America's Youth

If there has ever been any question whether youth and wisdom can coexist, these young activists and first-time voters put it to rest. So set aside your pessimism, your cynicism, your fatigue: The kids are all right, and they know what it takes to make a more perfect union.

- By Selina Fillinger

"You can teach people how to read you, my partner said, gently. He paused, then amended the statement: "You will have to teach people how to read you." He was referring to my body of work as a playwright. I had just been venting, I cringe to admit, about being misunderstood as an artist.

There is an idea, or perhaps an ideal, among professional artists that one's work should be able to stand on its own. In actuality there has only ever been a small proportion of creatives who could present provocative work without defending it. New voices, young voices, historically silenced voices, have always had to train the mainstream ear to appreciate our timbre.

There is a related ideal that a person's vote should be able to stand on its own, that our civic duty can begin and end at the ballot box. I say "related" because I consider political organizing an intrinsically creative endeavor. The writer and activist Adrienne Maree Brown describes political organizing as science fiction, since it requires collective imagining of a future society that does not yet exist.