My Sisters' Voices
Iris Jacob, Editor
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2002 Henry Holt & Co.
ISBN: 080506821X

Teenage Girls of Color Speak Out.

A passionate & poignant collection of writings from teenage girls of African American, Hispanic, Asian American, Native American & biracial backgrounds.

Like Sara Shandler who wrote & edited Ophelia Speaks, Iris Jacob was inspired by Mary Pipher's riveting Reviving Ophelia & set about gathering essays & poems from her own teenager experience as biracial in a white majority society.

My Sisters' Voices young women represents a demographic that has had no voice of its own--adolescent, females & minorities--a group often spoken for & rarely heard. With candor & grace they write about topics that anyone who is raising, teaching or nurturing young women of color needs to hear.

My Sisters' Voices can heard in the essays & poems of personal & inspiring stories about family, friendship, sex, love, fear, racism, loss & oppression.

The choir of My Sisters' Voices sing a capella in:
• More Than Skin Deep in which they write about being the black sheep, or in a culture of their own, of the standards of beauty, words they never understood, about the color line or the all-American girl.
• In Our Roots they explore their histories, what it is like on their streets, on the reservations, their villages, what it's like being Daddy's girl, the power of silence, of being abandoned.
• In Person To Person the poems & essays are about friends, dances, abusive relationships, identity.
• In Ourselves Inside and Out they write about being a female skater, the feminist thing, who they are, sex, mortality, schooling, God & the church & spirituality.
• In Sharing Our Sorrows we hear from them about death, love, deafness, depression, scars, violence & abuse, pain.
• In Reclaiming Our Voices they ponder on forgetting the stars, their hair, who they are, the essence of life, on being a stranger, a daughter of Africa, the colors of their skins.

Each section has much, much more than what I've distilled for this review, & I agree that “My Sisters' Voices is essential reading for a generation of girls struggling to define themselves in a world that keeps trying to do it for them.”

Listening to these maidens' voices, there are places they have had the courage to explore, the subjects they have bravely bared, the tender & the mournful along with the philosophical, humorous & downright dangerously proud ideas. I use that word, maiden, with all the respect of its old-fashioned meaning: new, fresh, earliest, beginning, damsel, girl, lass, maid, single, unmarried, wench, youth, youngster. As you will see from these maiden's words the other implication of being unstained, virgin, inexperienced, untried, unused, are not necessarily so.

A powerfully transformative book that should be a part of every girl's library. Very Well done!

Iris Jacob has been a student facilitator at numerous diversity conferences, has started affinity groups for students of color & women, & codirected a youth leadership institute.
(05/18/03)

Rebecca