Going All the Way
Teenage Girls' Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy
ISBN10: 0809015994
ISBN13: 9780809015993
Trade Paperback
352 Pages
$20.00
CA$26.99
Going All the Way captures the experiences of young American women coming of age in the late twentieth century, a remarkable era in the history of sex, gender, and adolescence. Sharon Thompson presents firsthand girls' disclosures about love and desire, popularity and promiscuity, sex, birth control, and motherhood and provides a sense of historical and psychological perspective. What emerges is a revelatory canvas of the intimate lives of teenage girls that goes far in explaining teen motivation and behaviour.
Reviews
Praise for Going All the Way
"A brave approach to one of the most emotionally and politically charged issues of our times."—Peggy Orenstein, The New York Times Book Review
"Thompson, in her fascinating book lets these girls tell their own stories of romance, sex and pregnancy in their own terms . . . She reproduces them generously, along with her own judicious and politically pungent commentary . . . The sum of these stories demonstrates a huge and widening range in ways of viewing the female self."—Ellen Ross, The Nation
"[Thompson] challenges the simplistic stereotypes and savage preconceptions that have kept us dangerously ignorant."—Alix Kates Schulman
"A fascinating probe into girls' intimate lives. So much so that the reader often feels like a voyeur, overhearing a conversation that is not meant for the public."—Catherine Texier, Newsday
"Teenage girl lust is all about stories passionately told: part of the thrill lies in the breathless confession, the tiny detail, the confirmation that repetition accords. Thompson listens patiently, then . . . nails everything . . . These girls are her text, and Thompson is a very close reader."—Katherine Dieckmann, The Village Voice
"What makes this book so absorbing and so important is that it captures the experiences of young women at a critical moment in American history."—Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls and Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa