Thinking Outside the Girl Box: Teaming Up with Resilient Youth in Appalachia

Title Page, Praise, Other Works in the Series, Copyright

A dvA n c e p r A i s e f o r Thinking OuTside The girl BOx “Writing between hope and despair, and with tremendous grace, this extraordinary pair of mother-daughter researchers reveals the limits that young Appalachian women face in breaking free of the strictures of gender and the injury of being working class in America.” —Ruth Behar, professor, University of Michigan, and author of Traveling Heavy:A Memoir in between Journeys “i read the entire thing in two days! it is incredible! it is like a love story! i laughed, i cried, i was angry, i grieved . . . simply incredible!” —Shelley Gaines, founder, Girls’ resiliency program of Lincoln county,Westvirginia “Thinking Outside the Girl Box reads as a delicious, compelling, collaborative ethnography that escorts readers into the delicate, rugged human terrain of life in Appalachia, where girls contend with dreams, relationships, possibilities , disappointments, the delights and struggles of rural life in a stretch of disinvested America.The book is written with a spirit of sweet invitation into a love story indeed;a mother-daughter adventure;an intimate essay on girls’ desire for lives of meaning and creativity; a sad obituary on a program that carried the girls on the wings of possibility.We meet young women, adult mentors, shelley and ric who carve the space and hold the girls, and we bear witness to the possibility and fragility of programs devised to support youth in a nation that has banished them to the margins in times of swelling inequality gaps. This book is beautifully accessible to undergraduates or graduates; if you are trying to teach students to appreciate ‘difference’ and imagine ‘others ,’ you don’t need a passport. come to West virginia and meet young women in our own country, sisters in the mountains, with few opportunities , enormous capacity, and rich desires. spatig and Amerikaner are gifted storytellers.Together with the young women and their mentors, they have crafted a sweet jewel,opening the box of ethnography,challenging the girdle of evaluation, asking us to peer inside the intimacy of growing up girl in rural America.” —Michelle Fine, distinguished professor,The Graduate center,cUnY “The aim of this book is to tell the story of rural,Appalachian girls in a youth development program—their lives presented through their own words, and the words of the authors, spatig and Amerikaner, highlighting the girls’ challenges,struggles,fears,likes,and dislikes....situating these girls’voices in a framework of‘collaborative ethnography’amidst a preferred research focus in the U.s. on quantitative, standardized, accountability models is refreshing, timely, accurate, and serves to highlight what we need to know most about girls and schooling.” —Brett Elizabeth Blake, professor, school of education, curriculum and instruction, st. John’s University (newYork), and author of She Say, He Say: Urban GirlsWriteTheir Lives “This book grows out of a ten-year community-based research project and exemplifies the possibilities of what can happen when outsiders tell stories about Appalachia. Beginning as a program evaluation of a youth resiliency program,it morphed into a collaborative ethnographic study of much reflection and fun, too much data, too little money, many mothers and daughters, and too many necessary losses. Honest about the tensions, it is designed to move beyond the walls of the university as it tells stories about the positive legacies of a program that helped adolescent girls in small-town West virginia live bigger lives.What results are complex tales of living poor and girlhood, girl-driven interventions, the violence of low expectations and the weight of gender norms. it is a life history of an organization told through strong characters about lessons learned, loving and leaving, poetry and song, and questions of power, voice, and language. i recommend it to those interested in Appalachian studies, girlhood studies, community-based activism, and collaborative ethnography as well as general readers interested in a darn good story.” —Patti Lather, professor,The ohio state University, and author of Getting Lost: Feminist Efforts toward a Double(d) Science “Written with great tenderness and insight, this book portrays Westvirginia through the eyes of those who seldom appear in the literature about Appalachia : rural girls. The stories of their struggles and transformations are revelatory—instructive and beautiful in equal measure. i love this book!” —Barbara Ellen Smith, professor, department of sociology,virginia Tech, and coeditor of Transforming Places: Lessons from Appalachia “far too often theories become abstract and convoluted...