Urban Girls : Resisting Stereotypes, Creating Identities

One of the first volumes to showcase the lives of girls growing up in urban poverty
Sociologists have tried to analyze adolescents as long as the discipline has existed. However, most studies have focused on suburban youth, ignoring a large segment of the population, the urban adolescent.
"Urban Girls tries to reverse this trend. The researchers included in this ambitious project realize there is more to adolescence than the suburban experience. The city has unique effects on the people who live there, and they on it. Drawing on experts from across the country, Urban Girls investigates what it is like to be young in an American city. This book also explores the minority experience in America. It is wonderful to see studies of Black and Latina youth that do not automatically label them as future convicts, drug dealers, or with other negative stereotypes."-The American Reporter
Traditional psychology textbooks have ignored the normative development of urban girls and the unique situations they face on a daily basis. Lumped together with their suburban, mostly white and middle class counterparts, their voices are frequently subsumed within the larger study of adolescent development. Urban Girls is the first book to directly focus on the development of urban poor and working class adolescent girls.
Including both quantitative and qualitative essays, and including contributions from psychologists, sociologists, and public health scholars, this volume explores the lives of a diverse group of girls from varying ethnic and class backgrounds. Topics covered include the identity development of Caribbean-American girls, the role of truth telling in the psychological development of African-American girls, relationships between mothers and daughters of different races and ethnicities, friendships, sexuality, health risks, career development, and other subjects of importance to human development. Filling a gap in the literature of human development, Urban Girls is sure to be of use to psychologists, sociologists, and social workers.

Bonnie J. Leadbeater is Professor of Psychology at the University of Victoria and co-author, with Niobe Way, of Urban Girls and of Growing up Fast. She is also co-editor of Investing in Children, Youth, Families and Communities: Strengths-Based Research and Policy, Resilience in Children, Families, and Communities: Linking Context to Intervention and Policy, and Ethical Issues in Community-Based Research with Children and Youth.

Niobe Way, Ed. D., is Professor of Applied Psychology in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University. She is also the founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity (pach.org) and the past President for the Society for Research on Adolescence. She received her doctorate from Harvard University in Human Development and Psychology and was an NIMH postdoctoral fellow in the psychology department at Yale University. Way's has been studying the social and emotional development of adolescents in cultures around the world for the past three decades. In addition to almost a hundred academic journal publications and dozens of blogs written for mainstream media outlets, Way has written numerous books that include her sole-authored: Everyday Courage: The Lives and Stories of Urban Teenagers (NYU Press, 1998); and Deep Secrets: Boys' Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (Harvard University Press, 2011). Her co-edited or co-authored books include: Urban Girls: Resisting Stereotypes, Creating Identities (NYU Press, 1996); Adolescent Boys: Exploring Diverse Cultures of Boyhood (NYU Press, 2004). and her award-winning Growing up Fast: Transitions to Adulthood among Inner-City Adolescent Mothers (Erlbaum Press, 2001). Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, The National Science Foundation, The William T. Grant Foundation, The Spencer Foundation, and by numerous other foundations. Way is an internationally recognized leader in the study of social and emotional development and adolescence as well as in the use of mixed methods.