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

I Am An Emotional Creature
The Secret Life of Girls Around the World
by Eve Ensler

ABOUT THIS BOOK

-information taken from the Random House website

In this daring, provocative, and insightful book, bestselling author and internationally acclaimed playwright Eve Ensler writes fictional monologues and stories inspired by girls around the globe. Moving through a world of topics and emotions, these voices are fierce, alive, tender, complicated, imaginative, and smart. Girls today often find themselves in a struggle between remaining strong and true to themselves and conforming to society’s expectations in an attempt to please. They are taught not to be too intense, too passionate, too smart, too caring, too open. They are encouraged to shut down their instincts, their outrage, their desires and their dreams, to be polite, to obey the rules. I Am an Emotional Creature is a celebration of the authentic voice inside every girl and an inspiring call to action for girls everywhere to speak up, follow their dreams, and become the women they were always meant to be.

Among the girls Ensler creates are an American who struggles with peer pressure in a suburban high school; an anorexic blogging as she eats less and less; a Masai girl from Kenya unwilling to endure female genital mutilation; a Bulgarian sex slave, no more than fifteen, a Chinese factory worker making Barbies; an Iranian student who is tricked into a nose job; a pregnant girl trying to decide if she should keep her baby.

Through rants, poetry, questions, and facts, we come to understand the universality of girls everywhere: their resiliency, their wildness, their pain, their fears, their secrets, and their triumphs. I Am an Emotional Creature is a call, a reckoning, an education, an act of empowerment for girls, and an illumination for parents and for us all.

You can read an excerpt of the book HERE.

MY REVIEW

I Am an Emotional Creature is an intense book. It is thought provoking and incredibly poignant. I cried several times reading this book. It is so well done- and so true. This is the first book by Eve Ensler that I have read but it won't be the last. I found I Am an Emotional Creature fascinating and I think everyone should read it. I will say that there is a bit of profanity and a whole lot of reality... I would not classify it as a "feel good" type of book and I found it emotionally very hard to read. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants (or needs) a wake-up call about what is really going on in our world.