Next: Visions Toward a Less-Divided America

As we face waves of climate emergencies and pandemic shutdowns, outrages and protests, America sometimes feels like it’s coming apart. They writers in this collection of essays tell a different, more hopeful story: of a country learning not to turn its back to the changeable and restless forces of history.

A mother in a mixed-race family reflects on being mistaken for a nanny at her child’s playground. A writer interrogates his own relationship to “Asianness.” Parents confront fears around their children’s futures, and a historical essayist asks us to confront inequality at its starkest: the unmarked graves awaiting some of our unhoused. By looking intimately at the biased thinking that has fueled our divisions, these writers – clear-eyed, inviting, insightful – chart a new way forward. These are the visions that are Next.