My Girls - by Jasmin Sandelson (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Reveals how friendships and social media can help girls survive even the most tragic consequences of American poverty.

My Girls explores the overlooked yet transformative power of female friendship in a low-income Boston-area neighborhood. In this innovative and compassionate book, researcher Jasmin Sandelson joins teenage girls in their homes, at their hangouts and parties, and online to show how they use their connections to secure the care and support that adults in their lives can't give.

Friendships among young people in poor, urban communities--often framed as "risky" sources of peer pressure and conflict--offer crucial support and self-esteem. In a new, positive take that reveals the primacy of phones and social media in contemporary friendships, Sandelson demonstrates how girls look to one another to battle boredom, find stability, embrace adulthood, and process trauma and grief. This illuminating study--one of the first to combine digital and in-person fieldwork--blends firsthand narratives with tweets, Snaps, and Instagram and Facebook posts. My Girls places young women of color at the center of their own stories to illuminate the worlds of love and care they create.

From the Back Cover

"Drawing on four years of ethnographic fieldwork, My Girls offers an intimate and tender account of the lives of teenage girls striving to break the cycle of poverty. In these portraits of solidarity and struggle, Jasmin Sandelson shows how girls growing up in public housing rely on each other in countless ways when navigating social media, boyfriends, and hardship, including neighborhood violence. Heartfelt yet unsentimental, these stories testify to the enduring power, and limits, of friendship and love."--Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

"A remarkable ethnography of friendship. My Girls is about growing up, getting by, looking for love, and finding support. It shows how an ordinary group of teenagers in a poor urban neighborhood makes connections, and how social bonds create meaning, purpose, and possibilities for a better life. This is a major contribution to sociology and a fantastic, gripping read."--Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life

"My Girls offers a powerful alternative to research that frames low-income young women of color as 'lacking' in so many ways. Beautifully written, it illuminates how friendship provides recognition and sustains dignity as these girls move toward adulthood while mobilizing social media for support. This powerful analysis of challenges and responses to marginality will engage college students, social scientists, and the larger public alike."--Michèle Lamont, author of Seeing Others: How Recognition Works and How It Can Heal a Divided World

Review Quotes

"Warm and reflective, Jasmin Sandelson's ethnography My Girls is at once an examination and celebration of young women's friendship."-- "Society for the Anthropology of Work"

About the Author

Jasmin Sandelson is Research Manager at Columbia University's Justice Lab and a creative writing MFA student at New York University. She has a PhD in sociology from Harvard University.