Review: Girldrive

Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism by Nona Willis Aronowitz & Emma Bee Bernstein, with a foreword by Jennifer Baumgardner

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Girldrive is a chronicle of Aronowitz and Bernstein’s whirlwind trip around the country, interviewing mostly young women about their lives and feminisms. The magazine-like volume is a hodgepodge of compressed interviews, dynamic photographs, and diary entries ranging from Aronowitz’s reflections on her late mother’s feminist parenting to descriptions of acid-induced relaxation.

Calling on the classic motif of the open road, Girldrive‘s creators succeed in framing their adventure around a feminism that’s truly American. The book’s subjects are diverse in almost every way — race, class, level of education, sexuality, connection to the feminist label. The one thing they share is a nearly tangible sense of passion: if not for “the feminist movement,” then for making women’s lives better.

The book revels in the complexities of contemporary intersectional feminism. As the title suggests, Nona and Emma seek not to define feminism for the ambivalent, but to broaden our conceptions of activism and celebrate the awesome stuff young women in this country are doing every damn day.

Also check out the Girldrive blog.