Summary Of Silva's 'Coming USort'

Silva begins discussing what she calls “insecure intimacies” in chapter 3 of Coming Up Short, by introducing singles who think that maintaining a potential relationship is too risky. One example would be Kevin who is a white male working as a customer service representative at a grocery store. He believes that searching for a partner is not a priority since his job is so time consuming and he feels as though maintaining a relationship to which he would ideally invest a lot of his time, would be too much currently. Kevin is one of many younger men in his position who believe that they do not have enough to be offering a partner and would not like to gamble on trying to maintain a relationship because they feel as though they owe their future
In one cases, she comes across two younger married couples. Earlier on she introduces Kiana and Curtis who are both black and got married as a result of unplanned pregnancy. In their situation, the two live together and remain part of their child’s life since Kiana believes motherhood to be a permanent role, while Curtis believed he had no other option but to be a father to this child. Not only is Curtis unemployed and has no direction, but Kiana remains hopeful of some day getting into nursing school. Although the two are unhappy together, Kiana still believes that Curtis will remain her friend even after a foreseeable separation purely on the basis that he is her child’s biological father. Later on she introduces Sandra and Cody who got married under the same circumstances, but the two are trying to make things work between them especially for the sake of their children. However, they both appear to have their own issues that impact their relationship and become easily detectible through verbal and even physical conflict at times that they later become embarrassed about since they aren’t able to hide it from their children.
It is clear that Silva not only wants the readers of this novel to understand the challenges that face younger people in middle-lower working class living in the United States, but also the overall changes that have been taking place in the way in which younger people are viewing marriage, relationships, and adulthood. Economic insecurities, mistrust of institutions, and the “mood economy” that she mentions are all part of the ongoing issue that these individuals face these