Vendela Vida
Description
In a fascinating look at how young women are coming of age in America, Vendela Vida's Girls on the Verge explores a variety of rituals that girls have
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adapted or created in order to leave their childhoods behind.
Vida doesn't just observe the rituals, she actively participates in them, going as far as spending a week at UCLA to experience rush—she emerges a Tri-Delt. She also goes to Miami to learn about the "quince" (the Latin American celebration of a girl's fifteenth birthday), to Houston to take part in a debutante ball, to Los Angeles and San Francisco to talk to female gang members, to Salem, Massachusetts, to interview a coven of witches, and to Las Vegas to watch young brides take the plunge—some of them in drive-through wedding chapels. With humor, insight, and illuminating detail, she explores girls' struggles to forge an identity and secure a sense of belonging through various rituals—rituals that they embrace without necessarily understanding the comforts they seek or the repercussions of their often all-too-adult choices.
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