Rob Henderson's *Troubled*

a few thoughts

I read Rob Henderson’s memoir, Troubled, pretty much straight through. This is not going to be a review, just a few thoughts strung together.

Early on, he writes,

I’ve come to believe that upward social mobility shouldn’t be our priority as a society. Rather, upward mobility should be the side effect of far more important things: family, stability, and emotional stability for children.

Near the end, he writes,

very young children are implicitly preoccupied with three questions, First, am I a lovable person who is welcome here? …How can a small, inexperienced being like me cope with this vast world and all these overwhelming feelings? …Am I like other people, and am I accepted by them, or am I weird and unacceptable?

I think that the third issue, wondering if you are like other people and are accepted by them, is particularly pressing and overwhelming in the latter teen years. That is why mean girls can arouse so much jealousy and be so hurtful. It is why a boy might join a gang, even though it works out badly for him.

When you leave home for college, I think it is natural to sort of assume that you don’t belong. I felt that way my first few weeks in college. My roommate, and other classmates, had read in our physical freshman facebook that I was from Clayton, Missouri. They assumed that it was a hick town (it is St. Louis’ richest suburb).

Many of them came from elite Eastern prep schools, and they were clearly different from me. They pronounced it “Swathmore” instead of Swarthmore. Their favorite sports were soccer and lacrosse, while mine was baseball. I remember that when I found a fellow classmate from Chicago, I finally felt like I had someone I could relate to. He and I stayed up half the night talking. Those first few weeks I wrote many long, lonely letters to my high school friends.

College freshmen nowadays probably come in with much bigger insecurities. They must get all sorts of cues from administrators and upper classmen that one way to avoid outsider status is to sign on to what Henderson famously has dubbed “luxury beliefs.”

Henderson spends a lot of time on his middle school and high school days, and he describes the friends that he hung out with. I assume that he is using fake names throughout the book. Several of the first names he uses happen to be those of some very online conservatives. Is that an inside joke, or just coincidence?

If I get a chance, I will ask him, assuming I attend this event on his book tour.

A book that I read many years ago that reminds me of Henderson’s is Manchild in the Promised Land, by Claude Brown. I see that book as showing how the move from the rural south to the urban north served to unmoor children like Brown, even though both parents were present in his life.

Brown’s parents’ cultural background offered no relevance or survival value for him. He wanted to fit in where they now lived, in Harlem, and that led him into the world of street crime. I sense that my grandparents’ Russian Yiddish cultural background seemed backward and embarrassing to my father growing up in St. Louis. Fortunately, his desire to fit in as an American took him in more respectable directions.

Another book about troubled youth is Random Family, by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. It is not a memoir of her own life, but it describes a group that she spent several years following as a journalist. Unlike Henderson, LeBlanc’s portrayal of this cohort is nonjudgmental and accepting, if not downright laudatory.

Indeed, Henderson’s judgmentalism is what stands out in his book. He respects responsible adults. He resents spoiled children. I find his judgments congenial.

I hope that Henderson remains strong enough to live out his values. I would hate to have to read about a later life in which he is alcoholic or divorced.