Tonights speakers mattie kahn is an Award Winning writer and editor. Her work been published in the new york times. The washington post, the atlantic, harpers bazaar, vogue, vox and more. She was the culture director glamor, where she covered womens issues and, politics and a staff editor at elle. She is joined in conversation tonight by julia rubin, the editorial director for culture and features at vox. Mattie kahn is presenting her new book, young and restless the girls who sparked americas revolutions. Young and restless recounts one of the most foundational and underappreciated forces of American Revolution. Teenage girls from, the American Revolution itself to the Civil Rights Movement, to Nuclear Disarmament protests and the womens liberation movement. Black lives matter and school strikes. Climate. Mattie kahn uncovers how girls have leverage their unique strengths from fandom to intimate friendships to organize and lay serious political for movements that have often sidelined them. In the words of billie jean king, quote, young and restless honors ferocious power of teenage girls. In this bracing retelling of social movements, mattie kahn celebrates girls not as saviors, but as leaders and visionaries deserving of a recognition. We are so pleased to host this event here at harvard bookstore. Please join me in welcoming mattie kahn and julia rubin. Thank you so much. Just working. Were good. Okay cool. Im so excited to be here tonight. I am both fan and friend of mattys and was very lucky to be an early of this amazing book. And i cant wait to hear more about it. Its great for matty so going to ask what your elevator pitch is for this book since maybe not everyone has read it yet yet being the operative but that those are also really great by our hosts here. But you know i guess well kind of start with how did you conceive of this idea . Yeah. So first of all, thanks, julia, for doing this. I read the acknowledged first for basically every book i ever read. So i felt a lot of pressure when i was writing my own acknowledgments, wondering if there was a Single Person in the world like me who does that. But in the hopes that maybe theres one you can see that julia as extensively thanked in the acknowledgments. And i didnt even know when i wrote them that she would also agree to do this. So thats a true friend. I came to idea for this book kind of over time. I worked, as our host said at elle and at glamor. And so i came into contact with a lot of and young women and women and sort of like across the cultural and political spectrum. And i think that if youre in a lucky position i was to work in that environment it starts pretty normal. Its just all in a days work to meet. Know a young person is organizing thousands and thousands of people across the country, around the world, sort of normal. But with a little bit of perspective, i started to feel like there really was something extraordinary happening with this generation of young women, such that they were organizing a Global Climate strikes and on the frontlines of lives matter and doing sort of like digital activism in ways that i found really impressive. And what i thought i might do is write book about what was so special about this generation. Teenage girls and young women. And then i started researching and i received a quick in just how long this kind of work had been going on. And i felt really inadequate, like i needed to learn a lot more. So i spent a year and a half on the proposal. Im glad my agent isnt here tonight. She definitely wanted that to happen faster. And then, yeah. And then it became really a history book, a telling of all of these social movements that i feel really transformed america as through the lens of teenage girls. And the project started surprise even me and its scope and it got bigger and bigger and then it ended up with the book once a year and it really is just such feat of research because you have this incredible archival and then original reporting, which is obviously what you do in your day job well. What did that process like, especially uncovering these stories that hadnt really been told before . I think the time line is helpful. So i started writing the book during the the research phase. I did that mostly in. 19 2018, 2019, 2020. And then i started sitting and really outlining each chapter in detail in the spring of 2020, when there was nothing but time. So i had more concentrated hours to do than i ever would have wanted. And i think the way i approach work and my my journalism and writing in general is always to start as wide as. So i try to when i was thinking about what these chapters would be or things that i knew belonged in the book, sort of like one movement at a time. I tried to read most general and histories on those things that i could possibly find. So whatever the biggest doorstop far of a book thats like everything you wanted to know this thing. I like to start there. And then i always used to say, even before i sold this book that my hidden talent was reading a huge 800 page book and finding the one sentence where a woman is inside. Oh, this random person did this one thing. And being okay, i want to read the book about her. So the Books Research really followed that process. It was a process of reading and researching and talking as many people as i could about, various social movements in america. The random clause, a girl who happened to be there and then figuring out everything i possibly could about about that person going deeper and deeper, chasing lots of footnotes, emailing librarians were the only people in their buildings and therefore very happy to go on wild goose chase looking for a document because what else did they have to do in july. 20 and and kind of yeah. Following my curiosity i think thats the nice about about always sort of that feeling of being a little bit of an amateur in this work is is you ask a lot of questions and i think you find a lot of people are really happy to share. They know. I that and i, i learned so much. And i was telling you like the the amount that this for me after you know, going to school going to college, the amount that i learned, if you like, about American History just through this book is as fast. And im grateful that did that work for us. Was there a story that you found particular surprising or moving . You were doing this research. There were a lot of stories that surprised me. I think youve probably heard me talk before about mabel ping, molly, who was a chinese immigrant, heavily involved in womens suffrage, fighting for a right that she knew if she achieved the aims of that wouldnt be extended to her as a noncitizen. And i found story very moving and she led this massive march up fifth avenue in 1912. She was so charismatic as a teenager that a whole phrase was invented to describe how she turned audiences. People would write a newspaper is that you went to a talk by mabel king probably and you left margolyes by procession. And i love that idea of like this captivating young person. But i also think she was a good example. One of the other stories that really surprised me was and dickinson, who was an abolitionist orator during the civil war, actually the first woman in, her very early twenties ever, to address the house of representatives in congress. These were two girls, as they were. Would been identified at their time who. Both tried best to seize a platform that was extended to them sort of unlikely in, an unlikely way, because they were young and female, but also couldnt help but have to kind of brush up against constraints of a platform like that where. Youre really given an acronym stick a microphone, but youre not given a lot of power. And i think reading those stories, which were not stories i went into the book knowing that i would include but so much heart and of sometimes heartbreak in this of being so famous and so charming, but not being taken seriously. Those were stories that surprised me and also, i think, changed the direction of the rest of the book. As you know, having it. And i feel like i always say this when im talking about the book this is a story that these are stories that really celebrate teenage girls and why young women are capable of. But i wouldnt ever want someone to read this book and think its enough to just from young women. I think if stop there you run the risk that many adults who helped platform young women or young people in general but never really followed up after that you run that same risk which is you create a star instead of helping an activist, have a long career. The work that she wants to do. I love what youve said about, you know, we we have this tendency to say, you know, girls going to save us, girls are going to save the world. And if you just could speak a little to what you think adults should do. Yeah i think that that that idea has been around for us for each successive generation of young people since truly the founding of this country. And here we are many generations no saved world. So clearly something not cohering and not working think that one of the things that i sort of almost an answer in in opposition which is one of the things that i think really works and that has helped people remain activists and still feel connected to this work that could otherwise bring them out. Is intergenerational partnership. So not just saying the girls are going to save us or the kids are doing all, but really asking like, how can we be on the field with them sharing . This work be in partnership, in community, being conversation and i think you look towards some of the most famous activist elders like, people like dolores huerta, our gloria steinem. They are very committed to not just talking amongst themselves and not just applauding the next generation of people who are following them, but in really figuring out how they can provide what people need. I always like, and the stories in this book definitely attest to this. Young people bring energy to movements. They bring new ideas. They dont have a sense yet of whats impossible. And so they make a lot possible in the absence of that fear over what maybe cant happen or wont happen. And older people bring perspective. They bring the the knowledge that one defeat isnt an entire failure. You can keep going even if it feels like something is disintegrating that you might feel right now, like this isnt working, but history will look more kindly on it. I really think you need both of those things and so i just feel its such a mistake to say good them. Were were done now because you cant leave it to them. Im wildly impressed by the girls in this book. I have so much respect for them, but i wish they didnt have to do it alone. Yeah, i think that is totally wrong. And speaking of intergenerational relationships, what patterns did you see emerge across time when looked at activists . I think the earliest for the 1830s. Is it the little male girls . Earliest. And then we talk about you know the climate activists of today kind of yeah what patterns have emerged is the same what is different. Well, one thing and thats the same as i think young have to their advantage thinking their parents are hopelessly outdated that has driven so much culture so much politics so much social change and definitely thinking of the low girls who were working in textile mills in the 1830s who felt like, you know, they were the first girls ever to strike out on their own, mean in some ways what they did was unprecedented but that feeling of invincibility, young people can have that is really amazingly the same. I think that theres so much in the Civil Rights Movement of young people feeling like these problems, these inequities, theyre waking up to it in ways that their parents never did. And of course, they get older and they realize their parents saw, too. You know, it wasnt bernie, john and reagan whose story i love in the book says that only once you became much older did she see that their generation been some great leap forward. She said it had been a continuance that that everyone built on the work of the people who come before. But its a great, i think, advantage being young to think youre the first person ever to do it because it to make it feel like really exciting. And i loved reading those. I mean, theres nothing i think one of the fun things about almost being a spectator to the process of writing the book is, is reading those diaries and journal entries and letters to kind of be able to eavesdrop on girls discovering themselves in their power is i could i could do it