One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In

The prologue and introduction sections establish Kennedy’s reasons for writing One in a Millennial and introduce her structure, point of view, form, and style. These introductory portions of the text invite the reader into Kennedy’s essay collection and also humanize Kennedy as an author, a thinker, a cultural commentator, and an individual. The prologue and introduction each possess their own distinct form, style, and tone and function as mini-essays that capture the themes and tenor of the One in a Millennial text as a whole. The prologue appears in the form of a single, lengthy paragraph presented in the italics. This section employs a more lyrical and poetic style and relies upon figurative language, anecdotes, allusion, and personal experience. For example, the opening lines of the prologue appear as follows:

I often think back to buying beads in a pack, making bead lizards for my BFF’s backpack. Eating cereal from a bowl, flipping through American Girl catalogs to the contentment of my ‘Heart and Soul,’ the only song I knew on the piano. I think about the importance of being kind, perhaps more importantly, to rewind, and the beauty of never really knowing the time until it got dark. Streams weren’t on screens, they were creeks or ravines, and sporting a shark-tooth necklace was what it meant to look sharp (1).

This passage introduces Kennedy’s unique and playful approach to language. She embeds cultural allusions to the millennial era within her sing-song, lyrical reflections. These stylistic patterns establish Kennedy’s familiar, down-to-earth, and approachable authorial tone. At the same time, Kennedy is contextualizing each of her incorporated cultural references in new ways. For example, the reference to streams is both an allusion to streaming movies and television in contemporary society and a memory of the natural settings of her unplugged childhood. Kennedy also toys with the idea of kindness with her subtle allusion to VHS reminders to be kind and rewind the tape. Such linguistic plays serve as formal hooks. The entirety of the prologue progresses in this manner and offers an accessible point of entry to Kennedy’s complex social and cultural commentaries in the essays that will follow.

The introduction uses different formal elements to lay out the overarching themes and motivations behind the 12 enclosed essays. Kennedy leans more heavily on her first-person pronouns throughout these pages, as she is explaining not only the title of the book but how her essays will offer one possible analysis of the millennial generation. Kennedy’s point of view is indeed unique, as she admits that for “most of [her] early life, [she] felt like an amalgam of the people, pop culture, and zeitgeist around [her]” (5), thematically introducing Self-Discovery and Personal Growth in the Modern World as well as alluding to The Influence of Media and Culture on Women’s Identities. She employs a confessional tone and is vulnerable on the page when she admits that she often forwent “the discomfort of forging [her] own identity and instead bur[ied] it in other people’s whose coolness had already been preapproved by society” (5). Kennedy caveats this statement with admissions of her own shame around failing to claim her individuality when she was growing up in the late 1980s and 1990s. Analyzing Kennedy’s first-person point of view is therefore vital to understanding Kennedy’s outlook on herself over time and how the millennial culture continues to impact how she understands herself as a person.

Furthermore, Kennedy’s straightforward descriptions of the topics she will cover in the subsequent essays and how she will cover them offer a neat map to navigating the forthcoming sections. Kennedy identifies the enclosed essays as “[her] life stories,” while also remarking on her desire to reach, relate to, and communicate with “the not-so-few, the not-always-very-proud millennial generation as a whole” (8). Kennedy’s first-person point of view represents the “one” millennial referenced in the title. However, her perspective is also a way for her to claim her part in this collective experience and thus to invite other millennials to do the same. Furthermore, Kennedy’s consistent gestures to musician’s names, to ‘90s movies, and to significant cultural turning points ground her point of view in the millennial era and make the text accessible. These stylistic techniques set the precedent for the enclosed essays while also potentially igniting the memories and attention of millennial readers.