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GROWING UP AMERICAN
Many of American literature’s most memorable moments are found in the coming-of-age
tale. From Huck Finn on his raft to John Grimes leveled on the church floor, these stories
capture the liminal state of adolescence as a character transitions from childhood to adult
consciousness.
Coming-of-age literature is also a tool for broader social critique, providing a cultural
examination through the eyes of someone still a bit outside of the adult world’s norms and
values. The role of race in American coming-of-age tales, for instance, especially underlines
this point. Just as James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, and Richard Wright used the genre as a
prism to examine relations between blacks and whites in America, authors of various races
and ethnicities have similarly used the coming-of-age framework as a way to constellate
their own position in American society.
Other social dynamics also have been examined. Holden Caulfield, for example, challenges
conformity, adolescent sexuality, and the oppression of social expectations. The coming-ofage genre thus comprehends both the terrain of the personal and the historically specific
territory of a work’s moment of creation. In this sense, that fancy German term,
Bildungsroman, provides some illumination: the notion that a person is an act of
construction, and all of the experiences of a person’s life are building blocks that create that
final product, the self-conscious adult. In the American context, the very complexity of the
American mosaic makes the coming-of-age genre such rich territory.
BOOKS IN THE SERIES
Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (1951)
“I keep picturing all these kids playing some game in this big field of rye.... What I have to
do,” Holden explains, “I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff.” Can J. D.
Salinger’s classic still tell us anything about what it means to be American? Let’s start this
series by revisiting that too-wise-for-his-age smart aleck Holden Caulfield and his quest for
the un-phony.
Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl (1998)
“I was slowly discovering that if you watched people as they ate, you could find out who
they were.” Through food, Ruth Reichl also comes to learn who she is. By turns moving and
hilarious, nostalgic and hopeful, she recalls the long road from her upbringing (with parents
indifferent to the appeals of the palate) to her chosen profession of restaurant reviewer,
with foreign travel and Dumpster diving along the way, and a recipe to punctuate each
chapter.
Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead (2009)
Benji explains the central terms of his summers away: “First you had to settle the question
of out.” The “out” is out from school, out for vacation, and out to Sag Harbor, but for the
African American elites who made the resort their vacation home, the ins and outs of it
were more complex. In Sag Harbor, an enclave for an emerging black professional class,
fifteen-year-old Benji must try to come to terms with growing up, with African
Americanness, and with American popular culture.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (2007)
“But we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances. Or
choices. We’re just poor. That’s all we are.” Junior hopes to break the pattern by going to
school away from the reservation. His life is further complicated, however, when he is
treated like a traitor at home and an outsider at school. Although Junior is a teenager, his
dilemmas are fully adult: endemic poverty, alcoholism on the reservation, and the difficulty
of trying to advance yourself without betraying those you leave behind.
FURTHER READING
Classic Coming-of-Age Literature
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876); Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943)
Richard Wright, Black Boy (1945)
James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
Philip Roth, Goodbye Columbus (1959)
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1962)
S. E. Hinton, The Outsiders (1967)
Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultimo (1972)
Judy Blume, Forever (1975)
Edmund White, A Boy’s Own Story (1982)
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1984)
Historical, Sociological, and Anthropological Works on Coming of Age
Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (1965)
Colin Heywood, A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval
to Modern Times (2002)
Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (2006)
Karen Sternheimer, Childhood in American Society: A Reader (2009)
Mary Frosh, Coming of Age in America: A Multicultural Anthology (1995)
Literary Studies of Coming-of-Age Works
Gail Schmunk Murray, American Children’s Literature and the Construction of Childhood
(1998)
Jerry Griswold, Audacious Kids: Coming of Age in America’s Classic Children’s Books (2002)
Karen R. Tolchin, Part Blood, Part Ketchup: Coming of Age in American Literature and Film
(2006)