Breaking Through: The 2014 Girls Write Now Anthology is now available on Amazon.
This collection is made possible thanks to a charitable contribution from Amazon.com.
In tune with this year’s curricular theme, Breaking Through: the Girls Write Now 2014 Anthology is composed of stories that celebrate the incredible diversity and creative fearlessness of our intergenerational community, showcasing poetry, fiction, memoir and more that surprise us and stretch our understanding of the world and ourselves. This year’s anthology showcases stories both intimate and universal, and through each piece you can witness not only the talents of our young writers, but also the friendships that bond each mentee and mentor pair.
FROM THE FOREWORD:
“I was going to high school in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, when I read my first Nikki Giovanni poem. I was always the only black kid in my class, and there were times when I was the only black kid in the entire school, which I had some pretty strong feelings about. For the most part, I kept my opinions to myself. But when my sophomore English class read Giovanni’s poem, I felt like I had a new friend. And she was sitting right in my classroom, talking to me.” Excerpt from foreword written by NYC’s First Lady, Chirlane McCray
PRAISE FOR BREAKING THROUGH:
“To write is to bring an inner voice into the outer world, to believe that our thoughts are worth entering the thinking of others, and to make real what has never existed in quite the same way before. What could be a better path to self-valuing than that? In giving young women in the five boroughs this biggest of all gifts, Girls Write Now is giving the rest of us the gift of those girls.”— Gloria Steinem
“When girls write their truth in their particular way, with their particular vibrant edged rhythms and images, the door to the new world opens. Girls Write Now is a breathtaking liberation. The wild birds are flying free.” — Eve Ensler, Playwright and Founder of V-Day
All too often, still, girls’ voices are muted, restricted, ignored silenced. Why? Because of the fear about what they might say, the truths they know. What happens when their voices are set free? Girls Write Now knows the answer to that question. They soar! They write powerful moving stories about their lives and the lives of others. They write uppity stories that question us and challenge the status quo. And every word on the page becomes a declaration of freedom. — Marcia Ann Gillespie, teacher, writer, and editor emerita of Ms. and Essence
FROM BREAKING THROUGH:
“I had written the poem nearly a month after Malala Yousafzai’s attack. The contorted faces of the audience began to smooth as they realized the singular sound symbolized the push of a finger on a gun that had threatened a young girl’s life. As a spark, I wanted to inspire other girls to be change-makers. Clicks aren’t commonplace at poetry slams but neither was I. I will move and shake the world.”— Priscilla Guo, “I Have a Voice”
“My mother always stood by me, from the warm glasses of milk she would hand to me during late-night study sessions, to the Girls Write Now annual public readings, where she clapped the loudest when I read my work. Even so, her long work hours and my demanding academic schedule meant that we spent little time together.”— Tuhfa Begum, “The Feminist in Me”
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