A vivid portrait of what it means to be a teenage girl in America today. Teenage girls today live their life in words--in text and instant messages, on blogs and social network pages. It's how they conduct their friendships and present themselves to the world, but they are also creating a formidable body of personal written work. This generation's unprecedented comfort level with the written word has led to a fearless new American literature. These collected essays offer a key to understanding one of the most mislabeled and underestimated members of society. Here, nearly sixty teenage girls from across the country, representing a diverse spectrum of socioeconomic, political, racial, and religious backgrounds, create a rich portrait of life as a teen girl in America today, revealing the complicated inner lives, humor, hopes, struggles, thrills, and obsessions of this generation.--From publisher description.