Author Event: Lyn Mikel Brown

Author Lyn Mikel Brown will discuss her book Powered by Girl: A Field for Supporting Youth Activists.

"A playbook for working with and training girls to be activists of their own social movements.

"Armed with a rich array of online media platforms, seemingly endless reserves of creativity, and a keen sense of justice, girl activists are getting things done. But scholar and activist Lyn Mikel Brown knows that for every provocative news story about one exceptional girl out to change the world, there is a strong network of passionate adults and seasoned activists behind her.

"Drawing from a diverse collection of interviews with women and girl activists, Powered by Girl is both a journalistic exploration of how girls have embraced activism and a guide for adults who want to support their organizing. Here we learn about the intergenerational support behind thirteen-year-old Julia Bluhm, when she got Seventeen to go Photoshop-free; nineteen-year-old Celeste Montano, who pressed Google to diversify their Doodles; and sixteen-year-old Yas Necati, who campaigns for better sex education in the UK. And we learn what experienced adult activists like Joanne Smith of Girls for Gender Equity and Dana Edell of SPARK Movement say about how to scaffold girls social-change work. Brown argues that adults shouldn't encourage girls to lean in. Rather, girls should be supported in creating their own movements disrupting the narrative, developing their own ideas on their own terms."

About the Author: "Lyn Mikel Brown has been studying and working with girls for over twenty-five years. She is the author of five previous books about gender and girlhood, and is the co-founder of three grassroots organizations. She teaches education and women s, gender, and sexuality studies at Colby College in Waterville, ME."

Co-presented by the Waterville Public Library and Children's Book Cellar.

Location: Colby Program Room, Lower Level.