Melissa Fraterrigo begins a rally cry with The Perils of Girlhood
Around 2020 I began to take notice of the books that were finally speaking on a female experience that felt true to the core. Hidden thoughts, identities, desires and fears were finally being put forth into the world with an audacity that I had long craved. Books like Night Bitch, When Women Were Dragons and The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman got me through until I could once again voice the horror that was living inside me with like minds. I’ve read Yellow Wallpaper and know that feminist authors and practices and tales have long been told, but even #Metoo became a forgotten era, a time when we thought change was coming, and watched that time come and pass. It became a blip, instead of a revolution. The quiet ferocity of the books that I had been reading made me realize that social stratosphere movements were not what would shift us, it would be the ongoing push of stories about the interiority of women. Melissa Fraterrigo’s The Perils of Girlhood is one of those books.
A memoir in essays, Fraterrigo takes readers from the confusing advances and assaults of youth as she was groped by her swim coach, to the male gaze ever present and unsettling, to the need to do whatever it takes be desirable, to protecting daughters from what we suffered as if we can shift the lived-girl experience one mother at a time. From marriage to birth, from murderers to friendship, Fraterrigo shares her own stories of what it was like to be a girl, to be a woman, with the realization that the details may shift, but every woman or girl reading her book will recognize something, relate. Her book is a work meant to connect and empower, not instill fear, but to scream there’s so much more to life than what has been sold to us in the past. It is a love letter to daughters, thankfully lacking advice yet filled with raw honesty. Fraterrigo invites you to the literary slumber party where secrets are spilled, tears are wiped and emboldened growth occurs.
Fraterrigo’s The Perils of Girlhood interweaves neverforgotten atrocities and traumas with the day to day worries, without ever allowing one to outweigh the other. It is all shared as a whole lived experience, all of it an important piece of who Fraterrigo is as a woman. All of it told without apology. Fraterrigo’s memoir asks you to listen, share, and continue the whispers that become rally cries that every day change what it means to be a girl. There will always be a creepy guy, that will never change, but the terror of that, the increased heart beat, the rise of adrenaline, the fumbling for keys as weapons or mace or phones can be lessened by allowing the monsters to be monsters instead of demonizing their prey. We are not yours, Fraterrigo reminds us, we owe you nothing, we belong to no one but ourselves.
The Perils of Girlhood: A Memoir in Essays (University of Nebraska Press) is available wherever you buy your books. Melissa Fraterrigo will be discussing her book with Michele Morano at Women and Children First Wednesday, Sept 24 at 7 PM.
