Own Your Voice & Share Your Story: The Lady Project & Wrapping Up “About The Girls”

March 25, 2016 |

A recent college graduate approached me two weeks ago to thank me for the workshop I gave at The Lady Project Summit. To anyone who has ever presented or talked in front of a group, it’s pretty well-known people will approach you after and chat. It’s my favorite part, since often, I get asked really great questions and get to interact one-on-one.

But what this girl said to me really struck me, and it struck me hard. She told me thank you for my presentation because it will change her life. After spending four years in college and earning a degree in a field she enjoys, she’s working full-time in an unrelated place. It’s not awful, but the challenge is she has no idea what it is she wants to do. And the reason she thanked me was because my presentation focused on figuring out what it is you want in your life and how you can effectively take risks through discovering your core values. These are the things deep inside you that matter; they are touchy-feely sort of things that are different for each and every person.

They are not the sort of thing you’d learn about in school.

This girl told me it meant a lot to listen to someone talk about values, rather than career milestones. It hit me then how little time we spend talking about the softer parts of ourselves and how much those matter in all aspects of our lives. In a world that is eager to funnel you into one place or another, it’s important to stop and reflect upon the ways you as an individual get to control those funnels and how much you pour into one space or another.

What struck me about her comments, though, weren’t that they were flattering to me (they meant a lot, of course). Rather, they were the same sorts of thoughts I was having about the event that day and the takeaways I’d had from the workshops I attended. I had the opportunity to learn about assertive communication — learning there is a tiny but powerful difference between assertive and aggressive that has changed my entire perspective of talking and asking for what I want and need. The other workshop I got to attend was about negotiation, where I walked away with real tactics for negotiating and advocating for myself. Both workshops, as well as two of the powerful keynotes, were given by smart, driven, engaged women and it hit me how wonderful it was to be learning powerful things about “softer” talents from women who’d figured these things out. So what this college graduate student said to me mirrored so many of the things I’d been thinking about my own experiences and things I wish I’d had the opportunity to say the those speakers.

The last few months have been personally challenging for me. I haven’t talked much about it and don’t plan to, but I’ve had to make a few life adjustments in order to make space for even more changes in my life. Non of it is bad, per se, but it is exhausting and draining in a way that can exacerbate the reason I need to do those things in the first place. I’ve tried to find positive, exciting spaces to make up for it, including joining a local yoga studio and being involved with the practice on and off the mat, but it was really The Lady Project Summit that unlocked something for me.

There are some wonderful women in my life. There are incredibly talented, well-spoken, driven, and reliable ladies in my life. But now that I’m not engaged with a professional institution as I have been before, I’ve missed out on the opportunity of networking, of learning new skills in an in-person environment, and enjoying the spontaneity of connection. I’m not a particularly extroverted individual, but one reason I find conferences to be worthwhile is that I can take away the things others say, mull them over as long as I need to, and figure out which pieces are worth it for me and which aren’t. I love being challenged by new ideas and voices, and part of what made The Lady Project Summit so wonderful was that I knew no one in attendance — I’d only emailed and chatted briefly with the CEO and co-founder — and I had never attended an event that was 100% female-centric and female-developed.

I can think of no way to describe the level of enthusiasm, of empowerment, and of intellectual discussion and “you can do it, dammit” spirit that infused the entire event. Walking away, I was filled with a sort of excitement I hadn’t felt in a long time, and I’ve been eager to share the things I’ve learned and learned about with about anyone who will listen. (And yes, if you’d like my notes from the sessions and keynotes, please hit me up — I am jazzed to share them!).

from Emilie Aries of BossedUp.org

This year’s “About the Girls” almost didn’t happen, in part because I’ve not been feeling like my best self. I didn’t want to push something together that wasn’t great or outstanding. In part because I take pride in everything I write here and elsewhere, and in part because I know how blog engagement is down significantly from what it has been. In order to stand out anymore, you need to be angry or be talking about hot issues of the moment. And honestly? I’m just not interested in that right now. What I am interested in is primarily self-focused: I want my old self back, and I want to put together the best work I can in all capacities.

But when the end of February rolled around and I had no “About the Girls” to look forward to, I knew that I had to put it together again. Even if it was low-key. I knew the women who would participate in the series would turn out great work.

I’ve thought about that last-minute decision in conjunction with the way I feel about blogging and engagement more broadly, and I can’t help but see the parallels between those things and what it was I walked away with from The Lady Project. There will absolutely be times we’re all on our up, just as there are absolutely times we’ll be on the down. Respecting them both matters, but there shouldn’t be a point where one’s down impacts one’s ability to recognize there will come an up time again. Maybe this series was meant to be smaller and tighter this year; not because our audience isn’t there — it is, and thank you! — but rather, it was meant to be smaller so I could use my reserve energy to put together the most amazing anthology for next spring.

And maybe, part of this year’s “About the Girls” is about recognizing that I needed to hear from the voices I heard from, as much as I needed to share them with readers (and then those readers sharing them with their readers and teen girls themselves).

Female-identifying individuals are amazing. They are wildly talented, and they’re worth our time and energy. In many ways, it’s surrounding ourselves with women as women that we begin to truly understand the magic of other girls. Being in a space that welcomes women of all shapes and sizes and ages and experiences and then encourages those women to be themselves in order to find their best selves is like nothing else in the world. The energy is there. The compassion. The “got your back” vibe. Not to mention how incredible it is to see other ladies in their own element and showing others how to make the best of theirs.

The final keynote from The Lady Project Summit left a sour note in my mouth following such a spectacular day. The speaker is a business woman who crawled from the bottom of the barrel up to being a major player in some major companies. I cringed about ten minutes into her talk when she proudly proclaimed herself “not a feminist, but a woman.” Those, to me, are not separate identities. Her advice to the audience bothered me to no end because it came down to this: play the boys’ game in order to be part of the game. Dress nicely. Don’t wear dark nail polish. If you got in trouble for wearing something, it was probably merited. “Don’t distract from your message” was her repeated mantra.

But the truth is our world has bowed to and catered to the boys’ game forever. If we don’t stand up and demand change and if we don’t do things on our own damn terms, then the boys will continue to be the ones we ask about and bend do. The boys will continue running the show, putting limits onto what is and is not “acceptable.” And even if you play the game by their rules, who says what the outcome is will be what it is that makes you your best self? Dampscribbler on Twitter said it even better:

@veronikellymars Also, you don't win *your* prizes that way, best case you might win theirs, maybe. Know what you want.

— Dampscribbler (@dampscribbler) March 13, 2016

“About the Girls” is about remembering how important it is to recognize that girls and girls’ stories and voices matter. Every girl has magic within her, and it’s important to encourage girls to cultivate those things and share them in the ways that feel best to them. Likewise, it’s vital to tell girls and women when their stories impact you and when it is you’ve taken a piece of their insight and grown from it (or expect to grow from it). I want a world that is rightfully angry and driven, but I also want a world that encourages girls to work together, for one another, with one another. That is how we allow one another to come from out of the shadows, how we stand up and own our voices and refuse the erroneous beliefs pressed upon us by others, and how we come to find safe spaces and solid, powerful bonds among each other.

This is how we claim our own prizes and how we find what matters to us.

Never stop reaching. Your way is the right way.

Permission Granted: Guest Post by EK Johnston (Exit, Pursued By A Bear, A Thousand Nights, and More)

March 24, 2016 |

The final guest post in “About the Girls” this year is from EK Johnston. After reading Exit, Pursued By A Bear, her most recent novel, I had expressed a few questions that felt left open for me as a reader. They weren’t criticisms, but rather, threads of thought I wanted to toy with. She reached out to me to answer them — and thus, here’s a really thought-provoking post about power, about girls, and about how sometimes realistic fiction can be the most fantasy of fiction.

E.K. Johnston had several jobs and one vocation before she became a published writer. If she’s learned anything, it’s that things turn out weird sometimes, and there’s not a lot you can do about it. Well, that and how to muscle through awkward fanfic because it’s about a pairing she likes.

You can follow Kate on Twitter (@ek_johnston) to learn more about Alderaanian political theory than you really need to know, or on Tumblr (ekjohnston) if you’re just here for pretty pictures.

E.K. Johnston is represented by Adams Literary.

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There’s a thing that I keep saying: this book is the most fantasy that I have written. The worst part is that it’s true.

I have unleashed a plague of dragons across the globe, turned a girl into a god so that she could save the world, and I’m in the process of re-writing history from the Victorian Era onwards, and yet Exit, Pursued By A Bear is my fantasy novel.

To write it, I imagined a world where a girl is believed and supported; a world where adults do their jobs and children are gracious; a world where a bear of a girl can heal, and then save herself. And it’s the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever done.

It’s made slightly less fantastical by the setting. Canada, particularly southwestern Ontario, is a much easier place to access abortion clinics, therapists, and necessary medication, but it’s not perfect. Hermione has access to a car, which not every rural teenager would – especially if they didn’t have their parents’ support. Other Canadian places, like PEI, which has no clinics at all, and the Territories, need attention and funding.

I don’t regret writing any of it the way I did.

I didn’t set out to write a different kind of rape story. Or, rather, I did, but I don’t want to set books like SPEAK, ALL THE RAGE, FAULT LINE, SEX & VIOLENCE, etc, etc, aside. Those books are important. Those books are real. BEARS!!! is a “how it could be” book, a “how it should be” book. It’s the world I want for children who have been violated.

I think what I ended up with was Polly Olivier in book form; the girl who will hold your hair while you vomit and your flower when you duel. The VERONICA MARS comparison was deliberate on my part: this is a Veronica who never had to build that shell, and, more importantly, Lily and Meg don’t have to die to kick-start the story.

Because that’s what I want too: stories for girls that don’t revolve around what they are to their families, teachers, and boyfriends, where their reactions aren’t dramatic fodder. I wasn’t able to do this entirely in BEARS!!!, but I could have my characters be aware of the roles they played in other people’s lives, and redefine themselves accordingly.

I tend to view writing YA less as coming-of-age stories, and more as deciding who you want to be with who you are, but both of those imply a certain level of arrested development. We love to tell stories, especially tragic ones, and lock the protagonists into that narrative as if they can never be anything else, but that’s not how life works.

The world expects so much of girls, with no guidance and a myriad of contradictions. Hermione learns to give herself permission to live outside of that, despite what happened to her and how people want to view her as a result. I give you permission to do the same thing.

Girls of the Stories, Stories of the Girls: Guest Post by Samantha Mabry (A Fierce and Subtle Poison)

March 23, 2016 |

Today’s piece for “About the Girls” comes from debut author Samantha Mabry. Her novel, A Fierce and Subtle Poison, hits shelves April 12. I read it a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t shake the story from my head. I’m thrilled she wrote this piece about Isabel, who is the main character of the story, but whose story isn’t told by her.

Samantha Mabry grew up in Texas playing bass guitar along to vinyl records, writing fan letters to rock stars, and reading big, big books, and credits her tendency toward magical thinking to her Grandmother Garcia, who would wash money in the kitchen sink to rinse off any bad spirits. She teaches writing and Latino literature at a community college in Dallas, Texas, where she lives with her husband, a historian, and her pets, including a cat named Mouse. A Fierce and Subtle Poison is her first novel.

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The girl in my story begins without a body. She exists somewhere apart from but tied to everyone in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. She lives –if you could call it that –behind the walls of a house that’s been afflicted with a curse. She haunts the dreams of an entire community. She’s a myth, a girl with green skin and grass for hair. She’s a witch who grants wishes.

The story goes on, however, and the girl begins to make herself known. She creeps from dreams into the realm of reality. She leaves the confines of her house and slips letters under doors. She reveals her name –Isabel. Then, finally, she reveals herself. That doesn’t mean the stories stop about her stop, though.

Isabel is a girl. She’s trying to figure herself out, yet others are intent on figuring her out for her. They tell her who she is and what she means, and they’re intent on clinging to the stories they’ve made up about her. They heap those stories upon her, layer on top of thick layer, until she’s nearly smothered: all stories, no girl.

Take, for instance, Isabel’s father: he claims she’s a miracle, unlike anyone who has ever come before or will come again. Lucas, the boy with the all-consuming desire to lift the curse from her house, isn’t sure if she’s a miracle or something more sinister, but he’s fascinated with her nonetheless.

