Violence Girl

In Hunting Girls, Kelly Oliver examines popular culture's fixation on representing young women as predators and prey and the implication that violence - especially sexual violence - is an inevitable, perhaps even celebrated, part of a woman's maturity. In such films as Kick-Ass (2010), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), and Maleficent (2014), power, control, and danger drive the story, but traditional relationships of care constrict the narrative. Even the protagonist's love interest adds to her suffering.

In this 2009 National Book Award finalist, Rita Williams-Garcia proves that she has an “uncanny ability to project unique voices” ( Publishers Weekly). Jumped is told in alternating points of view between three girls as they struggle to make tough choices when they become involved in a fight at their urban high school.

Sixteen-year-old Beau Willet has dreams of being an artist and one day leaving the Chicago projects she’s grown up in. But after her older sister, Katia, is killed by an off-duty police officer, Beau knows she has to clear her sister’s name by finding the only witness to the murder; Katia’s no-good boyfriend, Jordan, who has gone missing. If she doesn't find him and tell the world what really happened, Katia's death will be ignored, like the deaths of so many other Black women who are wrongfully killed.

Tightly plotted and fast paced, Girl Crazy is a cinematic ride through one man’s obsession with a younger woman. Justin, a dissatisfied community college teacher, meets Jenna and is attracted at once to her mixture of toughness, vulnerability and ripe sexuality.