Raising Their Voices: Politics of Girls' Anger - Hardcover

In "Raising Their Voices", [Lyn Brown] shows us the ways in which girls adopt some forms of the culture's notions of idealized femininity but resist others. And she seeks to broaden our understanding of girlhood in the '90s by explaining how cultural fictions about femininity differentially oppress middle-class and working-class girls...It's not just that [this book reports] the results of research that makes [it] so much more interesting than the girl-victim books front and center in bookstores today; it's the care [Brown takes] to use working-class girls as subjects, to understand them, to get under their skin and see the world from their perspective. This stance precludes the stereotypical victim perspective, if only because of the feisty, hard-nosed talk and relationships of these girls...Brown's writing is beautiful as she lovingly recounts the girls' interactions with each other and with the leaders of the discussion groups.--Sharon Lamb "Readings "

Two 14-year-old girls, fed up with the "Hooters" shirts worn by their male classmates, design their own rooster logo: "Cocks: Nothing to crow about". Seventeen-year-old April Schuldt, unmarried, pregnant and cheated out of her election as homecoming queen by squeamish school administrators, disrupts a pep rally with a protest that engages the whole school. This text, filled with the voices of teenage girls, corrects the misperceptions that have crept into the usual picture of female adolescence. Based on Lyn Brown's yearlong conversation with white junior high and middle-school girls, it allows the reader to hear how the girls adopt some expectations about gender but strenuously resist others; how they use traditionally feminine means to maintain their independence; and how they recognize and resist pressures to ignore their own needs and wishes.