Voices of Youth: Essays on “The Other”

Every community carries stories that go unheard. The voices gathered in this collection belong to students of Steamboat Springs High School who chose, in the face of fear and silence, to write down what it has felt like to be on the outside of something — a culture, a tradition, an assumption, an expectation. Their courage is what makes this book possible.

Imagine a set of windows. The reader is invited to look through them slowly, one at a time, and to let what is on the other side stay with them after the page has turned. Some of these stories are about religion, some about identity, some about disability, some about the small daily indignities of

being misread. All of them are about the human work of being seen.

STAND was founded on the belief that the surest antidote to hatred and indifference is to be known. When one person tells another what it is like to live inside their skin, history quietly bends. Each essay in this volume bends history a little. Read together, they are a portrait of a generation refusing to let bigotry be the last word.

Register here and come hear the students, get the book and be part of the conversation!