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Reviews/Testimonials for Growing Up Girl
Hey everyone! Thank you for your support of "Growing Up Girl". Thanks to your support, "Growing Up Girl" is currently on the best selling books list for Bus Boys & Poets!!!
On this page, you will find interviews/letters/reviews/testimonials from you, our readers and supporters. Enjoy!
- Michelle
INTERVIEWS/REVIEWS
5/8/07 mention of new call for submissions
4/3/07 blogspot www.inhermemoryshow.blogspot.com
12/7/06 Interview in Shepherd Express
10/3/06 Interview in Sure Woman Magazine
7/25/06 Interview by Steven Fullwood
7/11/06 Interview on .jade foster (contributor) - East of the River
5/25/06 Interview in Bahiyah Woman Magazine
LETTERS/COMMENTS
Michelle,
hi! i saw you at in other words in portland on saturday and you were GREAT! i loved hearing you read... you have a lot of life and energy in you. i think what you did is just amazing bringing together a collection of unheard and seasoned writers alike. thank you for being a positive in the world. :)
with admiration, joan
Michelle,What a marvelous collection. You have done a great job of putting together some really compelling pieces that has a significant historical perspective.
Robert
Michelle,
In the depths of the abyss of this whirlwind
I'm reaping,
the quiet knowledge that somewhere you are writing
brings me peaceThec
Michelle,
God bless you for what you have done by giving a voice to these ladies (girls). When I read "I am" and "There are No Victims Here," I was hooked. Both these pieces are my daughter.
Go forth!
Geri
Dear Michelle,
I just had an exciting moment~Emory University just received your book in the library! This is my favorite part of working where I do~~seeing people I know and their books arriving for the shelves.
Hell yes.
Much love to you,
~Karen G.
Michelle,
I am very happy to get a chance to purchase this book. A girl that graduated from the program I work at was published in it. Many of the girls from our facility have enjoyed getting to read your book. Thanks for this great effort to help young women have a place to have their work published and voices heard.
Sincerely,
Melissa P.
Michelle,
I had to share this with you. Your book arrived on Saturday. Last week, my 16 year old daughter - who grew up in a gritty inner city neighborhood - was placed in a Dept of Youth Services detention facility while awaiting a placement in a substance abuse program. It's the culmination of a long year that started with a stupid choice last summer and has been exacerbated by her refusal to stop smoking pot even while she's on probation with weekly drug tests. Not the point of the story though.
When I visited her on Sunday, I brought Growing Up Girl with me, asked her advocate to look it over and if it was deemed 'appropriate', give it to her. The advocate okayed it - though the judgment was made later that the explicit language in it was 'not okay' and she had to fight to be allowed to keep it. The compromise was that she could have it - but it must stay in her room, and not be shared with the other girls. I won't go into how that judgment infuriates me - because that's not the point of this either.
Last night, I visited her again - she's had Growing Up Girl for two days. She asked to have it brought to her so that I could take it home with me... because she's hoping to be released on Thursday and she doesn't want to leave it behind. She told me 'I turned down the corners of the poems I really liked' - Michelle, there must be fifty turned down pages there. We sat in the visiting room of a kiddie jail, and for over an hour of the one visit that she'll get this week, she read poems to me from Growing Up Girl... or handed the book to me and said, "I want to hear you read this one, mummy." She told me that until they made her put the book away, she had a group of girls gathered around her to read and listen.
Right now, I wish that I could win the lottery and buy dozens of copies to ship to every youth facility in the country that houses girls. I want to smack the idiot who decided it was inappropriate for girls who are living in the middle of this world to read the words of other girls who have been there, are surviving it, are sharing it... to take away a way for them to connect to something and hear that they're not alone and they can get through it.
I understand that part of your mission with Growing Up Girl is to do exactly that - and I just wanted to let you know that your book touched my daughter - and for a little while this week, a bunch of little girls in lockup found out that there are people out there listening, Thank you.
Deb