This is what happens to girls, and not just girls in books. Stories get made up and told about them. Some of those stories are true. Some are false. Some are sort of true and sort of false. Some of those stories slide right off; some of them stick. Some of them get notched right into the bone. People –known and unknown –say, “Because you are a girl, you should do this.” Or worse, “Because you are my girl, you should do this.”

What I wanted to do, ultimately, in A Fierce and Subtle Poison, was give Isabel some amount of control over her own story. Even if her own life had largely been controlled by outside forces, I wanted her –in just the right moment –to take control of and steer her life in the direction of her choosing.

I think that girls need to keep hearing that they can do this, that they can decide which of the stories about them are useful to keep and which are worthless. They can then shed those useless stories, like shrugging off the dirty coats of strangers. They do not have to be what they are told they should be, or act the way they are told they should act. They can choose to define themselves and wrestle back the control of their narrative. I’m not saying this is easy; it can be difficult and terrifying, a strange and solo trip. But still: it’s possible and sometimes necessary to just set a course and go.

On Light and Shadows: Guest Post by Christine Heppermann (Poisoned Apples & Ask Me How I Got Here)

March 22, 2016 |

The first of three great guest posts for “About The Girls” comes today from Christine Heppermann and it tackles the all-important issue of shame.

Christine Heppermann is the author of Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty, which was selected as a Best Book for Young Adults by ALA/YALSA, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, The Boston Globe, and the Chicago Public Library. Her young adult novel-in-verse Ask Me How I Got Here is forthcoming from Greenwillow in May. A long-time book reviewer for a variety of publications, she currently reviews young adult literature for The Chicago Tribune. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley and is seriously considering getting a Virgin Mary tattoo. Or a witch tattoo. Or both.

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About five years ago, my family and I came home from a trip to the grocery store to find a package on our doorstep, a big padded envelope full of books. That wasn’t unusual. I’ve been a professional children’s and young adult book reviewer for most of my career. Several times a week, at least, publishers send me a mix of new titles that I’ve requested or that they want me to consider.

Except this particular package didn’t come from a publisher. It didn’t have postage or a return address or any markings on it at all, as far as I remember. And the books it contained all covered the same subject: eating disorders. Specifically, they were guides for parents on how to treat children suffering from anorexia or bulimia.

Well, okay. I got why someone thought we needed those.

It was all coming back to me: a few days earlier a friend had called to pass along a message from someone who had seen my older daughter at school and wanted permission to contact me.

Apparently, “contact” meant a surreptitious delivery. An anonymous note.

My daughter was eleven years-old at the time, in fifth grade at the public elementary school. From a distance she could look like one of those naturally skinny young girls who just hasn’t hit puberty yet. But if you looked closer, saw the sharp bones of her face, noticed the way she seemed to curl in on herself, as if hoping to disappear, you knew otherwise.

This woman knew otherwise. In the note she told me her daughter had also struggled with anorexia and, thankfully, come out the other side—gone on to attend college and maintain a healthy weight. She didn’t want to reveal her name or her daughter’s name, but she did want to offer us reassurance.

We weren’t reassured. We were creeped out. Especially my daughter. Someone was spying on her from the shadows, and she had no idea who.

I called my friend. I told her to thank this woman for her concern. I said I would happily stay in contact with her on one condition: no more anonymity. We could correspond via email. We could meet for coffee. But the sneakiness had to stop. If she truly wanted to help, she had to do it out in the open.

I never heard from her again.

In the introduction to Directed by Desire, the collected poems of the late feminist poet and civil-rights activist June Jordan, Adrienne Rich writes about Jordan’s belief in the importance of connection. Says Rich, “She wanted her readers, listeners, students…to understand how isolation can leave us defenseless and paralyzed.”

Sometimes it feels like our cultural norms have evolved solely to keep everyone, women in particular, isolated, ashamed, and afraid. Which is why I could relate to this woman’s fear of exposure. She wanted to reach out and at the same time, with the intent of protecting her child from judgment, remain hidden. But what kind of message was that sending to my daughter? That anorexia is a club so shameful members can’t even identify themselves to each other? That books about anorexia should be smuggled in, like contraband?

