The Perils of Girlhood - (American Lives) by Melissa Fraterrigo (Paperback)

About the Book

By interrogating the personal and emotional toll of being female, the essays in The Perils of Girlhood serve as a reckoning for women and girls.

Book Synopsis

Like many girls growing up in the eighties and nineties, Melissa Fraterrigo leaned on popular culture to transition from childhood to adolescence and beyond. Judy Blume told stories about girls embracing their imperfections; Madonna encouraged bold moves. But Fraterrigo's experiences with dating and attempts to refashion her body through diet and exercise left her feeling far from empowered. It wasn't until Fraterrigo became a mother to twin daughters and they began their own self-criticisms that she questioned how she might help them navigate their own girlhoods.

A handsome swim coach's advances, an anxious daughter soothing her father's temper, the history of Mace, and the joy of female friendship: these are some of the memories that shape Fraterrigo's worldview as an adult. Written with lyricism and insight, The Perils of Girlhood provides a reckoning and a reclamation. And while these personal narratives developed from Fraterrigo's desire to guide her daughters, their universal truths compel us to consider how best to bring all of our daughters into the future.

Review Quotes

"Recounted in frenzied flights, Fraterrigo describes a time of her life marked by scissor-kicks and Tupperware containers filled with lettuce leaves. . . . In this becoming, Fraterrigo grows . . . into someone more expansive, someone living for more than just beauty and order and acclaim, but for the life of another."--Anna Rollins, Mom Egg Review

"The Perils of Girlhood is a reckoning with self and world, with girlhood as well as womanhood--and motherhood--and the violence that hovers at all times around the periphery and occasionally breaks through. Marked by their raw honesty and precision, these essays transcend the purely personal and speak to the complexities and challenges of being a woman in our current cultural moment."--Steve Edwards, author of Breaking into the Backcountry

"The Perils of Girlhood will generate conversation that parents of daughters and sons find challenging. Melissa Fraterrigo's wisdom, painfully achieved, is important to pass on to the next generation, to strengthen the way we honor ourselves, both in how we are treated and the way we treat others."--Abigail Thomas, author of Safekeeping, A Three Dog Life, and Still Life at Eighty

"In this striking collection, Melissa Fraterrigo offers intimate essays examining her youthful fears and desires and the complex challenges facing her now as she parents twin girls. The Perils of Girlhood is an essential meditation on how we raise our daughters, in a voice that is clear, honest, and wise."--Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic and Desire

"Melissa Fraterrigo writes of a friend, 'Near her, everything loosens and I feel sixteen again, ' which is how I feel reading (and rereading) The Perils of Girlhood. How I wish this book had been given to me when I was a girl--to make sense of the simmering frustrations with wanting and resenting male attention, with accepting others' anger while denying one's own, with trying to be agreeable and likable and perfect. The Perils of Girlhood is a necessary book that I will recommend for years to come."--Jeannie Vanasco, author of Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl

"This collection is a subtle subversion of the conservative political narrative that women's lives are inconsequential, and somehow interchangeable. These compelling essays about sexuality, home life, coming of age, and the interior life are not always in-your-face, but they are always in-your-soul."--Sue William Silverman, author of Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul

"This gorgeous, shattering, hopeful, sorrowful, soulful book is about the perils (and glories) of girlhood, yes, but also of motherhood and daughterhood, womanhood, life. I dare anyone to read it without a frequent--maybe constant--shiver of oh yes, me too. Whether Melissa Fraterrigo is writing about the excruciations of adolescence, the highs and lows of love and marriage, self-image, friendship, extreme dieting, or the daily just-below-the-surface drumbeat of worry that's so often baked into motherhood (not an inclusive list!), she is writing from the heart, beautifully and heartbreakingly and oh-so-smartly."--Michelle Herman, author of If You Say So

"Through a crystalline rendering of an eighties girlhood (bran cereal and the Barbie Style Head, Judy Blume and Jean M. Auel, aerosol hairspray and Zinka, Judd Nelson and Rob Lowe, too much exercise and too little food) and onward into a writing career and motherhood, the essays in Melissa Fraterrigo's The Perils of Girlhood navigate the complexity of a life lived in a female body with the kind of clarity and empathy that both brings me back--I mean, Fraterrigo gets me--and helps me to see a way forward."--Jill Christman, author of If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays

About the Author

Melissa Fraterrigo is the executive director of the Lafayette Writer's Studio in Lafayette, Indiana, and teaches at Purdue University. She is the author of the novel Glory Days (Nebraska, 2017) and a collection of short fiction, The Longest Pregnancy: Stories.