The Endless Tryout

From New Yorker staff writer Jay Caspian Kang, a provocative, hilarious, autobiographical rejection of the toxic competitiveness that has come to define the lives of American parents and children alike—and a search for a better way for all

Every year, the rat race begins earlier for American kids. Parents hustle ever-younger—and increasingly anxious—children from one extracurricular activity to another. The financial cost of soccer practice, Kumon, or ballet lessons keeps rising. But the apparent social costs of not building a differentiated résumé for an eight-year-old seem to rise even faster. Otherwise, what hopes are there for a spot at the “right” educational institution later in life? Parents white-knuckle their way through a hierarchical game that seemingly cannot be won. Running this gauntlet, the middleclass will jettison their stated ideals and commitments in the blink of an eye, if it means their kids have a fractionally better shot with the admissions office. Who built this Hunger Games-style arena of personal development? And whose interests does it serve? Jay Caspian Kang, for one, has had enough.

In his distinctively thoughtful, lacerating style, Kang takes aim at this culture of competition, optimization, and hypocrisy, pointing the finger with as much ferocity at himself as at the rest of us. He writes with startling candor about his precocious eight-year-old daughter, Frankie, and their adventures together in the baroque world of youth soccer. He skewers the affected and overwrought milieu, in which he and his family find themselves as card-carrying members of the so-called “coastal elite,” having relocated from Brooklyn to Berkeley. And he confronts the intractable dilemma of “screen time,” and its attendant alienation, with sangfroid and a spirit of pragmatism.

At once an accusation and a confession, The Endless Tryout promises both catharsis and salvation for parents at the end of their rope. Kang captures the cruel hybrid of panic and calculation that gives American parenting its uniquely stressed-out emotional texture. His book is a desperately creative attempt to imagine a better—no less high-achieving but more realistic, honorable, and humane—world for parents and children alike, as well as a love letter to his own kids. For Frankie and her little brother, Anzan, he would do or sacrifice anything—including his sanity and reputation.