girlSpoken: from pen, brush, and tongue.

Emily Walters Gregor is a graduate student in 20th-century American
literature and an ESL writing tutor at the University of Minnesota.

GirlSpoken is the result of a project that combines poems, short pieces of prose, and artwork by young women with statistics, information, and reflection about the challenges and advantages of contemporary girlhood.

The contributions to the collection are, above all, honest. They tell of the number of girls who are anxious at the opportunity to discuss and examine the injustices and anxieties that characterize their lives. They indicate both strength and vulnerability and examine many issues—sexuality, identity, friendships, imagining the future—for which young women are given few other positive outlets. The diverse circumstances and experiences of the contributors also portray the wide range of experiences of girlhood lived by Canadian girls.

This book is best at providing prospective readers with an opportunity to read both contributions that might parallel their own experiences as well as contributions that might illuminate alternate perspectives. Both types of contributions are means for girls to better understand themselves, and for girls’ friends and family to better understand them. A scholarly postscript grounds the project in its feminist goals. Recommended.