Jennifer Karlin and Amelia Borofsky's \Regeneration: Telling Stories from Our Twenties"" is clearly targeted towards a college-aged crowed. The two editors have compiled numerous tales on a variety of subjects that hit close to home with all of us. Unfortunately, the absence of stories with a unique focus and strong individuality holds the collection back from reaching its true potential.
The book is divided into four categories or four states of mind that pretty much every young adult goes through: Navigating, Relating, Working and Dreaming. While it's comforting to know there are others out there that feel exactly the same way-facing the same obstacles, the reader can easily guess all too well what will happen in the following pages. Such predictability takes all the fun out of it.
The opening chapter, Navigating, contains stories based on a variety of reasons to pack your stuff and hit the road. The most common, and most clich??d, is the young, independent adult going in search of their roots. A particular tale tells of a youngster spontaneously quitting their job and buying a bus ticket to the other side of the country, in search of a dream, a job and a new beginning. An interesting story, yes, but seeing as how everyone goes through this sooner or later, it seems almost too obvious to include.
Working would potentially be more entertaining to someone straight out of college in search of employment. Two tales in particular add a refreshing twist to this chapter and prove to be enduringly charming. Karlin adds a bit of humor describing her personal battle with having to get up on time for her newly acquired job.
Yet what fables of the working world would be complete without the trite story of a fresh-out-of-college teacher who reaches out to the troubled teens of her inner city classroom? The young teacher's sugar-coated story of how she helped her angst-ridden teenage pupils overcome obstacles and believe in themselves was a disappointing addition.
Twins, friends, an ex-lover's wedding, inter-racial relationships, single moms and polygamists are among the chosen subjects of the section devoted to Relating. The diversity of this section may catch the reader off-guard. The stories from a polygamist marriage and the relationship of twin siblings in particular were a refreshing and intriguing change.
The final section of ""Regeneration,"" Dreaming, dealt with the hopes and dreams the writers have for not only themselves, but for their country as well. It opens with an emotional description of one young man's survival of Sept. 11, 2001 and how this one day changed his dreams, expectations and future. Dreaming also contains commentaries on the corruption of the 2000 presidential election. A mother's poem, expressing the hopes she has for her baby daughter is among the most heartfelt of these pieces.
Regeneration is defined by Karlin and Borofsky as ""twenty-somethings trying to find solutions to global problems today."" The focus of ""Regeneration"" is lost in what seems to be a never-ending complaint. The editors make several bold choices with certain pieces but lose their edge by including safe, known-to-please accounts of love, loss and struggle. Ironically, it seems that because of the editors' and contributors' youth, a fresh new outlook was expected, but not achieved.
