Lyn Mikel Brown - Powered by Girl: A Field Guide for Supporting Youth Activists

Praise for Powered by Girl

If youre committed to working with girlsand I mean really working with them in every respect, through all the messy beauty of their activismPowered by Girl is an essential read.

Loretta Ross, cofounder of SisterSong

Highlighting the collective dimensions of girls activism, Powered by Girl is an important corrective to over-simplified discussions of girls empowerment. Browns passionate call for intergenerational collaboration engages with the challenges and rewards of this kind of activism, demonstrates a profound respect for girls knowledge and expertise, and asks all the right questions about how adults can better support girls in the struggle for a more just world.

Jessica K. Taft, author of Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas

Behind every exceptional girl is... a movement! Kudos to Lyn Mikel Brown for identifying the architecture that lifts up the next generation of feminists!

Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, authors of Manifesta and Grassroots

If you teach, mentor, or work with girls, you need to read Powered by Girl. Full of stories and strategies, its a must-read manual for nurturing agency, sisterhood, and critical consciousness in girl activists. Adults will learn when to step up and when to step back, how to cultivate inclusiveness and truth telling among girls, and how to develop the most fertile conditions for girl activism to flourish.

Rachel Simmons, author of Odd Girl Out and The Curse of the Good Girl

I am a huge fan of Lyn Mikel Browns; her partnerships with girls and support of their activism are nothing short of revolutionary. Powered by Girl explains how she joined forces across generations to make changeand, even better, how we can too!

Peggy Orenstein, author of Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape

Brown offers us a powerful and urgent critique of the media-generated kickass girl, a mythical girl who supposedly needs no one but herself to change the world. Behind the scenes, Brown shows us how real girls and women can truly kick some ass by working together on jointly constructed actions for social justice. An essential read for those who want to create a more just and humane world and want girls and women to lead the way. Read it right here, right now!

Niobe Way, author of Deep Secrets: Boys Friendship and the Crisis of Connection

In this bold, inspiring book, Lyn Mikel Brown investigates the realities and possibilities of intergenerational activismand does not shrink from the challenges. A blueprint for intergenerational feminist work, Powered by Girl offers multiple strategies for adult women to build hopeful, respectful activist relationships with girls, all the while acknowledging the complexities of grassroots politics today.

Anita Harris, Research Professor, Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University

The development of honest dialogues between adult allies and girls is the key to social changeand recognizing that girls are the most qualified experts of their experiences is critical to their activism. Lyn Mikel Browns book accurately captures the benefitsand challengesof how to nurture our next generation of change agents.

Clarice Bailey and Charlotte Jacobs, Girls Justice League

Powered by Girl is a godsend for everyone who parents or works with girls. Girls are passionate about making the world a better place. But when they try to do so, obstacles appear that adults need to help with. Lyn Mikel Brown shows us how and challenges us to go far beyond vague good intentions by building genuine, respectful, mutually trusting relationships that succeed in making change both out in the world and inside ourselves.

Nancy Gruver, founder, New Moon Girls

Powered by Girl is the essential manual for anyone working with young activistsfrom youth workers to seasoned mentors. Lyn Mikel Brown presents the necessary skills for adult allies to be supportive and effective backseat drivers while girls do the steering.

Wendy Lesko, president of Youth Activism Project and cofounder of School Girls Unite

In an increasingly commodified feminist movement, Powered by Girl offers insight into how girls and young women can reimagine a movement rooted in political activism, and gives activists the tools to do so in an intergenerational and inclusive way.

Julie Zeilinger, founding editor, FBomb

Powered by Girl is a compelling narrative and rationale for feminist intergenerational practices with girls, dismantling ageist models of girls programming and making visible the diverse ways coalitions of girls and their allies are pushing forward a new feminist agenda. An important book for all interested in girls studies and girls activism.

Amy Rutstein-Riley, PhD, MPH, principal investigator of The Girlhood Project at Lesley University

TO MY WILLFUL, LOVING,
AND ALWAYS ENTERTAINING
DAUGHTER, MAYA

By all appearances, the stars are aligned for young feminists. Armed with a well-honed sense of irony, an inventive amalgam of online and on-the-ground activism, and an intersectional lens, girl activists are getting it done. Theres no denying the power of the feminist blogosphere or girls and young womens use of a rich array of digital platforms to connect, rant, strategize, and land the movement. Girls are increasingly critical of media and marketers hell-bent on inventing and then profiting from their anxieties and desires; theyve stayed ahead of corporate shibboleths by culture jamming and pushing back on efforts to sell them on personal failure of various kinds. As pop culture icons and political leaders alike begin to proclaim their feminism, there is an enlivened and palpable sense of possibility.

That possibility has taken hold in creative grassroots organizations, programs, and campaigns across the country, where girls are developing collective approaches to social-change work every day online and in their communities and schools. But popular media feed an American public that has, as English professor Wendy Hesford says, an insatiable appetite for the exceptional individual, They are model citizens, defined, ironically, by their lack of participation in any political community.

When girls with dreams and demands fueled by social injustice enter the fun house of popular media, they exit as the current it girls, the latest desirable commodity.

And activism is the new fashion accessory. Like the stars in celebrity magazines, girls with a cause are Just like us! which means, in pop culture vernacular, that they, too, are vulnerable, uncertain, and prone to bad hair days. They are strong and smartand nonthreatening. Lena Dunham the Activist, Elle announces, is nothing if not polite... a blond ball of smiles and eye contact.

This girl-activist makeover has a dj vu feel, eerily reminiscent of 90s Girl Power, when media and marketers bypassed hip-hop feminisms call for solidarity and respect altogether and set their sights on transforming the largely white Riot Grrrl rebellion into a glittery wasteland of girly consumerism. Girl Power 90s style was exploitable, explains gender professor Marnina Gonick, because it resonated with an image of the new ideal feminine subject demanded by neoliberalism, a self-determined (white, middle-class) girl, assertive, dynamic, and unbound from the constraints of passive femininity.