As a writer, I have the ability to conceal myself, at least partially, in fiction. For instance, I use fairy tale characters to speak my thoughts about the dark side to beauty culture in Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty. Addie, the narrator of my forthcoming novel-in-verse Ask Me How I Got Here, voices opinions about religion and hypocrisy and double standards for men and women that are constantly on my mind, though I can’t always bring myself to say them in public. Okay, I did say those things in public; I wrote those books. Still, it’s not exactly me putting myself out there, is it? It’s Addie. It’s Snow White.

My ultimate goal is to be as brave as my characters. To be as brave as June Jordan. I want my books to ask questions and start conversations. Conversations that are complicated, messy, and, above all, LOUD, not conducted in fearful whispers.

Like mold, shame can be hard to get rid of, but we can’t just let it grow. On an individual and societal level, the effects are too damaging.

I have the utmost respect and admiration for Amelia Bonow and Lindy West who, in response to last fall’s Republican congressional push to eliminate government funding to Planned Parenthood, created the “Shout Your Abortion” social media campaign, which encouraged women who had undergone the procedure—one in three of us, statistics show—to speak up. Quoted in the New York Times, Bonow said, “A shout is not a celebration or a value judgement; it’s the opposite of a whisper, of silence. Even women who support abortion rights have been silent, and told they were supposed to feel bad about having an abortion.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/us/hashtag-campaign-twitter-abortion.html?_r=0) Hiding may seem safer, but in the end, as Bonow and West realized, it cuts us off from one another. It separates and conquers.

My books aren’t completely autobiographical, but they do reflect my personal experience. Like Addie in Ask Me How I Got Here, I attended an all-girls Catholic high school. Like her, I got pregnant as a teenager and had an abortion. Like her, I don’t regret my decision. I never have.

What I do regret are all the years I wasted feeling ashamed, having bought into the lie that if I didn’t feel ashamed, there was something wrong with me.

I never want my two daughters to feel, for any reason, like they should stay in the shadows. I want them to live in a world where they feel free to share their stories, to reveal who they are, to not have to pretend. Because it can be cold and lonely in the shadows.

Let’s step into the sun.

Welcome to About The Girls (#AboutTheGirls) Year 3!

March 21, 2016 |

Welcome to the third year of STACKED’s “About The Girls” series. The series launched in 2014 as a means of allowing a space that talked unabashedly about girls, girls in YA lit, female authorship, and feminism. So often, we ask “What about the boys?” when we talk about reading and books, and this is my response: “What about the girls?”

Like in years past, I’ve reached out to female YA authors who’ve penned books about girls and shared girls stories. But unlike previous years, because of my own commitments with my own anthology, I’ve scaled down a touch. Rather than a week of posts from guests, this year we have three excellent ones. I thought rather than overstretch myself, it would make sense to highlight those pieces, share a little bit about a conference I attended and the amazing female-grown resources and knowledge I acquired worth sharing (and totally applicable in all settings girls inhabit), and I’d reshare some of the pieces from “About The Girls” in years past. Note that because of our change from Blogger to WordPress, some of the previous pieces are a little wonky format-wise, but all of them have such amazing thoughts and insights that I’m okay with the messiness of them for sake of what they have to say.

Prepare your week of thinking all about the girls with this round-up of “About the Girls” guest pieces from 2014 and 2015 that we’ve had the honor of hosting. They tackle the issues of girls, girls reading, and girls stories head on. As always, if you want to write anything this week on these broad topics, please link back to your work here, and I’m happy to create a big round-up for readers. I love reading about this topic and love more to share your words.

Let’s peek back:

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Considerable debate has been devoted to the subject of the Unlikable Female Protagonist, a common pest of the natural world. While it is not our intent here to contribute to the extensive literature on her value as an object of study, we hope that by clarifying and outlining her identifying characteristics we may make a valuable and practical addition to the current research being conducted in the field.

HABITAT

The Unlikable Female Protagonist (UFP) is indigenous to a highly diverse spectra of ecosystems, climates, and geographical zones.

