Overview

What experiences constitute 'girlhood'? What personal and social pathways are available to girls in contemporary American fiction? These questions lie at the heart of this book, which argues that emancipatory new representations of girlhood have emerged in novels published between 19902020, in response to the social and cultural transformations that have been catalysed by the girl-centric agendas of contemporary feminism. Through analysing how twelve contemporary novelists depict girlhood as an expansive period during which girls can fulfil a range of personal and socio-political agendas from pursuing intellectual ambitions at university, to achieving self-realisation through solo travel this book investigates how contemporary fiction asks readers to view girlhood anew, by reimagining the personal, narrative and social possibilities of American girlhood.

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9781399528320

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Angelica De Vido reminds us that 'girl power' wasn't simply a successful marketing slogan of the 1990s but a pointer to real transformation in ideas about girlhood. Avoiding both superficial celebration and cynicism, Girlhood in the Contemporary American Novel shows how the containment of girls' coming-of-age stories by versions of the marriage plot was undone in the decades after 1990 by the success of more diverse stories about girls' lives - stories open to popular modes of feminism still unfolding around us today.--Catherine Driscoll, University of Sydney

Author Information

Angelica De Vido is the Gardiner Fellow at New York Historical Society, where she is a scholar of twentieth and twenty-first century literature, feminist studies and the history of urban America.

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