1. GenerationZero 

All we had to do was take the prize. They’d marched, chanted, been jailed and taunted. Their civil disobedience earned us the right to new social freedoms. Those baby boomers, in short, rocked it.

The door was wide open for racial and gender equality. We just had to walk through the door.

One at a time, or maybe two or three at a time, not a crush of passionate people, just bewildered and bumbling kids, feeling mostly alone, completely clueless–we have been the first ones to walk through that door.

The wide-open social landscape offered huge opportunities side by side with huge pitfalls.

Because in some ways we don’t know each other very well, people of different races and of genders. We don’t know how to live together. We don’t know how to split the bill, or eat dinner together, or raise kids together, worship together.

Bringing social equality to bear in daily life is quiet, but arduous work, and I’ve felt lost at sea and alone, even in my own home, trying to keep my sphere of influence, however small it might be, clear of racism and sexism.

So I wanted to dig into it, this job for GenZero, or whatever we are, this going out to walk the walk the baby boomers paved for us. I wanted to honor it, explore it, wonder about it. And that’s one reason I wrote Holding True.