— from The Unlikable Female Protagonist: A Field Guide to Identification In The Wild by Sarah McCarry

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I wish more YA books featured strong girl friendships – the kind worth every bit as much to the heroine as a boy, the kind who aren’t shoved off stage or reduced only to giving relationship advice, who fight the monsters or evil government right alongside the heroine. Here are three girl friendships that I think are really, really awesome.

— from Positive Girl Friendships in YA by Jessica Spotswood

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But when it comes to using past experiences as power, there is no greater female voice in YA than that of Cheryl Rainfield. A survivor of incest and torture, Cheryl understands exactly what it means to have to be your own hero. She escaped her horrific situation. She saved herself. She became her own hero, many times over. But, more than that, Cheryl somehow kept her grip on that power, and has used her writing to share it with others who need to see that possibility exists for them, too.

— from Cheryl Rainfield, a Hero for Girls by Jennifer Brown

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I love “unlikeable” characters. I write “unlikeable” characters (or at least I try). And to be honest, I am an “unlikeable” character. I don’t sit quietly in a group. I won’t back down in an argument. I’m ambitious and arrogant and maybe a little bitchy just because I happen to feel like it. I will always suggest we do something I like and I will always have an opinion. I won’t stay quiet for the benefit of group harmony. If I get irritated I will tell you so and leave.

In other words, I am a real person with all of the complex emotions and feelings that being a humans have. And I’m not the only woman that happens to be that way.

— from I Love “Unlikable,” I Write “Unlikable,” and I Am “Unlikable” by Justina Ireland

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Let me also say that if someone wrote me a letter like this, I’d be speechless. The world is wide, and feminism is wide. Lots of valid choices exist, and I’m questioning yours in public, which is pretty damn cheeky. So I hope you never see this letter. But this book made me panicked enough that I had to write it all out. I send you my apologies. People have called me a misogynist (and a transmisogynist) in my writing, so I think A LOT about why those readers believe I screwed up. Did you screw up? I don’t know. I can’t know. All I know is my reaction.

— from Whose Feminism(s)? by Kirstin Cronn-Mills

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Across all categories of YA—contemporary realistic, fantasy, mystery, traditional romance, magic realism, dystopian, and everything in between—the kinds of authors and books that I personally love and admire feature complex, interesting, multilayered female characters. Characters who surprise me, who challenge my expectations, who force me to reconsider my own beliefs, who open my eyes to new ideas and possibilities, who illicit some kind of emotional reaction from me. Characters I’d like to write about. Characters who embody the complex traits I like to discover in girls and women in real life.

Yet, by and large, role model reviewers seem to be Scarlet Lettering these girls—young female characters who are, on the most basic level, just being human. They’re exploring their (sometimes unpredictable, often contradictory, usually confusing) emotions. They’re confronting new situations and fears, and are often handling them with less grace and aplomb than adults think they should (or, more likely, with less grace and aplomb than we think we would’ve handled things at that age).

— from Challenging the Expectation of YA Characters as “Role Models” for Girls by Sarah Ockler

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I write stories about girls. And a lot of the time, some people get very upset with the way my heroines actor react to what’s going on around them.

My girls have been called mean, uncaring, whiny, stupid and that’s just a start.

Here’s the kicker. The people saying these things? Other girls. Other women.

— from Some Girls Are Not Okay and That’s Not Fine by Elizabeth Scott

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In my high school experience, it was my friends who were my constant, my tight-knit group of four (and then five, and then six) who were the center of my world. Boys were there, of course – to swoon over and crush on and date and go to the prom with and sob over at two AM. They were there filling the pages of my journal and the subject of hours and hours of phone calls. But when I think back on my high school experience, the boys were the cameos and exciting guest stars, while my friends were the series regulars. Friendship was, in experience, more important to me than romance. So why hadn’t friendship featured more in my books until now?

Why did it seem like friendship was always taking a backseat to romance in YA?

It just seems like, more often than not (and I count myself in this group) authors are much more focused on the romance, and the friend often takes the role the BFF takes in a rom-com – there in the background, to talk to the heroine about her boy problems, and not do much else.

