Sexual Reckonings: Southern Girls in a Troubling Age

• Publisher:   Harvard University Press
• Number Of Pages:   384
• Publication Date:   2007-05-30
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   0674024524
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780674024526

Sexual Reckonings is the fascinating tale of adolescent girls coming of age in the South during the most explosive decades for the region. Focusing on the period from 1920 to 1960, Susan Cahn reveals how both the life of the South and the meaning of adolescence underwent enormous political, economic, and social shifts. Those years witnessed the birth of a modern awareness of adolescence and female sexuality that clashed mightily with the white supremacist and patriarchal legacies of the old South. As youth staked its claim, the bodies and beliefs of southern girls became the battlefield for a transformed South, which was, like them, experiencing growing pains.

Cahn reveals how young women, both white and black, were seen as the South's greatest hope and its greatest threat. Viewed as critical actors in every regional crisis, from the economic recession and urban migrations of the 1920s to the racial conflicts precipitated by school desegregation in the 1950s, female teenagers became the conspicuous subjects of social policy and regional imagination. All the while, these adolescents pursued their own desires and discovered their own meanings, creating cracks in the twin pillars of the Jim Crow South--"racial purity" and white male dominance--that would soon be toppled by the student-led civil rights movement.

Sexual Reckonings is an amazingly intimate look at a time of deep personal exploration and profound cultural change for southern girls and for the society they inhabited, a powerful account of the clash between a society's fears and the daily lives and aspirations of its most prized, and unpredictable, population.

Take a moment and think about this: How often do we negotiate a changing social order through the discourse of female sexuality? Seldom do scholars present a significant historical analysis esteeming adolescent female experiences more than the explanations of traditional civic institutions. If women's bodies and sexuality are the landscape over which power struggles are often fought, then shouldn't we listen to the females themselves in order to gain a true understanding of history and social change? In Sexual Reckonings, author Susan K. Cahn offers an empowering, well-researched, and refreshing look at the South's transformation from the period of 1920 to 1960. She relies on anecdotal evidence of countless adolescent girls, integrating their narratives with the larger narrative of Southern political, economic and cultural change. The struggle over the sexuality of black and white adolescent girls represented the instability of an entire social order. Their "gathering storm of resistance" threatened the increasingly precarious system of patriarchal white supremacy. From poor white girls targeted for "reform" to wartime pickup girls to the rock 'n' roller, Cahn gives readers an insightful understanding of history that will leave you intrigued, indignant, entertained and even confer value on anyone who has suffered injustices, nourishing the possibility for change. Public concern about the direction of regional change repeatedly manifests itself through the sexual politics of adolescent girls. Indeed, race, class, gender and sexuality are inextricably linked. Cahn reminds us that the stories of adolescent girls matter. These girls, then and today, are symbols of social change and offer insights into our own shared problems and progress. Take the time to read this fascinating look at Southern history in order to gain a better understanding of current social change. Just try not to get bogged down in the details and it's alright if you grow tired of the myriad anecdotes.

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