Odd Girl Speaks Out

Description

Here, Rachel Simmons creates a safe place for girls to talk, rant, sound off, and find each other. The result is a collection of wonderful accounts of the inner lives of adolescent girls. Candid and disarming, creative and expressive, and always exceptionally self-aware, these poems, songs, confessions, and essays form a journal of American girlhood. They show us how deeply cruelty flows and how strongly these girls want to change.

Odd Girl Out helped girls find their voices; Odd Girl Speaks Out helps them tell their stories.

I’m always the odd girl out
No one talks to me
I try to be friendly and speak out
But I’m invisible, see?

You know, gossip is a natural thing in high school. I’m one of those girls that will do it right in front of you. I’ll whisper at my friends and look at you the whole time. Then we’ll all cut up laughing. You know we’re talking about you.

My best friend and I started being friends with this other girl. But she was fat. It was hard because she always wanted to go down the slide second and she would crush us. We didn’t want to tell her she was fat, so we decided to drop her. Her mother called my mother and told her we were being mean. But we just couldn’t be friends with her anymore.

-from Odd Girl Speaks Out

by Rachel Simmons

SIMM-OGPS || loc. f