Getting a new haircut. Surviving clothes shopping with Mom. Losing a beloved uncle to AIDS. Hearing the band Nirvana for the first time. These are just a few of the experiences that inspired this book's young authors to sit down and write. In thirty-five frank and intimate personal essays, they express their views on serious issues like violence, racism, and teen parenting, as well as common teen experiences like dating, getting first job, and starting college. Their stories resonate with their desire to discover who they are, through the written word, and to share their discoveries with their peers.

Much of the scholarship on second-wave feminism has focused on divisions within the women's movement and its narrow conception of race and class, but the contributors to this volume remind readers that feminists in the 1960s and 1970s also formed many strong partnerships, often allying themselves with a diverse range of social justice efforts on a local grassroots level. These essays focus on coalitions and alliances in which feminists and other activists joined forces to address crucial social justice issues such as reproductive rights, the peace movement, women's health, Christianity and other religions, and neighborhood activism, as well as alliances crossing boundaries of race, class, political views, and sexual identity. The contributors bring fresh perspectives to feminist history by calling attention to how women struggled to include and represent diverse women without minimizing the difficulties of conceptualizing a singular feminism.

Contributors are Maria Bevacqua, Tamar Carroll, Marisa Chappell, Andrea Estepa, Sara M. Evans, Amy Farrell, Stephanie Gilmore, Cynthia Harrison, Elizabeth Kaminski, Wendy Kline, Premilla Nadasen, Caryn Neumann, Anne M. Valk, and Emily Zuckerman.