In this deeply personal collection of poetry, writer Phil Cramp (the self-professed 'Gaylor Swift of his generation')delves into his diary of romantic exploits and unearths a trove of soured love affairs, embarrassing clunkers and passion-filled liaisons. Presented in three acts; Attraction, Heartbreak and Reflection, Phil recounts the experiences of an awkward heart as it attempts to navigate the highs and inevitable frustrations that come with dating the male species.

Desire, pleasure, and romance : post-feminism and other seductions -- The beauty dilemma : gendered bodies and aesthetic judgement -- Gendered cyber-bodies : the dilemma of technological 'existenz' -- Queer spaces in a straight world : the dilemma of sexual identity -- No laughing matter ... or is it? : the serio-comic dilemma of gender.

Everyone has that moment-the realization that adulthood has arrived, like a runaway train, and there's no getting out of its way. From the hit Tumblr blog of the same name, F*ck! I'm in My Twenties perfectly captures the new generation currently testing the waters of post-college reality. Quick-witted and self-deprecating, the author pens irreverent missives, DIY diagrams, illustrations, and tongue-in-cheek checklists that chronicle her experience as a twenty-something living in the big city. Including the best of her beloved blog, plus over 50% new material, this is a perfect humor impulse buy for anyone who has a love-hate relationship with their twenties.

Motion pictures have been one of the forces that have both shaped and reproduced adolescent femininity. Films not only reflect culture—they help to create it. So it is worth looking at films to see what messages they gave girls—and adults—about what girls were and should be like. Scheiner uses film as a window into the cultural meanings of female adolescence, and explores how those meanings changed over time. She looks at how female adolescence has been constructed in film, focusing on the period from 1920 to 1950. She contextualizes representations of female adolescence by looking at the actual experience of adolescence in each period and by examining the material conditions and film industry processes that contributed to these portrayals. As Scheiner makes clear, historical interpretations of film messages must be expanded to determine what conclusions girls themselves reached from film images. Girls are hardly passive consumers of film. Rather, they choose how to respond to the films they see. This is perhaps best illustrated by fan activities, where girls actively define what is important about films and film stars, and create their own understandings of female adolescence. Scheiner also looks specifically at adolescent girls as fans to decode their responses to filmic representations of adolescence. She uses some nontraditional sources such as fan columns in fan magazines, fan publications of various stars, reviews in young women's literature, fan mail, and letters to film companies to find evidence of audience reception. Scheiner opens up a world often at odds with the actual experience of female adolescents, and she makes clear that films about adolescent girls are not only a formative part of the nation's history in the early 20th century, but a formative part of becoming a girl. Scholars, students, and other researchers of American film and women's studies, popular culture, and 20th-century history will find this study of particular interest.

This book demonstrates how contemporary children's texts draw on utopian and dystopian tropes in their projections of possible futures. The authors explore the ways in which children's texts respond to social change and global politics. The book argues that children's texts are crucially implicated in shaping the values of their readers.

Seventeen-year-old Angie, who lives with her family in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, finds herself in love for the first time the summer after high school graduation.

Since his first publication in 1942, Luis Leal has likely done more than any other writer or scholar to foster a critical appreciation of Mexican, Chicano, and Latin American literature and culture. This volume, bringing together a representative selection of Leal’s writings from the past sixty years, is at once a wide-ranging introduction to the most influential scholar of Latino literature and a critical history of the field as it emerged and developed through the twentieth century. Instrumental in establishing Mexican literary studies in the United States, Leal’s writings on the topic are especially instructive, ranging from essays on the significance of symbolism, culture, and history in early Chicano literature to studies of the more recent use of magical realism and of individual New Mexican, Tejano, and Mexican authors such as Juan Rulfo, Carlos Fuentes, José Montoya, and Mariano Azuela. Clearly and cogently written, these writings bring to bear an encyclopedic knowledge, a deep understanding of history and politics, and an unparalleled command of the aesthetics of storytelling, from folklore to theory. This collection affords readers the opportunity to consider—or reconsider—Latino literature under the deft guidance of its greatest reader.