Getting a haircut. Going clothes shopping with your mother. Losing a favorite uncle to AIDS. Having a bottle thrown at you by a stranger on the street. Hearing the band Nirvana for the first time. Getting a job at McDonald's. Finding out that a friend has been shot. Moving into a dorm. Realizing that you're gay.

These are just a few of the experiences-some ordinary, some extraordinary-that inspired this book's young authors to sit down and write.

Many adults believe that the written word is dying, that kids today either can't or won't write. But in five years of working with teenagers, I've found just the opposite. Kids do all kinds of writing as part of their day-to-day lives: they compose raps and song lyrics, keep journals, write poems and love letters. They are inspired to put pen to paper by the need to create, to communicate, to figure things out.

It's true that many of these same kids struggle with or disdain the kind of writing they're asked to do for school. The word "essay" conjures up the dry, the distant, and the trite. But, when they are encouraged to explore subjects that really interest them, they find out that essay-writing can actually be fun.

The writers in this collection have discovered that essays can grow out of the same experiences and feelings that prompt letters and diary entries and poems. And that they can be written in the same kind of language--direct, colloquial, like a conversation with a friend. As Phillip Lopate writes in the introduction to his anthology The Art of the Personal Essay, "The hallmark of the personal essay is its intimacy. The writer seems to be speaking directly into your ear...the personal essayist sets up a relationship with the reader, a dialogue--a friendship, if you will, based on identification, understanding, testiness, and companionship."

In this anthology, you'll find essays on serious issues like violence ("Revenge in the Hood"), racism ("A Nice Neighborhood Where Nobody Knows My Name"), teen parenting ("Growing into Fatherhood") and AIDS ("Saying Goodbye to Uncle Nick"), as well as accounts of common teen experiences like getting your first job ("Climbing the Golden Arches") and starting college ("Dorm Life Is Heaven"). You'll encounter examples of humorous writing ("How to Survive Shopping with Mom"), travel writing ("Chinese in New York, American in Beijing") and autobiography ("I Hated Myself" and "Home Is Where the Hurt Is"). As you read, you'll feel like you're really getting to know the authors because their stories are written like letters to a friend.

But there are important differences between an essay and a letter. However friendly or casual the tone, an essay must have a specific focus and purpose. It's not just a rambling account of what the writer did today but her reflections on a particular event or experience and why it's important. In an essay, the writer tries to underscore what's universal in her experience or to use the events of her own life to comment on a larger issue or problem.

A stranger's detailed account of getting a haircut, for example, would probably not be interesting for most people to read. But Anita Chikkatur's story "A Shortcut to Independence" is about much more than a visit to the hair stylist. It's about family relationships, cultural traditions, standards of beauty, and adolescent rebellion. "For years," Anita writes, "I needed my Mom's help to twist my long, thick hair, which fell nearly halfway down my back, into a braid or even a ponytail. I hated that morning ritual because it made me feel helpless." But she was raised believing that being a woman means having long hair, and that this is especially true for "good Indian girls." Cutting her hair is Anita's way of telling her family (and herself) that she's not comfortable with the traditional Indian definition of appropriate feminine behavior and that she's going to figure out for herself what kind of woman she wants to be. Anyone who's ever fought with their parents over getting a tattoo or pierced ears, wearing pants that are too baggy or a skirt that is too short will be able to relate to Anita's story.

The other thing that makes an essay different from a letter is that the writing itself has to be entertaining, thought-provoking or touching. Otherwise, no one is going to want to read it. You can't assume your audience will understand what you're talking about or be interested in your opinions the way you can when writing to a friend. You need to come up with vivid descriptions made up of concrete details, use interesting metaphors and emotionally charged language to draw the reader in and help her see what you see, feel what you feel.

For example, in an early draft of "My First Love: Too Much, Too Soon," the author recalled that when she first met her future boyfriend, she thought he was "ugly." I asked her to come up with a more detailed description of the boy, something that would enable readers to visualize him. She then added: "Roger's face was bumpy and you could see where he scratched his pimple and it burst. And the way he dressed! He had on rundown faded black jeans and sneakers with holes in them and a striped shirt with bleach stains on it." This gives us a much clearer picture of what Roger looked like and also tells us what "ugly" means to the author.

The impact a story has on a reader depends not only on elements like description, but also on the writer's overall approach to her material. Delia Cleveland begins her story, "A Designer Addiction" this way: "My name is Dee and I am a recovering junkie. I was hooked on the strong stuff. Ralph Lauren wore my pockets thin. Calvin Klein was no friend of mine. And then Guess? what--I finally got the monkey off my back, although it took me awhile to get on the right track." Delia goes on to describe her "habit," compare the designers to "pushers," talk about how her mother begged her to "get help," and explain how seeing other "users" destroy their lives is what got her to quit. She could have taken a more straightforward approach, but by weaving the addiction metaphor through the essay, Delia cleverly gets across how her love affair with name-brand clothing got out of control. It's also an effective way to get readers to see their own "habits" in a new light--is there anything that they're "hooked" on to an unhealthy degree?

Like Delia, Loretta Chan shows how a personal experience can inspire reflections that are more than just personal. In "Tired of Being a Target," Loretta describes how helpless she felt after a strange man threw a bottle at her. Afterwards, she writes, "I wasn't the I-am-woman-hear-me-roar girl that a lot of people know me as. Instead I became one of those pitiful girls who can't stand up against a chauvinist pig."

But the incident does more than alter Loretta's image of herself; it also prompts her to grapple with the larger issue of women's place in society, of how their freedoms are circumscribed by fear. "We are constantly reminded that we are in danger," she writes. "People warn us that we shouldn't be taking the train at night alone, or at all, that we shouldn't be walking down a deserted street after dusk, that there are certain areas a young lady should never wander through. However, men can roam the entire earth with minimal caution." In the end, Loretta is left with a question: How can a woman live an independent life when she also needs to fear for her safety? "It's driving me crazy that I don't have a better solution to this problem," she writes. But the fact that she offers no easy answers makes her essay more satisfying to read, not less.

Many of the writers represented here use their essays to explore questions, doubts, confusion or ambivalence. The reader is invited to accompany them as they sort through their mixed feelings. The "I" who is telling the story often changes in significant ways between the beginning and the end. Take Allen Francis. A self-described "hardcore rap fanatic," Allen feels like he is betraying an old friend when he realizes that he likes the music of the band Nirvana. Early in "A Rap Fan's Alternative," he writes, "Part of me felt that there wasn't room in my musical taste for headbanger vomit noise. How could I be devoted to rap and grunge at the same time?" Allen undergoes an identity crisis: Is he no longer the person he thought he was? What will his friends and family think? Gradually he realizes that it is indeed possible to like both: "My musical taste had room the size of a warehouse; I had just never bothered to fill it," he writes. By the end, Allen has reached a new, more complex understanding of who he is.

Others begin with a strong point-of-view, a clear message that they wanted to impart to their readers, and never waver. In "Where Are the Latinos At?," for example, Jessica Vicuna takes a stand on a controversial issue that's important to her. Disgusted with the way Latinos are depicted in many Hollywood films, Jessica argues that only Hispanic actors should be cast to play Hispanic characters. "I'm sorry," Jessica writes, "but I don't want to see Al Pacino play anymore Hispanic roles like the leads in Scarface and Carlito's Way."

Jessica's essay demonstrates that you don't have to turn to an encyclopedia or newspaper to gather ammunition for an opinion piece. Her argument is based on her own observations through years of movie-going and TV watching. As a Puerto Rican, she finds many of the portrayals of Hispanic characters by White actors "unreal" and stereotypical. In her eyes, not hiring Hispanic actors for these roles is a form of discrimination. To help readers understand how she feels, Jessica asks them to imagine what it would be like if Hollywood were equally color-blind in its casting of other groups. "Think how silly the movie The Last Emperor would be if Jeremy Irons played the emperor," she writes. "What if Winona Ryder were one of the daughters in The Joy Luck Club? It wouldn't look realistic because they're not Asian, right? So why should movies about Latinos be held to a different standard?"

Although they address a wide range of topics and employ a variety of writing styles, these authors all have one thing in common--they are in the process of coming to terms with some aspect of their identity. They are exploring the factors that determine how they see themselves and how others see them. What's more important, they ask, the way we look or what we believe? What we have in common with the people around us or what sets us apart from them? Is identity something that we determine for ourselves? Or is it thrust upon us by family, friends, the larger society?

