Editing Pat Conroy (section)

=== Conroy's essay on military childhood ===
In 1991, Wertsch "launched the movement for military brat cultural identity" with her book ''Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood inside the Fortress''. In researching her book, Wertsch identified common themes from interviews of over 80 offspring of military households, including the special challenges, strengths and also the unique subculture experienced by American "military brats". While this book does not purport to be a scientific study, subsequent research has validated many of her findings.<ref name=podcast/>

Conroy contributed a now widely circulated ten-page essay on American military childhood, including his own childhood, to Wertsch's book, which was used as the introduction. It included the following:

{{blockquote|Her book speaks in a language that is clear and stinging and instantly recognizable to me [as a brat], yet it's a language I was not even aware I spoke. She isolates the military brats of America as a new indigenous subculture with our own customs, rites of passage, forms of communication, and folkways&nbsp;.... With this book, Mary [Wertsch] astonished me and introduced me to a secret family I did not know I had.<ref>From the introduction to the book, but quoted from{{cite web|url=http://www.tckworld.com/read/mbrats.html |title=TCK World's Suggested Reading |access-date=December 30, 2006 |url-status=unfit |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061230230736/http://www.tckworld.com/read/mbrats.html |archive-date=December 30, 2006 }}</ref>}}