Is ‘Normal People’ the Voice of Millennials?
There is a seat in the literature reserved for millennials.
Let me be honest. The discourses about “the millennials” drive me nuts. They put young people inside boundaries, make themselves feel alien in the world, and criticize their problems.
Inc claims that millennials are the most hated generation ever. Business Insider states that millennials prefer wine, want to learn via virtual classes, lovers of avocado toasts, and hate napkins. We are the destroyers.
I’m a millennial. I drink beer more than wine, I definitely prefer physical classes (I understood it better during the lockdown). I hate avocados, and I don’t have a personal problem with napkins. Why is it people’s desire to put etiquettes on “millennials” as if all people born between 1981 and 1996 had the same personality?
And, the same headlines that label us as “snowflakes” acknowledge Sally Rooney as “the voice of millennials.”
Why is Rooney’s Normal People resonating with a particular subset while what it means to be millennial is complicated?
I also emerged from Normal People utterly touched by the genuine story of Marianne and Connell — two high school students in a small Irish town. The story follows the on-again, off-again love story…
