of a beverage. A Pepsi commercial, for example, designed to fit the charismatic personality and gifts of singer Michael Jackson, became an invitation to make a decision and join in. Images and sounds of the soft-drink ad drew viewers into a growing throng of happy, dancing people following the steps of a dynamic cultural hero. Even couch potatoes might have been roused, vicariously at least, to skip lightly behind the agile Jackson as he led his ecstatic followers to the right choice. The conversionist call in this instance is to come on up to the good life through Pepsi. Nonetheless it plays upon the persuasive motifs of turning around and becoming a part of something larger.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »