Meeting at the Crossroads

by Lyn Mikel Brown, Carol Gilligan

Overview

On the way to womanhood, what does a girl give up? For five years, Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan, asking this question, listened to one hundred girls who were negotiating the rough terrain of adolescence. This book invites us to listen, too, and to hear in these girls' voices what is rarely spoken, often ignored, and generally misunderstood: how the passage out of girlhood is a journey into silence, disconnection, and dissembling, a troubled crossing that our culture has plotted with dead ends and detours.

In the course of their research, Brown and Gilligan developed a Listener's Guide - a method of following the pathways of girls' thoughts and feelings, of distinguishing what girls are saying by the way they say it. We witness the struggle girls undergo as they enter adolescence only to find that what they feel and think and know can no longer be said directly. We see them at a cultural impasse, and listen as they make the painful, necessary adjustments, outspokenness giving way to circumspection, self-knowledge to uncertainty, authority to compliance. These changes mark the edge of adolescence as a watershed in women's psychological development, a time of wrenching disjunctions between body and psyche, voice and desire, self and relationship. Brown and Gilligan open their method to us and share their discoveries as they encourage girls at different ages to speak about themselves in conversation with women. They follow some of these girls over time, listening to changes in their distinct voices from one year to the next, addressing their successes and failures as they confront one barrier after another.

This groundbreaking work offers major new insights into girls' development and women's psychology. But perhaps more importantly, it provides women with the means of meeting girls at the critical crossroads of adolescence, of harkening to the voices of girlhood and sustaining their sell-affirming notes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674731820
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	02/19/2014
Edition description:	Reprint 2013 ed.
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.63(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Brown Lyn Mikel :

Lyn Mikel Brown is Associate Professor of Education and Human Development at Colby College.Gilligan Carol :

Carol Gilligan is UniversityProfessor at the New York UniversitySchool of Law.

Table of Contents

1. A Journey of Discovery

A. The Underground

2. The Harmonics of Relationship Is

A. Centering on Voice

B. A Listener's Guide

C. Voicing Resistance

3. Whistle-Blowers in the Relational World: Three Guides through Childhood

A. Jessie: The Tyranny of Nice and Kind

B. Sonia: Genuine Relationship, Real Conversation

C. Lauren: Play and Courage

4. Approaching the Wall: Three Guides into Adolescence

A. Noura: Knowing and Not Knowing

B. Judy: Losing Her Mind

C. Victoria: Building a Shield

5. Rivers into the Sea: Three Guides through Adolescence

A. Anna: A Political Resister

B. Neeti: The Perfect Girl

C. Liza: Cover Girl

6. Dancing at the Crossroads

A. Women and Girls

Notes

References

Index

Editorial Reviews

Should sound a national alert to society that even our most privileged girls still pursue normal femininity at great risk to personal and civic health.

From the Publisher

During the course of five years, the authors interviewed 100 girls, listening on several defined levels to gain understanding of what happens as identity develops during adolescence. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews