2024 Winner of the Grateful American Book Prize, Stuart Brody, on Engaging Young Thinkers

Stuart Brody: Why it is so important for young people to be engaged? I mean, there’s a simple answer. Well, they are tomorrow’s leaders. But I think there’s something more important to this. Tomorrow’s leaders can be leaders in name, but in name only, but not in spirit. In other words, someone can love America and learn that as a young person, and then as they get older, they can keep that language going. They know how to mouth the narrative, but they start to turn on the values. And, you know, I think it’s sad, but everybody seems to acknowledge that we have leaders that are more interested … I’m not talking about either particular party … there’s no monopoly on this. Leaders who are more interested in maintaining their power while speaking the narrative of all the high-minded sentiments, but still more devoted to their power than doing the right thing. So the more probing answer to why it’s important that young people get centered around someone that they can really respect, is that they can maintain those values. They can understand how central they are, not only to the maintenance of democracy, but to its perpetuation.

Narrator: This author interview was produced through a partnership of the Grateful American Foundation and WETA. For more author interviews, please visit AdLit.org.