false 21 249 216 true 5624720 read 1 true 5011366 currently-reading 32 true 5011333 to-read 37 false 5025777 young-adult 23 false 5152179 classic-literature 20 false 5788906 vbc-reading-challenge 19 false 5022522 childhood-reads 12 false 5304509 history-biography-memoirs 11 false 5275728 drama 3 false 7855699 wishlist http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/79800943 to: I Don't Know How She Does It (Paperback) by Allison Pearson
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/72035298 to: Growing Up Female: Stories By Women Writers From the American Mosaic (Mentor) by Susan Cahill
bookshelves: vbc-reading-challenge
Growing Up Female is an anthology of very forgetable stories that make up this "American mosaic". There are short stories and excerpts from larger works by authors like Amy Tan, Gloria Naylor, and Julia Alvarez.

This book didn't resonate with me very much because the stories are dated and the situations not ones I could relate to. One of the stories by author Sandra Cisneros called "My Lucy Friend Who Smells Like Corn" is so bad that I should have seen it coming just from the nutty title. Actually I did. When she started talking about picking knee scabs and eating it, I knew skipping that one was in order. How it got into an anthology with Gloria Naylor and Amy Tan is beyond me.

Though many of the stories are mediocre at best, there are some diamonds in the rough. Amy Tan is always a pleasure to read and her excerpt from "The Joy Luck Club", dealing with difficult mother/daughter relationships, is no exception. Other notable stories are Diane Levenberg's "The Ilui", a very intelligent piece about a young writer taking her first steps to a great career and dealing with life as it comes; and, among others, Gloria Naylor's "The Women of Brewster Place", my personal favorite about a young African American woman who feels her mother does not understand her need to embrace her blackness. But her mother, a formidable lady understands all too well, and knows her daughter much better than the young lady knows herself.

This anthology is cited for women's studies and illustrates the lives of women from different socio-economic backgrounds that represent what it is to be a female in America.

B read. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/55687912 The Alchemist (Paperback) by Paulo Coelho
bookshelves: currently-reading, vbc-reading-challenge
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/76827427 Vision in White (Bride Quartet, #1) by Nora Roberts
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/76827055 The Truth About Forever (Paperback) by Sarah Dessen
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/76599526 The Hunger Games (Hunger Games, #1) by Suzanne Collins
bookshelves: to-read
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