Girls on the Verge: Debutante Dips, Drive-bys, and Other Initiations
Jun 2025 · Macmillan + ORM
2.5star
2 reviewsreport
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192
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About this ebook
In a fascinating look at how young women are coming of age in America, Vendela Vida's Girls on the Verge 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 ball, 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 girls' 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.
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 ball, 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 girls' 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.
Ratings and reviews
2.5
2 reviews
Jean Etienne
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November 17, 2015
A American girl story is so beautiful an it tell you you can find more details about the story
About the author
Vendela Vida graduated from Middlebury College and received her MFA at Columbia University. Her work has appeared in Vogue, Jane, and other publications. She is the author of Girls on the Verge, And Now You Can Go, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, and The Lovers. She lives in the Bay Area.
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