— from More on Girl Friendships in YA by Morgan Matson

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I really like reading about girls who are strong and accomplished and quick, who use powers both physical and supernatural to survive and thrive. But as an author who (so far, anyway) writes characters who are far more human than superhuman, I’m also a fan of girl characters who use cleverness and intelligence to make their way, whether it’s book learnin’ or street smarts. It’s a running theme in my own books, too. Asha, the narrator of my first book The Latte Rebellion, is bright and academic, but her bright ideas also land her in major hot water. Fortunately, she’s clever enough to swim rather than sink. We need realistic, believable girl characters (and guys!) to show us that brainpower is just as important as physical strength, and sometimes more so. So, for women’s history month, I present you with my list of Favorite YA Girl Characters Who Kick Ass With Their Brains. (And not just with their ass-kicking boots. Though I would dearly love a pair of those…).

— from Girls Kicking Ass With Their Brains by Sarah Stevenson

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We can’t all be Judy Blume. Or really none of us can, but the fact that we all agree she is the queen of navigating sexuality as a teen means there’s probably something to learn there. She didn’t trap us into one notion of what a relationship looked like, and she didn’t tell us sex was a goal that meant a relationship was real or valid or that a happily-ever-after was coming. She didn’t insist there was only the first kiss and the first time with nothing in between. She didn’t seem to have an agenda.

And listen, sex as a teen can make love feel more real, can bring a relationship to the next level. Of course it can! Just as marriage can work out and it can be a valid goal for a 20, 30 40 or whatever-something woman. But examining what literature and media are telling us is vital. And understanding our wants in that context elevates our understanding of ourselves. We have to give teens the chance to evaluate themselves in the same way.

YA literature has a responsibility to make a space for girls to think about sexuality on a broad spectrum. We owe it to girls to give them something we don’t have—more than one ideal Relationship Narrative. Open space where there used to be claustrophobic one-path hallways. A chance to decide for themselves what love looks like, and what sex looks like in all its forms.

— from How to Relationship by Corey Ann Haydu

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The girls and women who get abortions are our sisters, our daughters, our friends, our mothers, our readers. It is the stigma of abortion that prevents us from sharing these stories with our fellow women and the world, and it is that same stigma that might make us cautious, as writers, to approach the subject in ways that diverge from the acceptable abortion narrative: the good, unpromiscuous girl whose birth control failed or whose boyfriend convinced her that just this one time without a condom would be OK. This girl usually tells one or both of parents about her pregnancy. She agonizes over her decision. She has a bright future that must be saved through abortion. That kind of abortion is acceptable. It makes sense. She won’t make that mistake again. She learns. She’ll be better at being a good girl in the future.

But a girl who never even tried to use birth control? Who wasn’t in love or a virgin? Who doesn’t tell her parents? Who slept around? Who might not know who the father is? Who doesn’t agonize over her choice? Who doesn’t have a bright future? Who has to wait until the last minute because she doesn’t have the money? Who hitches a ride to the abortion clinic because she has no other option? Who is getting her second, her third, her fourth abortion? Her story remains largely untold—it isn’t acceptable. This girl, she makes bad decisions. She might not learn a lesson. Her story may be complicated, but it deserves to be told just as widely and boldly.

— from Abortion, Girls, Choice, and Agency by Tess Sharpe

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If we are to have a feminist YA, we must write about all the girls, not just the ones that are “likeable”. Because “likeable” is just another way of prescribing a right way to be a girl. Because girls and women are complicated and deep and layered and messy and infinitely fascinating. Because if male characters are allowed to be those things and still be worthy of reading, so should female characters. Because I don’t want to read just one kind of woman. Because I don’t want to be one kind of woman. Because if we do not give our female characters the right to be all kinds of women, how do we expect our readers to know they have that right, too?

— from On Being A Feminist and Daring to Write “Unlikable” by Amy Reed

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1. Friendship stories encourage us to seek out good friendships.

Books that show healthy friendships encourage us to foster these relationships in our lives. How many of us wanted an amazing spider for a best friend after reading Charlotte’s Web? Someone who would save our hides from becoming bacon when the world turned against us? E.B. White created such relatable emotions in her two unlikely characters of Wilbur the pig and Charlotte the spider, it’s not surprising this book is the best selling paperback of all time. The ending still chokes me up.

