Raising Their Voices : The Politics of Girls’ Anger

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.