Young and Restless

The Girls Who Sparked America's Revolutions

By: Mattie Kahn

Narrated by: Eunice Wong

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.

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.

Wow!

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

Thoughtful & detailed

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

Ms. Wong’s reading was terrific.