Our Stories, Our Voices Quotes

“Rape culture is the culture of silence. It’s the culture of girls thinking a boy’s desires trumps their own. It’s the culture of girls thinking they’re choiceless, of girls thinking their bodies are the most valuable parts of themselves and their worth is determined by how much they are wanted. It’s slut shaming and victim blaming. It’s parents not talking openly with their children about consent. It’s parents not talking to girls about their entitlement to pleasure. It’s parents not talking to their children about sex at all.”
― Amy Reed, Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America

“I began to realize that for every ignorant, misinformed, or prejudiced person I met, there was a counterbalancing person in the world who would recognize my worth and stand up for me and others like me.”
― Amy Reed, Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America

“Emotions are not bad, even the ones like anger or fear that are often labeled as such. These emotions always come up for a reason, and that is to let us know when something doesn’t feel right. Those emotions are what urge us to make a change or do something about the thing that’s not right. It is only when we don’t or can’t do anything that those feelings overtake us and become negative.”
― Amber Smith, Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America

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― Tracy Deonn, Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America

“I’m a pessimist by choice. Choosing to always expect the worst-case scenario protects me in many ways. I’m a prickly grouch who cares too much about almost everything and cries out of anger and explodes inside any time someone tries to comfort me. So trust me when I say it’s always best if I’m prepared for the worst.”
― Amy Reed, Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America

“I wasn’t changing for the world. The world would have to change for me.”
― Amy Reed, Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America

“But my body has never been what is considered acceptable.”
― Amy Reed, Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America

“So many people who are abused as children grow up to become abusers themselves.”
― Amy Reed, Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America

“That’s the real terror of gaslighting—that your sense of reality begins to warp and bend until you’re excusing the abuser and doing his work for him.”
― Amy Reed, Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America

“I liked feeling pretty. Not for men. Not for women. Not for some societal standard, but for me.”
― Amy Reed, Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America

“But, as a girl, it didn’t take long for me to figure out we are not considered our own. There’s a certain privilege men, some women, and the media carry, the right they feel to cast their gaze upon us and judge us fit or unfit based on the culmination of our physical parts.”
― Amy Reed, Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America

“There’s so much more to life, I feel, than trying to shoehorn yourself into one identity, one way of being.”
― Amy Reed, Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America

“we were told we could do anything a boy could do, be anything a boy could be. Still, these messages were implicitly and explicitly targeted at white girls and women.”
― Amy Reed, Our Stories, Our Voices: 21 YA Authors Get Real About Injustice, Empowerment, and Growing Up Female in America