The Nowhere Girls

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Quotations were taken from an uncorrected proof and may be modified or removed in the final text.

Trigger Warning: Rape

I want to add a disclaimer that I am a white cisgender heterosexual woman. I am not autistic. I am not an immigrant. I have not been raped. I cannot speak to the accuracy with which these topics are portrayed. I'm excited to hear from other readers if they feel these topics were described accurately and respectfully.

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5 stars. This book was powerful. It made me feel validated, that the sexism I experience is real and is wrong. It made me feel empowered to do something about it. But also sad that it was necessary, and humbled by the experiences others go through that I will never truly understand. I felt I left with a better understanding of other women and the different ways they experience sex, rape culture, and feminism. This book doesn't tell you what's right or what the correct way to fight is; it shows you what different people experience and encourages you to support other women in their own choices.

Erin

Mom always reminds her how lucky she is to be so bright; few Aspies are so exceptional, so special. As if they need to be. As if that's the only way to be forgiven for the rest of what they are.

Erin has Asperger's. She schedules her day to the minute and doesn't let her foods touch and speaks what she's thinking. She loves science, especially biology. She loves Star Trek. She doesn't break rules.

I can't speak to how accurate the author portrays Asperger's, but I really enjoyed reading Erin's chapters. It does a great job of showing the struggle of mental illness. The exhaustion of dealing with everyone who just wants you to act "normal". The amount of work you put in only for everyone to think you're not trying hard enough.

Rosina

It's not like there's a union for underage, under-the-table employees of a family business run like they're still in some village in Mexico where kids don't go to school past sixth grade.

Rosina seems to both hate how people treat her because of her race, as well as hate her own heritage. As the oldest girl in a large Mexican family, she's expected to babysit the kids and work in the family restaurant. She hates that no matter how much work she puts in, she is accused of not caring about the family at even the smallest hint of having her own wants.

Rosina is gay. She hates how men often take her sexual orientation as a challenge. But she has the biggest crush on one of the school cheerleaders and it is just the sweetest and most adorable thing to read.

Grace

She matters so little that her friends back in Adeline could just throw her away. She is no one. She is nothing. A girl no one sees. A girl no one remembers.

Grace is the new student. Due to her mother's change of faith to a more liberal view of Christianity, Grace lost all her friends in her old Baptist community. She worries that she's invisible, replaceable. If it was so easy for her friends to shun her, did she even matter? Grace takes a religious view on feminism, trying to do what's right as she believes Jesus would, while also creating a place for herself in her new school.

The Girls of Prescott High

Maybe at Stanford girls are allowed to be more than one thing. Since everyone there has to be smart by default, maybe it's something you get to stop trying to prove all the time ... What would that be like, ... to not have to choose between pretty and smart?

Besides the main characters, the author gives a voice to the background characters, to the trans girls and non-binary teens, to the girls who made it through rehab, the girls who want to go to med school, the girls who are insecure about their weight. And because the author presents so many voices, we hear many different opinions about the events in the book. There are girls who love sex and girls who think it's a chore. Girls who are saving themselves for marriage. Girls who don't believe rape culture exists and girls who think all men are animals. Girls who were raped but no one believes them. Girls who don't want to call what happened to them rape. Girls who want to fight back but can't because when Black girls fight back they're seen as dangerous. The author doesn't tell you what to believe. She shows you the different beliefs and helps you understand them.


What I Didn't Like

There's an awkward conversation where a boy talks about his "sister--I mean my brother" who transitioned two years ago (surely two years is long enough to be getting the words right). He complains about the double standard, that it's okay for his brother to transition to male but if he tried transitioning to female, his parents would never accept it. Your brother transitions and all you have to say about it is how it's not fair that you couldn't transition if you wanted to, even though you don't want to?

Read The Nowhere Girls on October 10.