Girls, Feminism, and Grassroots Literacies: Activism in the GirlZone

Case study of the life of a feminist organization in a changing political and funding climate.

Winner of the 2010 Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award presented by The Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition

This book explores the rise and fall of a grassroots, girl-centered organization, GirlZone, which sought to make social change on a local level. Whether skateboarding or designing Web pages, celebrating in weekend "GrrrlFests" or producing a biweekly RadioGirl program, participants in GirlZone came to understand themselves as competent actors in a variety of activities they had previously thought were closed off to them. Drawing on six years of fieldwork examining GirlZone from its inception until its demise, Mary P. Sheridan-Rabideau offers insights on the current state of and study of literacy in the extracurriculum. She addresses how girls have become cultural flashpoints reflecting societal-and particularly feminist-anxieties and hopes about the present and the future. Sheridan-Rabideau does more than chronicle the pressure girls face; she offers advice on how feminists, cultural critics, and activists can effect social change on local levels, even in today's increasingly globalized contexts.