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Emily Bazelon
Staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School
Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying with Character and Empathy
In her just-released first book Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy, author and investigative reporter Emily Bazelon explores the shifting landscape of teenage cruelty and harassment and its sometimes devastating consequences. Bullying has changed in the Internet era: Social networking and texting have given kids new opportunities to be mean to each other—just as a series of teen suicides have been blamed on bullying. Parents who care deeply about understanding this milieu need to know what’s important to pay attention to, and what’s misleading hype. The latest research shows how the Internet does (and doesn’t) pose problems for kids, and offers clues about how adults can help. Other work offers important wisdom about teen suicide, both about the way cruelty from peers hurts vulnerable kids and about the danger of the oversimplified “bullying” narrative that often obscures important truth and complexity. Bazelon writes: “Character and empathy are the qualities I care most about instilling in my children. To me, the effort to prevent bullying isn’t primarily about punishment, and it’s definitely not about some kumbaya dream of the perfect childhood. It’s about learning how to make it through life’s rough patches, and how to help other people through them, too.”
Bazelon is a senior editor at Slate, a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, a frequent guest on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, and the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School. Before joining Slate, Bazelon was a Soros media fellow. She also worked as an editor and writer at Legal Affairs magazine and as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. She is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.
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