Thinking Outside the Girl Box: Teaming Up with Resilient Youth in Appalachia PDF
Preview Thinking Outside the Girl Box: Teaming Up with Resilient Youth in Appalachia
AdvAnce prAise for Thinking OuTside The girl BOx “Writing between hope and despair, and with tremendous grace, this ex- traordinary pair of mother-daughter researchers reveals the limits that young Appalachian women face in breaking free of the strictures of gender and the injury of being working class in America.” —Ruth Behar, professor, University of Michigan, and author of Traveling Heavy: A Memoir in between Journeys “i read the entire thing in two days! it is incredible! it is like a love story! i laughed, i cried, i was angry, i grieved . . . simply incredible!” —Shelley Gaines, founder, Girls’ resiliency program of Lincoln county, West virginia “Thinking Outside the Girl Box reads as a delicious, compelling, collaborative ethnography that escorts readers into the delicate, rugged human terrain of life in Appalachia, where girls contend with dreams, relationships, possibili- ties, disappointments, the delights and struggles of rural life in a stretch of disinvested America. The book is written with a spirit of sweet invitation into a love story indeed; a mother-daughter adventure; an intimate essay on girls’ desire for lives of meaning and creativity; a sad obituary on a program that carried the girls on the wings of possibility. We meet young women, adult mentors, shelley and ric who carve the space and hold the girls, and we bear witness to the possibility and fragility of programs devised to support youth in a nation that has banished them to the margins in times of swelling inequality gaps. This book is beautifully accessible to undergraduates or graduates; if you are trying to teach students to appreciate ‘difference’ and imagine ‘oth- ers,’ you don’t need a passport. come to West virginia and meet young women in our own country, sisters in the mountains, with few opportuni- ties, enormous capacity, and rich desires. spatig and Amerikaner are gifted storytellers. Together with the young women and their mentors, they have crafted a sweet jewel, opening the box of ethnography, challenging the girdle of evaluation, asking us to peer inside the intimacy of growing up girl in rural America.” —Michelle Fine, distinguished professor, The Graduate center, cUnY “The aim of this book is to tell the story of rural, Appalachian girls in a youth development program—their lives presented through their own words, and the words of the authors, spatig and Amerikaner, highlighting the girls’ challenges, struggles, fears, likes, and dislikes. . . . situating these girls’ voices in a framework of ‘collaborative ethnography’ amidst a preferred research focus in the U.s. on quantitative, standardized, accountability models is refreshing, timely, accurate, and serves to highlight what we need to know most about girls and schooling.” —Brett Elizabeth Blake, professor, school of education, curriculum and instruction, st. John’s University (new York), and author of She Say, He Say: Urban Girls Write Their Lives “This book grows out of a ten-year community-based research project and exemplifies the possibilities of what can happen when outsiders tell stories about Appalachia. Beginning as a program evaluation of a youth resiliency program, it morphed into a collaborative ethnographic study of much reflec- tion and fun, too much data, too little money, many mothers and daughters, and too many necessary losses. Honest about the tensions, it is designed to move beyond the walls of the university as it tells stories about the posi- tive legacies of a program that helped adolescent girls in small-town West virginia live bigger lives. What results are complex tales of living poor and girlhood, girl-driven interventions, the violence of low expectations and the weight of gender norms. it is a life history of an organization told through strong characters about lessons learned, loving and leaving, poetry and song, and questions of power, voice, and language. i recommend it to those inter- ested in Appalachian studies, girlhood studies, community-based activism, and collaborative ethnography as well as general readers interested in a darn good story.” —Patti Lather, professor, The ohio state University, and author of Getting Lost: Feminist Efforts toward a Double(d) Science “Written with great tenderness and insight, this book portrays West virginia through the eyes of those who seldom appear in the literature about Ap- palachia: rural girls. The stories of their struggles and transformations are revelatory—instructive and beautiful in equal measure. i love this book!” —Barbara Ellen Smith, professor, department of sociology, virginia Tech, and coeditor of Transforming Places: Lessons from Appalachia “far too often theories become abstract and convoluted—losing connection to reality in the pursuit of ever higher levels of elaboration. Theorists cite other theorists to prove their erudition. This book, however, is a