Another classic series, the Betsy-Tacy-Tib books by Maud Hart Lovelace, centers around three best friends who are constantly getting into trouble for things like throwing mud at each other, and cutting off each other’s hair. When I read them, I longed for a friend I could throw mud at. (Instead, I had sisters, who were almost as fun.) To this day, I still seek out the kind of people I can be silly with, because of those girls.

— from Why Friendship Books Are Essential by Stacey Lee

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That’s what I’ve seen with the strong women in my life. They may get knocked down; they might make mistakes along the way, but that doesn’t stop them. They move forward drawing on their own unique strengths and the ones they’ve gained on their journey—and there are so many ways to be strong. One way of course, is through plain physical power. I know a lot of women with incredible physical endurance—and ones who can pack a wallop! But there are many shades of strength, including bravery, compassion, intelligence, perseverance, vision, curiosity, cleverness, ambition, resolve, and so many more.

— from Strong Heroines by Mary E Pearson

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Maybe the books I write are appropriate. Maybe they are not. But I think it should be up to the daughters to make that decision, not the mothers. Censorship—even on a familial level—only closes doors. We may want to guard our daughters’ innocence, we may fear that giving them access to books that depict sexuality in raw and honest ways will encourage them to promiscuity, or will put ideas in their heads.

I don’t think our daughters need guardians of innocence. I think what they need is power.

Let your daughter read my books, Concerned Mother. Read them with her. Have a conversation. Tell her your stories. Let her see your secrets, and your shames. Arm your daughter with information and experience.

— from Appropriate Literature by Elana K Arnold

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The concept of intersectional feminism has been around and discussed for many decades, but law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, a black woman, is credited as being the first person to coin the term in 1989, which is loosely defined as recognizing that women experience different layers of oppression, including race, class, gender, ethnicity, and ability.

So, in other words, the reasons my white female friends didn’t seem to quite get what I was going through was because most of their experiences were colored through the experience of being a white woman. Full stop. Race and ethnicity weren’t an issue for them, and typically class and ability weren’t, either.

I remember sitting in my therapist’s office in Chicago several years ago when she asked, “How do you define yourself?” I looked at her, confused, and she said, “If someone asked you to define all the things you are, what would you say and in what order?” It didn’t take long for me to reply: “Black. Woman. Writer.” To me, I am all of those equally, but I know society doesn’t always see or treat me that way.

— from What About Intersectionality and Female Friendships in YA? by Brandy Colbert

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In actuality, science fiction is the perfect arena for exploring sociological issues, because the genre has long taken on hot topics and attempted to reframe them in a way that might help us view our own world differently. We can take a fresh look at race, class, or terrorism without the baggage we have when reading the news, then return to those real-world issues with a fresher, deeper understanding. Women like the ones I’ve mentioned have proved they are not afraid to do this. In fact, they excel at this, one of the most fundamental values underpinning science fiction writing.

Women carving out a space for themselves in science fiction is changing the face of the genre, and changing it for the better. It is broadening and deepening the conversations we have in science fiction. If we keep reading and writing, who knows what brave new worlds we’ll discover next?

— from Staking Our Claim in Science Fiction by Alexandra Duncan

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One has to be curious in order to listen. Children’s and YA lit represents the bulk of the books actively contributing to the formation of a child’s values, and, where middle grade is concerned, the majority of the books that end up in a child’s hands are, on some level, prescribed by adults. This is a desperately important time to be cultivating a curiosity in young people about others’ experiences, and we’re not going to be able to do that properly if we remain entrenched in the same ideas about “boy books” and “girl books” that we’ve been working with up to this point. Books can be powerful tools for change in this respect—to teach young boys and girls to look outside themselves, to frame empathy as a trait not reserved for girls but as an important part of being a boy as well. The way in which we talk about gender with regard to books for kids and teens is certainly not the sole problem here, no more than any other aspect of American culture—but unlike those other aspects, we are in a unique position to be a part of the solution. The choices that writers, publishing professionals, booksellers, educators, reviewers, etc make with regard to framing gender can have a profound impact on these issues. Because books are one place where smart, kind, passionate men whose life experiences have simply prevented them from connecting with the perspectives of women can find that connection.

But first, we need to let them in the room.

— from On Curiosity by Jordan Brown