She's Shameless: Women Write about Growing Up, Rocking Out, and Fighting Back edited by Megan Griffith-Greene and Stacey May Fowles‏

What was it like for the previous generations to grow up? What challenges did they face? What barriers did they break through? How did girls struggle and thrive to become strong women? This anthology of short essays takes a look at those stories and presents them for the new generation of young feminists.

After a few recent incidents where I was judging a book by its cover, this time I almost didn’t read this book because of the ‘rocking out’ part of its subtitle. I liked the ‘shameless’ part, but while I can definitely appreciate music and musicians, I wasn’t that amped to read a ‘how to’ guide for a rock-style life. Then, out of a touch of curiosity, I read a bit of the book and realized how far off I was. In some ways, it seems almost like a passing of the torch for some of these writers, turning around to the next generation of teens and saying “Here. This is yours now.” What ‘this’ exactly is might not always be clear, but it has a combination of feminism, inspiration, history, and potential. I wished that most of the essays were longer, which is a great complaint to have against a book. There is a bio section in the back for each of the contributors, and I have definitely been inspired to seek check out some more of their work.

Check out the Shameless website.

Find it at IndieBound.

Read it with:
Cleavage: Breakaway Fiction for Real Girls edited by Deb Loughead and Jocelyn Shipley
Be Good by Stacey May Fowles
The Emily Valentine Poems by Zoe Whittall
BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine edited by Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler
Don’t Cramp my Style edited by Lisa Rowe Fraustino