story that advances theory. spatig and Amerikaner take life experience that they have felt—love, disappointment, and suffering—and conceptualize that knowl- edge into critical theory. This book is not just about Appalachian girls. This book is about how we study and think about life around us. This book is about how scholars should expose social inequality and oppression and then write about it.” —Lynda Ann Ewen, founder, center for the study of ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia at Marshall University “This is an extraordinary collaborative ethnography, one that authentically involves research participants in multiple stages of the research and writing processes. But it is also much more than this. it is, as spatig and Amerikaner suggest, a love story that both warms and breaks the heart. Thinking Outside the Girl Box documents the amazing successes, and then the unsettling demise, of the Girls’ resiliency program, a community-based youth development program in one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states in the country. Make no mistake, though, this isn’t another account about victims of rural poverty. The adult leaders and young women who are both subjects and research partners in this study do struggle against enormous odds; yet their remarkable and resilient commitment to model positive relationships and to make a difference to each other and within their communities inspires hope for what is possible when we decide to work together for change. Any- one with an interest in youth programs, Appalachia, rural poverty, or gender studies—and, of course, collaborative ethnography—should read this book.” —Luke Eric Lassiter, author of The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography “Thinking Outside the Girl Box will change the way you look at words like resiliency, development, democracy, girls. spatig and Amerikaner remind their readers that a real feminist analysis begins with love and that its meth- odology is necessarily one of loving collaboration. in a period in which multinational agency after multinational agency is ‘discovering’ that girls exist, the story of the Girls’ resiliency program, from efflorescence to almost complete demise, is a necessary one, and i, for one, can’t image anyone better to tell that story than Linda spatig and Layne Amerikaner.” —Daniel Moshenberg, director, Women’s studies program, George Washington University, and coeditor of Searching for South Africa: The New Calculus of Dignity Thinking OuTside The girl BOx oHio UniversiTY press series in race, ethnicity, and Gender in Appalachia Series editors: Marie Tedesco and Chris Green Memphis Tennessee Garrison: The Remarkable Story of a Black Appalachian Woman, edited by Ancella r. Bickley and Lynda Ann ewen The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Appalachian Literature, by elizabeth s. d. engelhardt Red, White, Black, and Blue: A Dual Memoir of Race and Class in Appalachia, by William r. drennen Jr. and Kojo (William T.) Jones Jr., edited by dolores M. Johnson Beyond Hill and Hollow: Original Readings in Appalachian Women’s Studies, edited by elizabeth s. d. engelhardt Loving Mountains, Loving Men, by Jeff Mann Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative, by Linda Tate Out of the Mountains: Appalachian Stories, by Meredith sue Willis Negotiating a Perilous Empowerment: Appalachian Women’s Literacies, by erica Abrams Locklear Standing Our Ground: Women, Environmental Justice, and the Fight to End Mountaintop Removal, by Joyce M. Barry Shake Terribly the Earth: Stories from an Appalachian Family, by sarah Beth childers Thinking Outside the Girl Box: Teaming Up with Resilient Youth in Appalachia, by Linda spatig and Layne Amerikaner Thinking OuTside The girl BOx Teaming Up with Resilient Youth in Appalachia Linda spatig Layne Amerikaner iLLUsTrATions BY LAYne AMeriKAner OhiO University Press • Athens ohio University press, Athens, ohio 45701 ohioswallow.com © 2014 by ohio University press All rights reserved To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from ohio University press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax). printed in the United states of America ohio University press books are printed on acid-free paper ƒ ™ ISBN (hardcover) 978-0-8214-2059-1 ISBN (paperback) 978-0-8214-2060-7 ISBN (electronic) 978-0-8214-4467-2 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request. shelley gaines, founder of the girls’ resiliency program: The kids that we were working with were really carrying around a lot of labels that people gave them and . . . it just got perpetuated within the family, or from the community. . . . everybody has had these girls in these little tiny boxes that were very disempowering. interviewer: How would you like to impact the girls’ lives? shelley gaines: i guess i hope . . . that the box they have drawn, that all women have to fit in, is at least a thousand times bigger than when they started.
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