Culture, Digested: Are Teens Too Woke to Read?

In the New York Times piece about the University of Michigan’s efforts to diversify their campus with a heavy investment in DEI initiatives, Nicholas Confessore includes an anecdote about a literature class. A student complained because her white professor had read aloud the Faulkner short story “Barn Burning,” which includes a racial slur. She complained, her complaint went viral, and everyone had an opinion about it.

I’ve been reading these anecdotes now for over a decade. The kids! They don’t want to read the books! Because of woke! They need trigger warnings, they need safe spaces, they need books with dragons and fairies because dragons don’t use racial slurs.

And it is true that children are annoying. But I do think that all these hysterical stories that people love to circulate to prove that the younger generation is doomed because of wokeness, illiteracy, pro-Palestinian politics or whatever, overlook one very important fact: teens will do whatever it takes not to read William Faulkner.

Also Shakespeare, Joyce, Morrison, or any other book you want to put in front of their face and demand they read. They’re teens. Reading is difficult. Faulkner is difficult. And teens have always been inventive in their methods of circumventing efforts to make them read The Scarlet Letter or Portrait of a Lady or whatever else. Oh suddenly I have to have surgery, yeah, who knew you could have two appendixes and both get infected. Oh yeah I don’t like John Proctor’s vibes this seems oppressive to me.

Leave a Comment