for a hundred more bucks. Like there there really is Nothing Better than seeing someone realize she has something to say. I think thats a real and whats different is the Technology Keeps changing like the way that girls are heard the kinds of that theyre able to seize the people who are there to listen, that audience keeps getting. And that comes with a lot of power and it comes with a lot of risk. So when and Elizabeth Dickinson was barnstorming through new england talking about abolition she was making a lot of people mad and people were reading about it in newspapers, but they werent responding to her on twitter. So the that i think young people now have with their detractors is very immediate. It can be very loud. I think thats always hard, but i think its gotten harder. You cannot imagine personally, id like to talk about what makes girlhood special. I worked at vogue. You have worked at many womens magazines and written for them, and i am always so surprised by young women and the stories that we get to tell about them. So id love to just sort hear about that, not even in relation to activism, but just, you know, how we conceive of. Girl dom and and when did that come to be . Yeah, when i first started working on the book, thought i would start. I thought i would open in the 1930s when the idea of a teenager became prevalent. And then i thought maybe i would in 1901, when a researcher coined the term adolescent. But then there were girls who earlier than that i wanted. So i decided, its my book, i can do what i want. But also i think, i think part of the reason that i felt that latitude, i think girls have conceived of themselves as Something Special and unique. For a long time, much longer than other people have been telling them. You are in a phase like that. Awareness of something happening there of, a new power coming into focus has been around definitely since the 1830, at least if not before. And if you read the diaries of the lonely girls, you hear a lot of what it means to be a teenage girl. I mean, i think when i was working on the book and i would tell people about it, sometimes people would say to me what, no, no, boys, youve ever done anything. And of course, boys have done amazing work and have been incredible activists have fought many wars, joined all kinds of movements, but i wanted to write about girls because i felt like, against all odds in terms of how girls have been socialized, not in terms of their innate qualities, they have developed characteristics i think make them so capable all and so savvy precisely because of the obstacles that they have truly always faced and some obviously more than others. I mean, a lot of a lot of real estate in the book is is spent on the different experiences that black girls for example have had compared to girls and that chicano girls who are organized in School Walkouts relative to immigrant girls. You know all different kind theyre all there are so many different kinds of experiences of girlhood. But what i think they do have in common is a sense of being and, a sense of wanting to flex your power wherever that may be available to you. And i think that combination it doesnt have to be true, but now societally, where were at it is true of girls. There are so many protests and movements in the book that start with two girls in the cafeteria or in the School Bleachers saying. You know whats kind of messed up . And that is experience of being a teenage girl i mean, youre talking about something totally trivial and maybe youre talking about literally segregation. And i think that quality so far. Well see. You guys can read the book and let me know. But so far, no one who has ever been a teenage girl came away from reading it and didnt feel like no matter how they spent their teenage years, like, oh my god, i that feeling extremely universal. And when it does come to activism, theres two points in the book that you that i really love. One is in the chapter about civil rights and how adults get embarrassed easily and how what makes teen girls especially effective is they dont have that sense of embarrassment. And then in the disarmament section, you talk about, you know, what can a girl do . What a woman can do . And id love to hear a bit about that divide and what does make girls effective protesters and activists. Yeah, well, joy, a Specialized Knowledge of me will in handy here because i think i dont do karaoke so but there was a time in my life where i had no problem singing loudly in public. Thats when i was a teenage girl i think that embarrassment which affects everybody not women and girls is is a powerful force for inaction. Feeling embarrassed to chant or to march or even to go to something where there might not be a lot of people like even tonight. I said to julia, i hope you overcome so thank you all for doing that. But you that that sense of like im doing it no matter what is is the unique property i think of teenage girls and and the flipside of that is also the investment in doing things your friends which is you know there isnt a teenage girl in the world who wants to do it totally alone. So i think that that the freedom that girls find in that is is different than growing up for sure. I also think and this does come up around disarmament and some other issues too is that i think we as a culture tolerate a lot of loud emotion from young people. We find very suspect women. So if a girl is standing at a podium sobbing or as in the case of the march for our lives demonstration in washington, literally throwing up, which happened on live tv, theres a lot of understandable on the part of adults who are watching that. And i think even admiration, that kind of display of feeling, i think anyone whos watched a woman run for office knows that its not so welcome an adult woman who is supposed to control herself comport herself a certain way, compromise not be dramatic, find consensus do all these things that in our be more effective but less than her power as a communicator. I think the purity of expression that we tolerate from young people makes them feel both more authentic and allows us to a level of empathy that set ourselves off from when. Were looking at people that we think maybe are clean power or being ambitious a way that we dont like and. I t