You Don't Have to Be Everything

This is such a beautiful gathering of voices, such a beautiful gathering of poems. If I had had this book when I was younger, it would have enriched my life. But I'm so incredibly grateful I get to read it, and be changed by it, now. -- Ross Gay, author of the New York Times bestseller The Book of Delights Varied and vibrant...the collection pulses with a vital and confident energy, embracing contradictions and complexity. --Boston Globe Each poem addresses a different complex aspect of coming-of-age struggles while confronting persistent views about femininity. You Don't Have to Be Everything provides a safe and guiding poetic space for young women to come into their true selves. --The Root Self-acceptance, bravery, celebration. --Ms. Magazine This collection feels like a gift, a pep talk, a shoulder to cry on, and, most of all, a mirror that will captivate its audience. A helpful companion for young women navigating a spectrum of complex emotions -- Kirkus Reviews This empowering assemblage of poems by an inclusive group of women writers offers insight and community to readers navigating adolescence... Whitney's introduction offers a message that permeates the volume's entirety: We are already enough. -- Publishers Weekly Whitney, a poet, author, and essayist, brings diversity to the forefront, with poems presenting a refreshingly inclusive array of perspectives, including from trans and nonbinary poets... -- Booklist The poems in this gorgeous book glitter like stars, like sequins, like a blade. And they constitute an invitation to our girls to be free--to be whole. How breathtakingly precious that is! How devastatingly rare. I am reminded (again and again) that art is here to save our lives. -- Catherine Newman, author of How to Be a Person This book is as beautiful to look at as it is to read, and full of important messages that every girl should hear. -- Lisa Selin Davis, author of Tomboy: The Surprising History and Future of Girls Who Dare to be Different What company this book would have provided me if I could have had it when I was young! The poems sing and celebrate, mourn and commiserate, question and assert. The smartly edited collection displays the tremendous vitality and diversity of women poets today and offers a soulful read for girls becoming themselves at any age, even my own. -- Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs