GIRLS WRITE NOW is a beautiful collection of essays which would
make a fabulous holiday or graduation gift.
It is subtitled “two decades of true stories from young female voices”
and these short writings feature typical teen concerns (first kiss, bullying and
belonging, work and school pressures) as well as lifelong issues associated
with gender, poverty and opportunity. Due to the non profit's location, many of the inspirational young writers are from the
New York area, but several other states and countries are represented and the surnames
reflect the breadth of ethnic experiences which are included. Well-known,
established writers (e.g., Alice Walker, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Francine Prose),
have provided brief reflections on writing, such as:
“Everyone has a voice. It’s just a question of finding the courage to
use it, and the first step in finding the courage is knowing that no matter who
you are or how quiet you think your voice is, your voice matters. You are never
going to please everyone with what you say, but you don’t have to worry about
that….” ~Roxane Gay
“To write is to bring an inner voice into the outer world, to believe
that our thoughts are worth entering the thinking of others and to make real
what has never existed in quite the same way before. What could be a better
path to self-value than that?” ~Gloria Steinem
GIRLS WRITE NOW is full of emotion and will elicit even more
from readers; this title received a starred review from Booklist. Get
this text as an advisory/homeroom read and pair it with other readings like The
New York Times feature – “This is 18.” In fact, many of the essays
in GIRLS WRITE NOW would be appropriate to share with middle school students (School
Library Journal suggests grades 7 and up) which makes this collection a
great book for parent-student reading.
That, in turn, offers the possibility of complementing this text with
the NEW Frontline Dispatch Podcast on the refugee crisis which has been designed specifically
for parents to share with tweens and teens.
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