"Dear Emotional Creature:
I believe in you. I believe in your authenticity, your wildness. I love the way you dye your hair purple, or hike up your short skirt . . . I love your restlessness and your hunger. You possess the energy that, if unleashed, could transform, inspire and heal the world."
The book isn't a novel per se, but a collection of facts, fictional letters, lists, poems and short stories meant to draw attention to issues girls around the world have experienced: child labor, bullying, genital mutilation, teenage pregnancy, and human trafficking, to name a few. At some points I was on the verge of tears because I just kept thinking "here I am worrying about a test I have Friday, and girls around the world are experiencing this?" but I actually came away from the book extremely empowered, and I'm recommending it to all of my friends (including you)!
Here's the official summary of the book from its website, V-Girls:
Among the girls Ensler creates are an American who struggles with peer pressure in a suburban high school; an anorexic blogging as she eats less and less; a Masai girl from Kenya unwilling to endure female genital mutilation; a Bulgarian sex slave, no more than fifteen, a Chinese factory worker making Barbies; an Iranian student who is tricked into a nose job; a pregnant girl trying to decide if she should keep her baby.
I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls will be a vehicle to empower girls and inspire activism. Through the newly created V-Girls program, young girls can participate in the V-Day movement, in the same way The Vagina Monologues has built a movement on college campuses and in communities around the world. The goal of V-Girls will be to engage young women in our “empowerment philanthropy” model, igniting their activism.
V-Day believes that girls are the future of our movement. Women are the primary resource of our planet. It is imperative to educate and nurture future activists so we can see our vision of a world free from violence against women and girls come true.