This text set examines feminism for middle school girls.
Anchor Text:
Astrid doesn't always appreciate her mother's "evening of cultural enlightment" but this changes when she experiences the roller derby. Astrid is determined to be a roller girl. Her plans are challenged when her best friend would rather do ballet buy she carries on. Astrid's summer doesn't turn out the way she expects - there are issues with losing her best friend, lying to her mother, learning to skate, and making new friends. This graphic novel is charming, entertaining, and loaded with issues to discuss!
Potential Discussion Topics:
Astrid doesn't always appreciate her mother's "evening of cultural enlightment" but this changes when she experiences the roller derby. Astrid is determined to be a roller girl. Her plans are challenged when her best friend would rather do ballet buy she carries on. Astrid's summer doesn't turn out the way she expects - there are issues with losing her best friend, lying to her mother, learning to skate, and making new friends. This graphic novel is charming, entertaining, and loaded with issues to discuss!
Potential Discussion Topics:
- Female Friendships and Relational Bullying
- Gender Stereotypes as reflected in activities and fashion
- Developing independence
- A Mighty Girl is a comprehensive website with media resources for girls. The resources are curated but need to be further curated, and they are linked to Amazon so there is a corporate interest at play one should be aware of. It is accessible for girls ages 8 and up.
- Girl Rising is a documentary that profiles 9 young women in developing world struggling to achieve an education. It is easily accessible for ages 10+. It is also an organization and has an accompanying book.
- Ain't I a Woman - Sojourner Truth's Speech. The text of her speech at Women's Convention 1851, can be read by 12+ independently. It does have some dialect that can make it more difficult for some readers.
- Here We Are is a collection of essays and art that examine issues related to girls, and feminism. It should be used with guidance at the middle school level but works well as a supplemental text in that pieces can be used with Roller Girl such Bad Feminist: Take Two by Roxanne Gay, and So I Guess this is Growing Up by Liz Prince.
- Feminism: Reinventing the F-Word is a non-fiction book that introduces a wide variety of concepts related to feminism including the history of feminist movements, issues related to equality at work, cultural expectations of women, and, bodily autonomy (e.g. rape culture and reproductive justice). Similar to Here We Are it is recommended that it is used with some guidance with younger girls, but is accessible for 12 and up. It has a Lexile of 1170 but its format allows for multiple entry points.
- We Should All Be Feminists is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Ted Talk on feminism. As an oral piece, it accessible for 10+ and has entry points to further the discussion of what it means to call one's self a feminist.