A tribe apart

by Patricia Hersch

For three years, writer Patricia Hersch journeyed inside a world that is as familiar as our own children and yet as alien as some exotic culture - the world of adolescence. As a silent, attentive partner, she followed eight teenagers in the typically American town of Reston, Virginia, listening to their stories, observing their rituals, watching them fulfill their dreams and enact their tragedies. Without prejudice or stereotype, Hersch set out with the goal of seeing adolescents as they see themselves. What she found was that America's teens have fashioned a fully defined culture that adults neither see nor imagine - a culture of unequaled freedom and baffling complexity, a culture with rules but no structure, values but no clear morality, codes but no consistency. Hersch also comes to a sobering conclusion. It is society itself that has created this separate teen community, a world where kids are left on their own to make their own choices and determine their own fates. Resigned to t