Ninety years ago, Virginia Woolf spoke to the young women of Girton and Newnham colleges in England on what women needed in order to become writers. These talks were to become her famous feminist tract, A Room of One’s Own, and in them Woolf explained why there were so few great women writers, why Shakespeare could not have been Shakespeare had he been born a woman: “For we think back through our mothers if we are women.” She was speaking of the importance of predecessors. It is hard to become a woman writer, she argued, if few have gone before. The lack of successful models demoralizes and dissuades.
In the intervening decades, women have excelled in many realms once off-limits, and many more dazzling female literary models have made themselves known—from Flannery O’Connor to Zadie Smith, Joan Didion to Jhumpa Lahiri.
Still, in this season of great hope and change, we have also witnessed staggering sexism and the status quo. Pollsters worried over so-called Bradley effects, but more amazing than this breed of covert racism, is the way in which, culturally, we feel no need to cover over gender biases. It seems it’s not embarrassing to be sexist: voters unabashedly told news sources during the primaries that they were not sure they’d be comfortable with a woman as their Commander in Chief. These biases are visible in the hallowed halls of all our highest offices. In 2007, only 86 of the 535 seats in Congress were held by women—a mere 16.3%.
Such dismal percentages permeate the culture well beyond politics. We see similar figures throughout the media landscape. A 2007 study found that only 15% of behind-the-scenes talent (directors, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors) on top grossing films in the U.S. were women, and the number has in fact decreased in the last ten years. The White House Project, an organization devoted to increasing the number of women in positions of leadership, reports that in 2005 women accounted for just 14% of guest appearances on the Sunday morning television talk shows. The table of contents of our most revered magazines and journals bear the names of fewer women than men. According to Editor & Publisher, 2007 saw a 0.1% gain in the number of women opinion columnists at the eight largest syndicates—from 24.4 to 24.5%.
Media, then, clearly reflects and perpetuates the inequality of opportunity for women in this country, and the lack of successful women role models no doubt demoralizes our young girls as much as it did in Woolf’s day. But youth media organizations are uniquely poised to serve as a corrective to that inequality. Not only can youth media offer girls the opportunity to thrive as creative and flexible thinkers, and in so doing train them to be our future leaders. We can also provide them with the successful role models they cannot find elsewhere.
Training the Next Generation of Thinkers and Leaders
In “What Feminism Means to Me,” essayist and memoirist Vivian Gornick explains the epiphany delivered to her at the hands of “women’s libbers” of the ’70s: “The lifelong inability to take myself seriously as a worker: this was the central dilemma of a woman’s existence.” This central dilemma persists today, and millions of cracks in the glass ceiling aside, there is an urgent need now, as then, for girls to see themselves as thinkers and workers, valued for the quality of their intellect.
As those who work in media, we know it is about making. This act of creation is inherently empowering—by making media, young people learn the tools and the hunger to make something of their lives. It falls to youth media organizations to make our next generation of media makers a more fair and accurate reflection of our 21st-Century world. Girls Write Now (GWN), a small and burgeoning non-profit mentoring organization, is one potent example of the role youth media can play in that kind of change. GWN pairs teenage girls from New York City’s schools with professional women in writing-related fields, and with an age range of 14 to 80, the women of our community come together as working writers with the purpose of sharing their work, and growing as workers.
Through the program, pairs meet once a week, developing both their writing and the bonds between them, and the whole community of 80-plus women writers meets once a month for workshops in memoir, poetry, fiction, editing, journalism, playwriting, and songwriting. Our curriculum challenges and stretches these young writers—each mentee completes the season with a seven-genre developmental portfolio of her writing. But these portfolios are evolving works-in-progress that encourage process over perfectionism, creativity over caution.
In addition to full participation in our monthly workshops and weekly pair meetings, GWN requires that the girls practice all facets of what it means to be a working writer, preparing them now, when the stakes are lower, for challenges ahead: at public events throughout the year they read their work aloud to large audiences; they must submit their writing to contests. Last year our mentees took home 13 Gold and Silver Key Awards from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. For those girls who did not take home awards, we talked, too, about the reality of rejection in the life of all successful writers, and the need to try again.
By giving girls the opportunity to take risks and try new things, and in so doing both succeed and fail within the safe space of our community, we can teach them not just to become better writers, but to become more fully and resiliently themselves. By focusing on girls, now, we can change the face of leadership in this country, and make sure our future Shakespeares are not limited by their X chromosomes.
Providing Successful Models
Like Woolf, GWN believes in the vital role successful models play in creative development. Through those that have gone before, we learn what we might be capable of. In the world of media, models of course can be living or dead, young and old, present in the flesh, or merely on the page or screen. The growing versatility of media allows all youth media programs even greater freedom—and demands greater imagination—in giving girls many varied “mothers” to “think back through.”
At our Poetry Workshop this November, we read and were inspired by the 19th- and 20th-Century models of Emily Dickinson and Gwendolyn Brooks. One of our mentors shared a sestina she had written. Then the girls from widely disparate neighborhoods of New York City became models to each other: they read their own poems, crafted that day in that communal room of our own, receiving both thoughtful feedback and riotous applause. Finally, at every workshop, there is the culminating craft talk by a highly regarded female author working in the genre.
At our Screenwriting Workshop last spring, the girls listened to Jenny Lumet talk about conceiving, writing, and selling her screenplay for “Rachel Getting Married.” The star of the film, Anne Hathaway, stopped by, and the two talked not about the usual staples of celebrity media (boyfriends, diets, clothing), but about the demanding and rewarding collaborative work of making this movie. At our Memoir Workshop this fall, Janice Erlbaum, author of Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir, spoke of the long process of revising her book, and read to us from her early drafts, demonstrating the equal importance of talent and tenacity. “If your first draft is perfect, congratulations! You may be the first person in the world to whom this has happened,” Erlbaum told us.
Lyn Pentecost, Director of the Lower East Side Girls Club, wrote last year in YMR of the importance of cultural exchange in youth media programming, of the need for “new people, new experiences, new ideas, and new environments.” This seems to me another way of articulating the importance of introducing a range of models—different ways of being, of living, of working. Though one can find such vital newness in Chiapas, Mexico, as Pentecost’s girls did, we can also build it into the spaces—virtual and actual—we create for the young people we serve.
Through on-line social networks or face-to-face workshops, chat rooms or brick-and-mortar rooms, youth media programs should provide girls with a diversity of mentors and models, and encourage them to be mentors and models to one another as they discuss and develop their work.
Using this approach at GWN, we are teaching young women not only what one needs in order to become a writer, but also what it means to be a professional woman in the world. As PinChang Huang, a GWN alumna, told The New York Times last March after a reading at The New School, “I was so nervous when I stepped onstage. I was shaking. But now I feel like I can say or do anything.”
Making Room—and Rooms—for Girls
This paradigm of teaching skills and practices, and providing successful models can be easily repeated in the many different types of media, and of course will benefit boys as much as girls. But it is easier to find those models of professional men, and indeed we often stumble upon male-only “rooms” when we turn on the Sunday news shows, or open newspapers to the editorial pages, or watch our presidential debates.
If we in youth media do not give girls rooms in which to practice the work of making media and to hear and learn from their predecessors and contemporaries today, we are guaranteeing they will inherit a media landscape with little room for them tomorrow.
Maggie Pouncey is Co-Curriculum Director of Girls Write Now, and a fiction writer. She received her MFA from Columbia University, where she also taught undergraduate writing. www.girlswritenow.org.
Tag: Girls Write Now
Girls Write Now: A Showcase of Intergenerational Learning
At first glance, The Library of the General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen of the City of New York looks like it sounds—old, austere, and a bit secret. It sits tucked away on New York City’s “literary row,” stomping grounds of The New Yorker magazine, Harper’s magazine, and the Algonquin Hotel during their heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. The stately exterior opens up into a graceful chamber of warmth, wood and learning. It does not look like it would be the setting for a vibrant display of intergenerational learning. Talented, fearless teen writers—whose thoughts are too often tucked away like volumes on the library’s shelves—and adult, professional women working in publishing, education, media and the arts would come together to share co-written stories. But, on the evening of January 24, 2007, the Library challenged more than one misconception by hosting the Second Annual Girls Write Now (GWN) Winter Pair Reading.
