• Young and Restless

  • The Girls Who Sparked America's Revolutions
  • By: Mattie Kahn
  • Narrated by: Eunice Wong
  • Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
  • 5.0 out of 5 stars (6 ratings)

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Young and Restless  By  cover art

Young and Restless

By: Mattie Kahn
Narrated by: Eunice Wong
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Publisher's summary

NPR's Books We Love 2023

Glamour's "The 15 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023, So Far"

Vogue's "Best Books of 2023 (So Far)"

Town & Country's "The Best Books of 2023"

A "heartening inspiration"(The New York Times), the untold story of the people who have helped spark America’s most transformative social movements throughout history: teenage girls

Nine months before Rosa Parks kicked off the bus boycotts, Claudette Colvin was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was fifteen. In 1912, women’s rights activists organized a massive march in support of women’s suffrage. Leading them up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan was not one of the mothers of the movement, but a teenage Chinese immigrant named Mabel Ping-Hua Lee. Half a century before the better-known movements for workers’ rights began, over 1,500 girls—some as young as ten—walked out of factories in Lowell, Massachusetts, demanding safer working conditions and higher wages in one of the nation’s first-ever labor strikes.

Young women have been disenfranchised and discounted, but the true retelling of major social movements in America reveals their might: they have ignited almost every single one.

Young and Restless recounts one of the most foundational and underappreciated forces in moments of American revolution: teenage girls. From the American Revolution itself to the Civil Rights Movement to nuclear disarmament protests and the women’s liberation movement, through Black Lives Matter and school strikes for climate, Mattie Kahn uncovers how girls have leveraged their unique strengths, from fandom to intimate friendships, to organize and lay serious political groundwork for movements that often sidelined them. Their stories illuminate how much we owe to girls throughout the generations, what skills young women use to mobilize and find their voices, and, crucially, what we can all stand to learn from them.

©2023 Mattie Kahn (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"This riveting and well-researched book invites us to reexamine the history we’ve been taught and to view teenage girls as a powerful force for change."—NPR

"Kahn’s study of the role of girls in American social uprising is timely...a reminder of the enduring optimism of youth."The New York Times Book Review's "Editors' Choice"

"Heartening inspiration can be found in Young and Restless, Mattie Kahn’s thoroughgoing examination of the role of young women and girls in America’s uprisings."The New York Times

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Wow!

Love this book! So inspiring and captivating, thank you!
I look forward to learning more about girl activism going forward

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interesting, well written "forgotten" history

Well written nonfiction that sheds light on the role teenage girls have played as organizers and protesters throughout American history.

Similar thesis to The Light of Days by Judy Batalion under less extreme historical circumstances.

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Thoughtful & detailed

Really great narrative history. So many amazing girls, whose stories I had never learned.

Ms. Wong’s reading was terrific.

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