Reading Response to Certain Girls

I’m finally nearing the end of Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner. It’s the type of book I like to call “real”. I really don’t understand exactly how the author did it, but she captured both the perspectives of the over protective mother and the teenage daughter and I know this is incredibly different because the thoughts and ideas of a mother to a daughter are such opposites. It’s real because when I read I can feel myself there and that’s something I haven’t experienced with a book in a long while. It’s nice.

            Life is twisted; this is one thing Certain Girls makes obvious. Joy, the teenager and Cannie, the mother, have a somewhat normal relationship with each other for their ages. They argue a lot and they disagree and Joy does things without Cannie’s permission particularly because she knows it will upset her. Cannie feels helpless. Like I said; normal.

But their lives, their history is far from average. Cannie’s past is filled with confusion and worry and hate which she vents in her book Big Girls Don’t Cry. She tells about how rough her childhood had been, with a terribly unkind father and a clueless mother. She tells of how she was always put down; every idea. Then she writes of her new boyfriend Bruce and how an unexpected pregnancy at a young age would potentially ruin her life. She didn’t want Joy; she never wanted Joy. And knowing this, Joy’s hatred toward her mother grew stronger.

            I can’t say I can completely connect to Joy’s situation, no, not to that extent. I don’t have some sob story about how I was a mistake or how horribly I ruined my mother’s life. But I can relate. I feel myself agreeing when Joy describes her thoughts not just about Cannie, but about everything, her whole world.

 Though, I don’t want to. I don’t want to be that teenager with the mood swings, or that daughter that argues a lot, or that girl so desperate for attention. I don’t have a hard life. I have things pretty great at home, I live in a house close to my school with a functional family, I have everything. So why do I feel like this? Many stereotypes exist about teens and I don’t want to admit that most of them are true.

That’s why this book was so important. I get it now, okay, I’m not always right and as Joy began to realize this, so did I. I don’t think adolescences should mean disobedient and secretive and untrustworthy all though we may want it to be. Really, we need this for our futures. Young and stupid, that's what they say.  So now I’ve got to stop, it’ll be hard.