The Mingling of Teenage and Adult Breaths

Abstract

This chapter discusses how the idea of intergenerational partnership is put into practice in a Dutch series of collaborative life writing for young adults. The books in this series are a product of a cooperative effort between young adult and well-known children’s authors, with the former telling their life stories to the latter, who subsequently wrote the stories down. Interviews with four authors and four young adults about what John Paul Eakin calls “the story of the story” band an analysis of the authenticity of representation in one case study show that the young adult’s agency in this creative project is equally important as the adult’s agency, thus supporting Marah Gubar’s view of childhood and adulthood as related instead of separated.