by Ilana Drake, second-year student, Vanderbilt University

This will be my fifth year as a mentee in Girls Write Now , a writing and mentoring program which serves young women, trans and gender-expansive youth and young adults.

Each year, Girls Write Now publishes an anthology written by its mentees. Over the past four years, I have reviewed the anthology in wonder, reading over the work of my peers and reflecting on the varied stories we share.

In this year’s anthology, “Taking Root,” the title reflects the pandemic’s impact on adolescence, or as Girls Write Now calls it, “a catalog of seeds—each young writer cultivating a shimmering, emergent voice.”

Other entries in the anthology take on the challenges of time commitments, stress with standardized testing, and the college process...

The anthology is made up of one piece by each mentee. Many of the pieces emphasize experiences of teen life, such as Chelsea Chinedo’s “The Sweet and Sour: Life as a Senior,” which focuses on the ups and downs of her senior year of high school. Chinedo’s piece starts, “July 2021: Senior year is approaching…Saying I’m excited does not give this feeling justice!” She ends in February of her senior year while waiting to hear back about college applications.

Of the college application process, Chinedo advises future seniors, “So I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes: ‘If something is meant to be, it will happen.’” Other entries in the anthology take on the challenges of time commitments, stress with standardized testing, and the college process, and so the anthology makes for an excellent road map for students navigating high school pressure.

Other pieces are more reflective of identity and place in society. Liana Komeng’s poem “Broken Masterpiece,” takes on false understandings of what it is like being a young Black woman in today’s world:

They judge and disassociate themselves from us,

They don’t want to live in a world where our existence is inevitable,

They believe that we are ruined,

A mistake, just an accident that continued to spread like a plague.

Ignorance tells me I am broken.

And maybe I am. But this is

MY

BRO-

KEN

MASTERPIECE

Some of the pieces which might be applicable to young adults focus on mental health and other pieces are short stories. There is a piece for every day, every time, and every mood, and I wish the anthology was small enough to tuck into a pocket so that I could find a new story each time I feel worried, stressed or scared.

Alyssa Johnson’s personal story “A Manageable Change,” about navigating Crohn’s disease speaks to the changes in our lives when dealing with the unexpected. Rizouana Prome’s poem “Internal Storm” focuses on reaching goals. Claire Yu’s excerpt from “The Sky’s the Limit” is a personal story about a girl learning to be confident after losing her brother.

These stories and poems cover many aspects of being a teenager and young adult. Each story shares a different truth and allows the reader to reflect deeply about another person’s lived experiences.

Ilana Drake is a second-year student at Vanderbilt University. She is a student activist and writer. She has written for The 74, YR Media and other national publications. Her work can be found here.

Read more about the anthology on the Girls Write Now site here . For a School Library Journal review of the first of Girls Write Now anthologies, click here .