I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World

...and I do, to an extent. Ensler painter poetic pictures of being a girl in all walks of life. I feel optimistic that these topics are being written about, but as 'an emotional creature,' my body aches that I can't fix the problems that face the world's girls.I plan on suggesting this book to every woman I know and perhaps they'll help me fix the world. I have to, I must, before my 11 year old niece sees how broken the it is. I feel downtrodden but happy that there is 'reality' and poetry in literature.

I bought this book last year after coming across the 'You Tell Me How To Be A Girl In 2010' poem while looking for poetry pieces to preform for my school's speech team. I read it cover to cover in less than a day and loved every page. It opened my eyes to so many critical issues in this world and helped me to see the true importance of feminism in today's society. I ended up using 'I Am An Emotional Creature' and 'Manifesta to Young Women and Girls' as my piece and I can truly say that they changed my life. I got to stand in front of hundreds of people and tell them why they had every right in the world to be emotional people - and that it is a GOOD thing, that they don't have to bend to societies will all of the time and that they can follow their passions. I can't find the right words to describe what these poems mean to me, but I HIGHLY recommend this book to EVERYONE.

I ordered this book after listening to Ms. Engler's talk and performance of the piece "I am an emotional creature" on TED Talks via You Tube. It was sent to me by one of my "girls" on the east coast who works at Cornell University and who sent it to all her girls, both female and male. I quickly sent it to all of mine.I have mentored girls through my work at UCSC and in my community and family and it always brings me such joy to be around them...Hearing her perform the poem from which the book gets its name simply rocked my world. I couldn't wait to order the book.It addresses in the most direct way the girl in all of us...that most precious of resources that we tend to abandon, repress, abuse and disown in so many ways and in accordance with so many cultural directives. It is a beautiful articulation of the wild, creative, dangerous, indomitable feminine--both an affirmation and a call to action.I'd like to give the book to all the girls I know.  I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World

I read this as a 23 year old and I absolutely loved it! The stories are so beautiul, raw and relatable. The sheer vulnerably and truth bridges connections between girls from all around the world. Some of the experiences are unique to certain cultures or regions; most are shared no matter where you’re from!Please share the gift of this book with your daughter, sister or another girl you know. I personally found it to be most powerful simply sharing it with the little girl within me ❤️

a bit tedious and redundant. I bought it for my niece but didn't give it to her, just wasn't quite appropriate

I'm from the same generation as Eve Ensler ( more or less) so I have watched the world of women and girls unfolding, seen girls disenfranchised and belittled..including myself. So for me the book was preaching to the converted. But I just held onto the thought consistently that if i was a teenager reading this I would be so damn empowered! So many things that I needed to hear when i was even thirteen or fifteen...So much needs to be said and girls need a voice and Eve is that voice. Give it to a girl you love or read it to the little girl that still resides inside you.

This makes me feel like I can conquer the world. I don't need to settle for less than I deserve, and I am okay to feel the feelings that I do.I love Eve Ensler, and her feminist views. I love hearing from women around the world that normally wouldn't hear from. This book and others like it are amazing, and I wish that they were required reading when I was younger. I wish that young girls today got a hold of things like this at an age when emotional run wild. This is a great book and just beautiful in many many ways.

I've read the vagina monologues also by eve ensler and I have to say I liked it much more. Although I did like this book as well. I really loved the introduction, "dear emotional creature..." I will have to reread it to form a better opinion.

Like The Vagina Monologues, this book is a collage of composite monologues in poetry and prose. These monologues recreate the pressures on young women to conform, wherever they might be in the world - from middle-class America to Africa to Palestine and Israel. They empathise with the suffering of girls forced into child labour and/or sex slavery and/or military activity. Girl issues range from arranged marriages and genital mutilation to anorexia and cosmetic surgery to the right to wear a short skirt without being raped or to request your partner to wear a condom. This book empathises with and gives voice to girls and young women most of us normally never hear. It is designed to reach out and touch women throughout the world, to encourage them to question and challenge, rather than seek to please and repress the instinctive woman inside. In terms of tone, it ranges from the darkly comic to the deeply moving to the justifiably outraged. While exhorting a rejection of the subject position(s) created for girls and women and a reclaiming of their lives, it simultaneously exposes those subject positions for the sham that they are. It provides insightful analyses of the ethically rudderless upside-down world in which we live and as such constitutes a rejection - emotional, intellectual and spiritual - of cold, mechanical and manipulative macho corporate culture, and a call to unite against it. This is a book to be read quickly and then meditated on slowly. If you are a young woman, read this book and help liberate yourself. If you're not, read it and learn.

Excellent read! A collection of monologues describing the lives of teenage girls in today's society, as a teenage girl myself I can't agree more with these monologues, some are funny and some are very touching.

I got it after I heard the TED talk from Eve Ensler, which ended with this poem: [...]I have to agree that, some of the writing is best heard (i.e., performed by Eve Ensler) rather than read. Nevertheless, it provides a kaleidoscope of girl emotions, and will definitely keep it in my library.

This is an absolutely beautiful book. It made me cry multiple times and echoed parts of my youth so much, as I would suspect it would for anyone who identifies as female or has suffered in the same way as women often do.

I love it!Enjoy being a girl, use the power in a good way.It remembers me something important but I forgot sometimes, it is lucky to read it when I am going to have a new life in a new city.I love it.