Secrets & Confidences: The Complicated Truth about Women's Friendships

by Jennifer D. Munro and Karen Eng

Book Overview

Relationships between women are often cast in binary terms, either as backstabbing competition behind the scenes or soft-filter best-friend-forever moments. Yet the simple truth about friendship is that it's never simple: not for eight-year-olds acting out adulthood through rich Barbie fantasies, not for teens trying to bridge the chasm of racial and cultural divide, not for kid-free singles watching old friendships weaken with each new partner and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 158005112X
• ISBN13: 9781580051125
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Seal Press (CA)
• Length: 222 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Great moments

This anthology has great moments. The introduction by Karen Eng promised a lot: yes, why don't women and girls' friendships get more critical attention? Movies and songs are about bad romantic breakups and longing. But what about friendships that break up? How many of us can say that we've kept all our friends all our lives? And who can swear that they've not been hurt by friends who abandoned us or drifted away? The introduction promised lots. I loved Karen Eng, Joshunda Sanders, and Ayun Halliday's essays. However I found the other essays while individually entertaining did not have collective thematic coherence. Perhaps that's the point, that there are all kinds of friendships and breakups, as diverse in variety as the human beings involved.