The Unknown City

The young people defined as "Gen Xers" in the media and popular imagination almost never include poor or working-class young adults. These young people - a huge and important part of our society - are misrepresented and silent in our national conversation. InThe Unknown City, Michelle Fine and Lois Weis offer a groundbreaking, theoretically sophisticated ethnography of the lives of young adults (ages 23 to 35), based on hundreds of interviews. We discover their views on everything from the construction of "whiteness" and affirmative action to the economy, education, and new public spaces of community hope. Finally, Fine and Weis point to what is being done and what should be done in terms of national policy to improve the future of these remarkable women and men.

Michelle Fine is professor of social psychology at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York and lives in Montclair, New Jersey. She is author of several books, including Framing Dropouts, coauthor with Lani Guinier and Jane Balin of Becoming Gentlemen, and coeditor with Lois Weis of the major new anthology Off White. Lois Weis is professor of sociology at the State University of New York, Buffalo, and lives in Buffalo, New York. She is also author of Working Class Without Work, among others.