Introduction / Ruth O. Saxton -- Where is she going, where are we going, at century's end : the girl as site of cultural conflict in Joyce Carol Oates's "The model" / Brenda Daly -- Self-possession, dolls, Beatlemania, loss : telling the girl's own story / Gina Hausknecht -- The battleground of the adolescent girl's body / Brenda Boudreau -- When the back door is closed and the front yard is dangerous : the space of girlhood in Toni Morrison's fiction / Deborah Cadman -- Dizzying possibilities, plots and endings : girlhood in Jill McCorkle's Ferris beach / Elinor Ann Walker -- "I ain't no FRIGGIN LITTLE WIMP" : the girl "I" narrator in contemporary fiction / Renee R. Curry -- Coming-of-age in the snare of history : Jamaica Kincaid's The autobiography of my mother / Diane Simmons -- Subversive storytelling : the construction of lesbian girlhood through fantasy and fairy tale in Jeanette Winterson's Oranges are not the only fruit / Isabel C. Anievas Gamallo -- But that was in another country : girlhood and the contemporary "coming to America" narrative / Rosemary Marangoly George.