Girlhood: Teens around the World in Their Own Voices

Girlhood is an illuminating nonfiction book that shares the authentic experiences of 30 teenage girls from 27 different countries. Through their personal diary entries, photographs, and contextual reporting, readers gain a deep understanding of what it is like to grow up as a girl in diverse communities, from bustling cities to remote villages. It highlights their daily routines, aspirations, challenges, and triumphs, moving beyond headlines to reveal the ordinary yet extraordinary lives of young women globally. This book is ideal for ages 12-18, fostering empathy, cultural awareness, and a broader perspective on girlhood.

What does a teenage girl dream about in Nigeria or New York? How does she spend her days in Mongolia, the Midwest, and the Middle East? All around the world, girls are going to school, working, dreaming up big futures—they are soccer players and surfers, ballerinas and chess champions. Yet we know so little about their daily lives. We often hear about challenges and catastrophes in the news, and about exceptional girls who make headlines. But even though the health, education, and success of girls so often determines the future of a community, we don’t know more about what life is like for the ordinary girls, the ones living outside the headlines. From the Americas to Europe to Africa to Asia to the South Pacific, the thirty teens from twenty-seven countries in Girlhood share their own stories of growing up through diary entries and photographs, and the girls’ stories are put in context with reporting and research that helps us understand the circumstances and communities they live in. This full-color, exuberantly designed volume is a portrait of ordinary girlhood around the world, and of the world, as seen through girls’ eyes.