Girls on the Verge

In her fascinating look at how young women are coming of age in America, Vendela Vida explores a variety of rituals that girls have adapted or created in order to leave their childhoods behind. Vida doesn't just observe the rituals, she actively participates in them, going as far as spending a week at UCLA to experience rush -- she emerges a Tri-Delt. She also goes to Miami to learn about the "quince" (the Latin American celebration of a girl's fifteenth birthday), to Houston to take part in a debutante bal, to Los Angeles and San Francisco to talk to female gang members, to Salem, Massachusetts, to interview a coven of witches, and to Las Vegas to watch young brides take the plunge -- some of them in drive-through wedding chapels. With humor, insight, and illuminating detail, she explores girl's struggles to forge an identity and secure a sense of belonging through various rituals -- rituals that they embrace without necessarily understanding the comforts they seek or the repercussions of their often all-too-adult choices.

Cover design by Carin Goldberg
Cover photographs by Michael Cuno

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Title of ebook: Girls on the Verge
ISBN: 9780312274368
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Internet download file size: 184 kb
Released online for download: 08-23-2002
Author of eBook: Vida, Vendela

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Girls on the Verge

Chapter One

Rush: Sorority Sisters

It's the first day of sorority rush at UCLA and things are going smoothly. I'm in a sorority house chatting with a group of sisters when my fellow rushees and I are herded into the sorority's back room for a slide show. The back room has a ceiling full of brightly colored helium balloons, their ribbons curling like fusilli pasta, and more sorority sisters for us rushees to meet, among them a most unwelcome surprise: Nancy.

Now evidently a sorority sister, Nancy is a girl my little sister grew up with and I recognize her immediately. Standing about ten feet away, she looks right at me and I'm positive a loud air-raid like siren is going to go off, the kind of warning signal sororities must surely have on hand to alert sisters than an impostor is in their midst. I hide my face behind my hair and stick my chest out in her direction so she can see my name tag, which bears the name Katie Wintersen, an alias. Like a lighthouse's beam, Nancy's eyes pan the room, and then cross back again, w ... read full excerpt from Girls on the Verge ebook

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