Girlhood in the Contemporary American Novel

Angelica De Vido is the Gardiner Fellow at New York Historical Society, where she is a scholar of twentieth and twenty-first century literature, feminist studies and the history of urban America.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Who Invented the Typical Girl?1. My Brilliant Friend: Girls’ Friendships in the Fictional Memoir2. Girl, Interrupted: Sexuality in the Campus Novel3. You Play the Girl: Queer Girlhood in the Bildungsroman4. My Mother, My Self: Intergenerational Girlhood in the Picaresque5. America was Hard to Find: Coming-of-Age in Novels of Immigration6. A Home at the End of the World: Gothic GirlhoodConclusion: Girls Will Be GirlsNotesBibliographyIndex

Angelica De Vido reminds us that ‘girl power’ wasn't simply a successful marketing slogan of the 1990s but a pointer to real transformation in ideas about girlhood. Avoiding both superficial celebration and cynicism, Girlhood in the Contemporary American Novel shows how the containment of girls' coming-of-age stories by versions of the marriage plot was undone in the decades after 1990 by the success of more diverse stories about girls’ lives – stories open to popular modes of feminism still unfolding around us today.