An interview with Patricia Hersch: A tribe apart

I feel tears coming to my eyes. I let them come.

"Remember, Stephen, the dish you nearly knocked off the table week before last, the one I told you was a family heirloom, the one I said was so very valuable? That dish is gone. I missed it after group that night. It's nowhere in the house. Then last week, the morning after group, I found a pornography magazine underneath the Bible on the table."

If any person in the room is still breathing, you couldn't tell it by the sound. The faces are astonished, stricken. They look aghast, guilty and angry.

"I've tried to be good to you. I make you dinner every week, I prepare the Bible study, make dessert. I pray for each and every one of you. I've given and taught. I've even loved you, taking you into my home, into my heart. How do you react to this?"

Silly question. Their pained faces forecast the words they'll say:

"It's so awful."

"I can't believe it."

"Who would do that?"

"I love coming here. It's my one home-cooked meal all week."

"I look forward to this group from Thursday 'til Wednesday."

"I feel like crying. It makes me so mad."

"You must feel betrayed."

I lower my voice once more, and speak these words:

"None of this happened. I made the whole thing up. Not a word of it is true. You have done none of this to me, but you do it to God every single time you sin. I give you some hot noodles and a couple hours of my time, and you feel pained for me. God gave his very life for you. Think how he looks upon your sin."

Two or three kids tear up. One boy says, "Wow." "Oh," another sighs out loud. "Please don't play games," I continue, "Sin is sin. Do it or not. It's your choice, a God-given choice, but don't pretend. Don't ever fool yourself. God is not okay with sin. Sin is not okay with God. Be honest enough to say this is sin and I am choosing it. Don't try to trick yourself, not in the face of the God who loved you enough to give his Son to die."

1 Here's what Kirkus Reviews says about A Tribe Apart: "On any given day across America, an editor somewhere is offering a rookie reporter this

basic advice: Don't tell me, show me. Hersch, a former contributing editor to Psychology Today, illustrates the breathtaking impact this kind of reporting can have through her remarkable fly-on-the-wall chronicle of teenage life today. A mother of three adolescents, Hersch spent three years following eight teens of middle- and high-school age in her Virginia suburb. She went to their schools, took them out to eat, and above all listened as they gradually trusted her enough to share their worries, their fears, their stories. The result is an astonishingly candid, poignant, and at times disturbing portrait of life for today's average teens. Interspersed with the tales are a few statistics from various reports. For the most part, however, Hersch lets the teens make her point-that America has become a society in which far too many adults have reneged on their responsibilities to children. 'What kids need from adults is not just rides, pizza, chaperones, and discipline; Hersch writes. 'They need the telling of stories, the close ongoing contact so that they can learn and be accepted. If nobody is there to talk to, it is difficult to get the lessons of your own life so that you are adequately prepared to do the next thing! As a sad consequence, far too many teens have become-as the title suggests--a tribe apart at the precise moment they most need adult leadership t& help them make sense of the chaos they inhabit as they struggle to define themselves and the world they live in. A poignant look into a critical period in a young life, and a powerful exhortation to adults to start paying attention."