Between Voice and Silence: Women and Girls, Race and Relationships - Hardcover

Taylor, Jill McLean; Gilligan, Carol; Sullivan, Amy

4.15

13 ratings by Goodreads

9780674068797: Between Voice and Silence: Women and Girls, Race and Relationships

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674068793 ISBN 13: 9780674068797

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1996

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More than any other psychologist, Carol Gilligan has helped us to hear girls' voices just when they seem to be blurring and fading or becoming disruptive during the passage into womanhood. When adolescent girls--once assured and resilient--silence or censor themselves to maintain relationships, they often become depressed, and develop eating disorders or other psychological problems. But when adolescent girls remain outspoken it is often difficult for others to stay in relationship with them, leading girls to be excluded or labeled as troublemakers. If this is true in an affluent suburban setting, where much of the groundbreaking research took place, what of girls from poor and working-class families, what of fading womanhood amid issues of class and race? And how might these issues affect the researchers themselves? In Between Voice and Silence Taylor, Gilligan, and Sullivan grapple with these questions. The result is a deeper and richer appreciation of girls' development and women's psychological health.

In an urban public school, among girls from diverse cultural backgrounds--African American, Hispanic, Portuguese, and white--and poor and working-class families, the authors sought a key to the relationship between risk, resistance, and girls' psychological development and health. Specifically, they found cultural differences that affect girls' coming of age in this country. In Between Voice and Silence, the story of the study parallels another, that of African American, Hispanic, and white women who gathered to examine their own differences and to learn how to avoid perpetuating past divisions among women. Together, these two stories reveal an intergenerational struggle to develop relationships between and among women and to hold and respect difference.

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About the Author:

Jill McLean Taylor is Assistant Professor in the Department of Education and Human Services, Simmons College.

Review:

This enlightening book focuses on the lives of 26 girls as they struggle to overcome a range of obstacles in their family and school lives...This book [shows] the importance of sustained, accepting relationships with women in order for girls to have opportunities to speak freely, sort through complex issues in their lives, and feel understood...The book's strengths include its interdisciplinary approach in which the authors, speaking as essayists, story writers, and cultural critics as well as social researchers, often draw on the voices of women of color (along with their daughters and other girls)...They bring a more sophisticated approach to listening into psychological inquiry, one which explicitly attends to cultural and ethnic biases. (Donna Eder American Journal of Sociology)

Public school girls 'at risk'--for early motherhood, dropping out of school, abusive relationships--are the subject of this collaborative study...As with the earlier, landmark study, this important, accessible research establishes the need for bringing women and girls together. (Publishers Weekly)

Written in a clear, interesting manner, Between Voice and Silence has much to offer social work practitioners, educators, and administrators. Instead of seeing the adolescent girl as an irresponsible teenage mother or acting-out high school student, this book presents the voices of adolescent girls in their struggles within nonsupportive environments. (Elaine P. Congress Families in Society)

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