Abandoned
America’s Lost Youth and the Crisis of Disconnection
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the 2020 Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice
A deeply affecting exposé of America's hidden crisis of disconnected youth, in the tradition of Matthew Desmond and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
For the majority of young adults today, the transition to independence is a time of excitement and possibility. But 4.5 million young people—or a stunning 11.5 percent of youth aged sixteen to twenty-four—experience entry into adulthood as abrupt abandonment, a time of disconnection from school, work, and family. For this growing population of Americans, which includes kids aging out of foster care and those entangled with the justice system, life screeches to a halt when adulthood arrives. Abandoned is the first-ever exploration of this tale of dead ends and broken dreams.
Author Anne Kim skillfully weaves heart-rending stories of young people navigating early adulthood alone, in communities where poverty is endemic and opportunities almost nonexistent. She then describes a growing awareness—including new research from the field of adolescent brain science—that "emerging adulthood" is just as crucial a developmental period as early childhood, and she profiles an array of unheralded programs that provide young people with the supports they need to achieve self-sufficiency.
A major work of deeply reported narrative nonfiction, Abandoned joins the small shelf of books that change the way we see our society and point to a different path forward.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Washington Monthly contributing editor Kim diagnoses a "crisis of opportunity" among America's youth in this substantial and cogent analysis of U.S. public policy. While affluent parents can afford to pay their children's college tuition and subsidize their internships and their housing and health-care costs, Kim writes, low-income young adults don't have the necessary support to make a successful transition into independent adulthood. She quotes a study showing that as many as 4.5 million young people ages 16 24 are neither in school nor working, and argues that millions more are at risk of a "lifetime of accumulated disadvantages." She places the blame on "vast structural forces" including racism, poverty, failing public schools, "geographic and social isolation," and inadequacies in the foster care system. Kim stresses the importance of mentorship programs and provides encouraging portraits of federal and local initiatives such as a Texas school district that lowered its dropout rate from 20% to 1%, and profiles young people who have overcome long odds to build stable lives. She presents strong evidence that "emerging adulthood" is a critical developmental period in people's lives, and persuasively indicts the failures of the child welfare, juvenile justice, and public school systems. Policy makers and social justice advocates will find valuable insights in this sobering, well-sourced examination.
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