Includes index.

1. How to be an active reader --
2. Writing in response to reading --
3. The writing process --
4. How we interact: --
Have a nice day / Thomas H. Middleton --
Unfair game / Susan Jacoby --
So Tsi-fai / Sophronia Liu --
Jennie's Girl Scout cookies / Katie Letcher Lyle --
Beauty : when the other dancer is the self / Alice Walker --
The truth about our little white lies / Karen S. Peterson --
Just walk on by : a Black man ponders his power to alter public space / Brent Staples --
5. Youth and age: --
Old at seventeen / David Vecsey --
My grandmother, the bag lady / Patsy Neal --
Complexion / Richard Rodriguez --
Aging in the land of the young / Sharon Curtin --
Kids in the mall : growing up controlled / William Severini Kowinski --
And maybe I can also walk on water / Bill Cosby --
Our youth should serve / Steven Muller --
They shut my grandmother's room door / Andrew Lam --
6. Family: --
Growing up with Trux / Ron Fimrite --
No turning back / Polingaysi Qoyawayma --
The stole our childhood / Lee Goldberg --
Letter to my mother / Tran Thi Nga --
An older brother lets go / David Marcus --
Hold the mayonnaise / Julia Alvarez --
Our son Mark / S.I. Hayakawa --
7. Men and women: --
Why I want a wife / Judy Brady --
Blasting some unmanly myths / Richard Cohen --
India : a widow's devastating choice / Juthica Stangl --
Male humor / Isaac Asimov --
Notes at midterm : the quintessential mom goes back to school / Mary Lou Heilman --
Television insults men, too / Bernard Goldberg --
8. Bias and discrimination: --
Don't just stand there / Diane Cole --
Black and Latino / Roberto Santiago --
It is time to stop playing Indians / Arlene B. Hirschfelder --
Excess baggage is not a firing offense / Andrea Sachs --
Don't let them see you cry / Audrey Edwards and Craig K. Polite --
An act of conscience / John Garrity --
Nora Quealey / Jean Reith Schroedel --
9. Education: --
Life is not measured by grade-point averages / H. Bruce Miller --
The physical miseducation of a former fat boy / Louie Crew --
Reading for success / Richard Rodriguez --
In an assault on tradition, more schools last all year / Seth Mydans --
Learning to write / Russell Baker --
Shame / Dick Gregory --
The lesson / Toni Cade Bambara --
10. Television: --
TV addiction / Marie Winn --
Is TV ruining our children? / Richard Zoglin --
Don't blame TV / Jeff Greenfield --
MTV's message / Newsweek --
"'Live, from San Quentin '" / Newsweek --
11. Remarkable people: --
Your real home is within / Wallace Terry --
Unforgettable Jane Edna Hill / Edward Victor Hill --
She leads a nation / Hank Whittemore --
Lee Atwater's last campaign / Lee Atwater with Todd Brewster --
You're short, besides / Sucheng Chan --
Juliette Low : the eccentric who founded the Girl Scouts / Nancy Lyon --
Mother tongue / Amy Tan --
12. Current issues: --
Big white / Skip Rozin --
Drinking : a problem for our society / Ann Quindlen --
Taking the test / David Groff --
Be scared for your kids / al Sicherman --
A crime of compassion / Barbara Huttmann --
The ways of meeting oppression / Martin Luther King, Jr. --
Invasion of the body snatchers : fetal rights vs. mothers' rights / Ronni Sandroff.