Taking Our Place In History

What is it like growing up in New York City as a teen in 2020? This book invites you into their homes and families, their schools and neighborhoods, their hearts, hopes, and fears. Enter a world where clay creatures take on aluminum oppressors. Get thrown against an elevator wall in the midst of a horror story. Go backstage with a rock band, say goodbye to relatives as you start a new life, stand with an engineer solving a coding problem. Experience tragedy in a mosque, feel the wounds of slavery, know the terror of glass shattering in a World War II village, and see how this next generation of leaders looks to the past and writes a better future for us all.

For more than two decades, the nationally award-winning nonprofit Girls Write Now has broken down the barriers of gender, race, age, and poverty, elevating the voices of writers who are too often not heard—or worse, silenced. With mentors by their sides, the girls and gender-nonconforming youth tackle climate change, racism, sexism, rejection, immigration, and friendship—and take their place in history. This book is their testament.