Krunk

Before I headed for my Long Island soiree I took out an audio copy of SMASHED by Koren Zailkas, a Syracuse Univeristy graduate, who chronicles her adolescent addiction with alcohol as she experienced it in high school and as an undergraduate, sorority girl. Her narrative is melodic prose, but captures a horrific relationship with booze and partying as an American in the 21st Century. Her tale is sobering.

The blunt honesty from where she writes is a discourse that should be read by every freshmen in college and their parents who send them there. Post-high school life will always be a place for exploration and finding oneself, but her journey exposes the madhouse of privilege that comes with the multiple pressures placed on young woman as they (ir)rationalize the purpose of drinking in defining one's self.

I wish I could note her story is quirky, but it is, I'm afraid, hauntingly familiar. It is a text that naturally opens the doorway to conversations that should be had by everyone who enters the collegiate scene of partying. It deserves its New York Times bestselling status and her intelligence as a writer is obvious.