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GIRLS TALK AND WRITE
Read an interview:
By Christina Soza, Grade 11, USA
Christima attended a Girls Speak Out workshop before she entered ninth grade, and here she is a few years later as part of her journalism class. She says the workshop "changed my life. and helps me stay focused when I feel pressure to change my true self."
Andrea helped organize the First National Girls Conference at UNICEF House in New York in 1997. She has inspired many girls to find their true selves. She has taught many girls to love and respect who they are. She also wrote a book called Girls Speak Out which had many stories of girl’s lives and what they face through their lives.
1. Who or what inspired you to write a book based on teenage girls? Why did that person or thing inspire you to write the book? Well there are two things: one was my own childhood and teenage years which I felt were more confusing than they had to be and the second was I met someone who knew how to spread the word so when you have a really great idea and you can think about all the things you want to share with people and then find a way to do it. You can get all these girls together and have them talk about it but then how do you get people to find it? So when I met Gloria Steinem, she was a published writer and people knew her because she is involved in woman's rights. So I knew that she was a way to get the information out. When we met we kind of clicked because she had been looking for somebody who knew how to work with girls and I had been teaching for a really long time.
I think it was because I had such a screwed up childhood and teenage years and I didn't think it was necessary for other people to experience that, but my parents had different belief systems from a lot of other parents, they didn't believe in girls going to college so everything I did was a struggle and so by the time I got older and started to teach I knew that there were kids who were happy and there were kids who were unhappy and so why didn't I try to do something and have all these different girls get together and talk about how they grew up so that we could learn from each other's experiences.
2. What made you want to start an organization to help young girls find their true selves? Why?
I think I was probably out of my mind. I didn't ever plan to start the organization; first what happened was Gloria had asked me if I could put together a program. So I put together what you call portable education which was like a program that Wilma Mankiller would take on lunch hours to different places where people from her tribe were working and she would share the history with them. So Gloria thought it would be a good idea if something like that could travel and meet girls and give them information that they wouldn’t get otherwise and collect information from them so that’s what it was going to be, a traveling program and I hadn’t notice much beyond that accept that I was the one who got to do the traveling and the girls were a little upset because I got to meet all the girls and they didn’t so they asked me to put a conference, where I would bring girls from different places together. I did that at the United Nations in New York. So we had girls from 40 states and 11 countries and they spent three days talking about what they wanted to change and what they felt they needed and then after they did that I needed a way to keep that information available so one of the ways was to create an organization to have a website and to make it available to girls. It all kind of happened.
3. How did you feel knowing that you helped organized the First National Girls Conference at UNICEF House in New York could change a difference in every girl’s life?
I think that’s what I was doing, I was giving girls a chance to tell it to the whole world because the United Nations was a place, it was the only place I could think of where the world might listen to you. It was hard to raise money for it and I ended up cashing in my retirement and spending my retirement money on the conference. So I was nuts, I was determined to do it and it had to do with a lot of connections with my past and my present in what I wanted the girls to have in their future. Afterwards I realized that my mother was never very patient. When I asked for help she would say don’t ask me ask the United Nations and then I did.
4. What advice do you have for young teenage girls today about anything?
You’re the only person who understands how you feel so whenever you feel confused or scared or misunderstood you have the right to stop whatever you’re doing and check in with yourself and ask why do I feel this way? You have a right to feel bad so I think the biggest advice I have is to trust yourself and to always check inside. When you feel good you don’t really have to check in, but it’s a good idea anyway. Teenagers are expected to be impulsive and do things but teenagers are like any adult age and need to just stop and really think. Figure how you really feel because that is where all the answers come from, and that’s where the true self comes from.
5. What do you and the groups of girls do in the workshop program that they join? What is the main moral that you try to teach them?
What happens is the girls come together in a circle so that we read things that could trigger feelings and ideas. It is a safe place because you can trust the people who are there and you can talk about things that you aren’t able to talk about anywhere else and also learn to have fun because we play games, eat lots of food, and girls do their own talk shows. They can sculpt and look at artifacts of females. So the idea was to educate the girls and have girls do things that are fun and have women there who really listen to them and don’t take charge and to let them go away feeling it’s okay to be who they are. I try to show them that right and wrong is confusing sometimes unless you check n with your true self because there are so many opinions about everything. The main thing is to be honest, and caring.
6. After writing the book Girls Speak Out, what was your final thought of the book?
I think my final thought is that I had said something that took me 30 years to figure out how to say, which was to give the message that growing up no matter what happened, that we all want the same thing and that is to be accepted for who we are and its hard to be who you are and the struggle doesn’t stop when you get to be a grown up.
7. How do you think that this book will affect young girls today when they are reading it?
Most of the reaction I get is "I didn’t know anyone else who knew that or I didn’t know anyone else who felt that way and I didn’t know any other girls felt that something was wrong so I just thought it was my fault." 8. What is something your book teaches the girls to not do in the real world today?
If girls are supposed to be in this box where females are struggling to get out and become powerful, when you put them in a box together they mess with other girls to experience what control feels like and they don’t know how hurtful and mean it can be. The girls will realize one day how beautiful and strong we all really are and that we all have a natural beauty. Don’t let yourself be brainwashed. Girls think that they are not the ideal, which is impossible to be, and if that’s where beauty is, they kind of get overwhelmed by an impossible standard.
9. What is something you think will change their lives by reading this book?
Believing what a lot of people say always has to be true because a lot of people can be wrong. My mother would always used to say "5 million people can be wrong!" but you know what they can all be wrong and you can end up being right. If it feels right to you then I would trust it.
10. What are the main issues that teenage girls face in life today as young female adults?
From my woman's point of view I think its the same problem but looks different I think the problem is still being able to hold on to who you are instead of changing to fit in because you’re going to be miserable if you chip away yourself to fit in. You want to look and sound and be a certain way so you trying to be someone you’re not and girls and women tell me this feels awful.
11. About the girls that tell their stories in your book what is the main thing they learn from doing these workshops with you?
That you don’t have to be ashamed of anything no matter what’s happened to you-- its happened to someone else, you’re not alone. Girls can talk, write, draw do whatever they choose to communicate what happened to them and what we found out was that they wouldn’t want the other girls to change themselves for anything.
12. When you were a teenager were you facing any of the problems teenagers face today?
Yes I remember I was in a total state of confusion and hormones. I was really attracted to guys and also liked my girlfriends and I didn’t know what that meant so I was confused about everything. I would find comfort in books because I think that we are always trying to look for a place where we feel accepted.
13. Why do you like helping teenagers’ find their true selves?
I found out that I have a talent for doing it. Whatever had happened in my life, when you sew it all together, what comes out is someone who loves helping kids find who they are and how to take charge of your life.
14. When talking with teenagers what is the number one problem that they face the most?
Feeling unsafe, especially when trying to be themselves, feeling unsafe saying exactly what they think and what they feel.
15. What are the main topics you feel that a lot of girls today face?
I think class/money is one of the big struggles because its part of fitting in and you have to dress and act a certain way for people to like you and unfortunately, it’s a superficial culture but with people like you who make a difference. |
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