These questions are excellent starting points for personal writing, especially for teenagers. For many of the writers in this collection, negotiating the gulf between other people's expectations of them and what they know to be true of themselves is a daily struggle. Where others might see the Black guy in the baggy pants and think "hoodlum" or see the Asian girl who always gets good grades and think "nerd," the writers themselves know better. As Jamal Greene, a Black teenager who has been told that he doesn't act like a "real" Black person, writes in "Color Me Different": "As long as other people expect me to act a certain way because of the way I look or to look a certain way because of the way I act, I will continue to be something of an outcast because I defy their prejudices." Writing this piece--which tells us how Jamal sees himself--is a further act of defiance.

The essays in this collection originally appeared in New Youth Connections, a magazine by and for New York City teenagers. The vast majority of the writers were public high school students when they joined the staff; most are Black, Latino, or Asian; some got school credit for their work and some were volunteers. They got involved with NYC because they enjoyed writing, because they were considering careers in journalism and wanted to experience working with an editor and getting published, or simply because they had something they desperately needed to say and no one they could say it to. Whatever their motivation, they all had stories to tell and a willingness to devote the time and energy necessary to tell those stories in writing.

None of the pieces in this book were just dashed off. In fact, they took weeks and months to develop. It's extremely rare for anyone--student or professional author--to produce a perfect first draft. In the initial rush to get their ideas down on paper, the writers in this collection left out many of the details, descriptions, and snatches of dialogue that you'll find in the versions published here. Working with an adult editor, they took their stories through as many as a dozen drafts. Questions were asked and answered, paragraphs were moved around, sentences were written, crossed out and sometimes put back again. Through this back-and-forth between writer and editor, the stories took shape: a focus emerged, unrelated ideas and superfluous information were cut, and the crucial events, characters and opinions were fleshed out. One of the best things about writing is that you can keep working on it until you get it right, until the words say what you want them to say. If you write something and you don't like the way it sounds or it doesn't convey exactly what you mean, you can erase it and start over.

Of course, revising can be difficult and frustrating. Sometimes it feels like you'll never be able to get it right. These writers stuck with it because they knew that when they finally finished, a large audience of their peers was going to read what they'd written. That's a great motivator, but you don't have to be published to have an audience. We can write for friends and family members, teachers and classmates. They can play the role of "editor" by asking questions and making suggestions. ("I'm not sure what you mean. Could you give an example? And I really like the fourth paragraph, maybe you should start with that.") Getting feedback from others can help a writer clarify what she thinks or figure out how to explain herself better.

Another way to improve your writing is by reading and that's where this book comes in. Some of the stories in this collection will remind readers of events in their own lives that are worth exploring on paper. Others may prompt a new understanding of the techniques writers use to make their work interesting or enjoyable to read. When a paragraph makes you laugh or cry or say to yourself, "Wow, I can see exactly what that must have been like," try to figure out what the author did to provoke that reaction. Then think about how you might apply what you've learned to your own work.

We hope this book will inspire teen readers to see new possibilities in the essay form and motivate them to use writing to reflect on their lives, argue their points of view, and entertain their friends. We also hope it will get teachers to see their students' day-to-day lives as worthy points of departure for essay writing. To help, we've included some reflections from the teen authors on why and how they write, as well as what they get out of working on these kinds of personal essays. You do learn a lot about writing, they say, but the real payoff is what you learn about yourself along the way.

In her comments, Anita Chikkatur points out that, at first, even she wasn't sure whether her haircut was "worthy of a story." But, once she got into it, she realized she wasn't just writing about her hair, but about "how to deal with family and friends when they disagree with you or hurt you with their words." As you read "A Shortcut to Independence" you'll see that for Anita, getting her hair cut is a major rite of passage; it's a way of asserting herself in defiance of the accepted wisdom of her family and culture. The story also explores the repercussions of her action: Anita has to cope with criticism and ridicule and in the process becomes a stronger, more confident person. Writing the story helped her come to terms with the whole experience and learn a few things about herself.. "By the time I was done…I realized I was quite happy with my decision…even if others did not like it," Anita says.