The past couple of weeks have been big book weeks for yours truly.

First it began with the release of the memoir I co-wrote with the amazing Marvelyn Brown, The Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful, and (HIV) Positive. Marvelyn in a 24-year-old HIV activist with the sort of charisma and authenticity that are born from surviving hard times. Here is Marvelyn being interviewed at the recent International AIDS Conference in Mexico:

Being able to play a role in getting Marvelyn's story out in the world has been one of the most profound honors of my life. Thanks M.

And, as if that wasn't enough, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters just came out with a new cover and a new subtitle on September 2nd!

I can't tell you how excited I am that my book is only $15 (as opposed to the 25 big ones it cost in hardback). I always intended this book to reach young women first and foremost. I know I rarely shell out $25 for a book, so I knew teenagers and, well, just about anyone, couldn't afford such a price tag. Thanks to Penguin/Berkeley, my paperback publisher, for all of their faith in the book and gallant effort to give it a renewed life in the literary world!

Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters has been an incredible catalyst for me to meet young women (many of them feministing readers), educate mothers, teachers, and coaches about what's really going on with young women, visit tiny towns across America that I might never have seen otherwise, be interviewed on television, radio, and in print and online publications through out the world, but more than any of that, it has allowed me the rare opportunity to speak a truth, to turn pain into polemic, to experience the personal as the political. It has been one of those rare experiences of feeling like you actually have the capacity to make a difference, just by paying acutely close attention to your genuine feelings and observations of the world around you, researching and reflecting on these feelings and observations, and stringing some words together. Thank you to everyone who I've met along the way. Can't wait to meet many more of you this fall...

1 Comments

September 4, 2008 12:20 PM

[0+|0-]  may said:

That looks like an awesome book. I'm only now really starting to get over my need for perfection and I'm interested to hear what you say.

Thanks for sharing!

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