“We haven’t had this kind of energy here in a long time,” said Janet Wells Greene Ph.D, Director of The Library. “I love it…Part of our mission [here at The Library] is to promote an understanding of urban work, and we think this is a great opportunity to honor the craft of writing and the occupation of writer.” She concludes, “This event [was] an opportunity to see reinvention of apprenticeship in action.” Maya Nussbaum, Executive Director of Girls Write Now comments, “[The reading is] a wonderful opportunity to see the Girls Write Now community in action…The spirit of our mission is perfectly encapsulated in the collaborative pieces written and read aloud by our mentor-mentee pairs.”
Girls Write Now
Founded in 1998, Girls Write Now (GWN) is a New York City-based non-profit committed to helping New York City high school girls discover their voice and have the courage and confidence to share it with the community. Through one-on-one mentoring, workshops, readings, and events, Girls Write Now provides a safe and supportive environment where girls can expand their natural talents develop independent voices and build confidence in making healthy choices in school, career, and life. In today’s society, young women are often silenced by all consuming images and messages in the media that stereotype and objectify women. Women are a target group of consumerism, thus, most marketing strategically promotes women as objects to “appear” or “attract” rather than to act, build alliances with each other, or support and develop their talents and interests.
Research in adolescent development consistently shows that relationships with caring adults other than parents can make young girls significantly less likely to engage in drug use, underage drinking and sex, and more likely to succeed in school, peer, and family relationships. Mentors benefit from involvement with the program as well. Adult mentors report that their experience in the program increased their self-esteem, as well as their sense of responsibility and accomplishment. Additionally, studies indicate that mentoring improves morale at work and relationships colleagues, friends and family.
GWN matches at-risk high school girls who have a love of writing with professional women writers. The goal: to help these girls develop their unique voices, their writing skills, and the confidence to tell their stories, as well as the ability to make healthy life choices. GWN is the only youth program that combines a rigorous, but fun creative writing curriculum and girls-only programming within the context of mentoring that benefits mentees and mentors alike.
Mentors & Mentees
The Winter Pair Reading was designed to celebrate the collaborative creative work of GWN mentors and their teen-age mentees. GWN mentors and mentees presented only collaborative works for the event, specifically single pieces written by a mentor-mentee pair, or two complementary pieces written separately by the mentor and mentee but read together. Many of the night’s poems, stories and essays were born in GWN workshops, which are followed by take-home exercises for pairs to do together.
Ebony McNeill, a Brooklyn teen attending an adolescent employment and educational program and her mentor, freelance editor Karen Schader developed their collaborative poems from a writing exercise in which they walked together through a neighborhood, observing it with all of their senses except sight. This exercise allowed both women, despite their differences in age and experience, to work as equals. By observing their surroundings with different senses, they view the world in new ways—a great leadership perspective.
Other mentor-mentee collaborative topics ranged from the sweet stuff of teenage dreams to memories of growing up and everything in between. Emceed by Penny Wrenn, Talent Director of GWN, the night kicked off with a pair of earthy and heart-wrenching poems about chances in love not taken by Anna Witiuk, a junior at New York City’s Beacon High School and her mentor, teacher, author, and literary agent Caron K. Stengel. This is Anna and Caron’s second year working together in GWN. Their pride in working together is easy to see during their performance and shows the power of linking women across generations.
Ebony, Mona, and each of the other 28 girls enrolled in GWN meet with their writing mentors weekly for one school year to develop their skills and understanding of the writing process. Pairs are made by a “matchmaking committee” consisting of board members and veteran mentors who consider geography, genre interest, and the unscientific but no less meaningful “x-factor” (or chemistry) between a mentor and mentee (members are alerted to the presence of the matchmakers, encouraged to share their preferences, but warned there are no guarantees the matchmakers will grant them).
This simple, but unique approach has worked to build a strong community of writers to nurture one another and their creative freedom. “The relationship between girls and their mentors is symbiotic,” said Nussbaum, “As pairs work together, they become apprentices of each other, learning the art and craft of writing through life experience.” The workshops provide fertile ground for learning as the community of mentors and mentees collaborate under GWN’s guiding principle of writing as a communal enterprise — to be created and shared.
Intergenerational Learning through Mentoring
The intergenerational learning fostered by this approach is built on multiple layers of commitment that mentees and mentors make to each other — and to GWN — each season. The first of these layers is between each pairing and the organization itself. Carefully screened candidates undergo a rigorous application process, which includes detailed applications, writing samples, and reference checks. GWN seeks mentors who have impressive academic and writing resumes, as well as a demonstrated commitment to teaching, tutoring, or mentoring girls, and the drive to contribute to the organization’s growth. Mentees must demonstrate a commitment to growing as writers, regardless of their skill level upon entering the program. Upon acceptance into the program, each new member signs a series of forms confirming her commitment.
The second layer is a commitment between the mentors and the idea of teaching and learning through the mentoring process. Each mentor undergoes an intensive full-day training conducted by the Girls Write Now program board in conjunction with experts from Columbia University, NYU, Community Word, Girls Scouts of America, Planned Parenthood NYC, and Urban Word, among other community institutions. This training serves as an introduction to adolescent development, diversity issues, mentoring tools, editing and revision for teens, and writing workshop facilitation.
The mentor-mentee pairs seal the third and final commitment shortly after they are matched at the start of the season’s first workshop. Each mentor-mentee pair signs a mutual agreement explicitly outlining the responsibilities of their writing partnership and through it, their commitment to learning as a team. Mentees learn the nuts and bolts of writing, while their mentors are reintroduced to the magic and art of creative writing, free of the limitations often imposed by professional writing. Mentors are often surprised to find within their pair writing sessions a spark to ignite their own creative passion, and — through knowledge obtained by working with a teen girl — the tools to approach their work in new ways.
Workshops
Weekly pair writing sessions are punctuated and informed by monthly, genre-based full-group workshops, featuring whole-group, pair, and small-group activities. The workshops are carefully balanced between spirited fun and curriculum rigor. Each workshop begins with an icebreaker to warm members to each other as well as to the idea of writing for four hours on a Saturday afternoon. One recent prompt was “My character for the day is [insert lovely, fun, or energetic color + food you like the sound of].” No one wants to miss reinventing herself as “Rainbow Meatball” or the chance to be introduced to “Royal Blue Hot Dog.”
At the close of each workshop, we engage in “Warm Fuzzies,” which are constructive, anonymous comments shared by all mentors and mentees around the circle. “Warm Fuzzies” begin with a prompt, such as the following from the fiction workshop: “If you could fly off with any character from today, who would it be and where would you go?” The anonymous nature of this exercise help to remove the mentor/mentee labels we initially assign, allowing for true reflection and intergenerational learning. It also fosters an environment wherein the relationships between mentors, mentees and the entire community transcend racial, ethnic, and religious boundaries in a city where many young people rarely leave their neighborhood.
In response to the fiction workshop prompt, one participant said: “I’d take off with black strawberry, the girl whose eyes change color. I would go to the park and watch people with her. I bet her eyes would show me great things.” Another member, prompted at GWN workshop to “name one thing in the world you would like to see change and how you would help make it happen,” put it this way: “I want people to stop being so skeptical and to not give up on their dreams just because their dreams are taking too long to get realized. How am I going to change this? By not giving up on mine.”
These statements echo GWN’s greatest achievement: mentors and mentees learning from one another as peers. Girl-only programming, with an intergenerational approach to mentoring, creates a space for communal voice, collaboration, and social, gendered change.
Michele Thomas lives in Brooklyn, NY and works as a K-8 writer and editor in children’s educational publishing. She is also a mentor and Communications Director of Girls Write Now. www.girlswritenow.org
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