Meeting at the Crossroads

''Should sound a national alert to society that even our most privileged girls still pursue normal femininity at great risk to personal and civic health.''THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBELyn Mike Brown and Carol Gilligan ask ''What, on the way to womanhood, does a girl give up?'' One hundred girls gave voice to what is rarely spoken and often ignored: that the passage out of girlhood is a journey into silence and disconnection, a troubled crossing when a girl loses a firm sense of self and becomes tentative and unsure. These changes mark the endge of adolescence as a watershed in women's psychological development and the stories the girls tell are by turns heartrending and courageous. Listening to these girls provides us with the means of reaching out to them at this critical time, and of better understanding what we as women and men may have left behind at our own crossroads.A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR