A Facebook friend told me about this book and mentioned that I might enjoy it – so I contacted the author and got a copy of the book.
I may be very open minded about sex – but I am concerned about teens and the things they are bombarded with every day. I may sound old – but I remember when kids, could be kids. They weren’t flooded with sexual messages everywhere they looked.
Sure there was sex in the music, the movies etc – but not like it is now. And, we had to get creative to send sexy and suggestive messages. As an example, when I was a teenager, our parents insisted that my boyfriend and I were “forbidden” to see each other and to even talk most of the time. So, we worked out a system where a friend of his brought me messages. It worked beautifully.
These days teens have email, chatrooms, instant messaging, cell phones, text messages, social networks and so many other options. But we have all heard of the things that can happen with these technological advances. It seems to me that few teens have the chance to be teens - they are pushed into adult situations by the media, their peers and many other things.
So – how do young people handle this “hyper” sexual culture? I think parents, other teens and anyone else who cares about teens need to read this book. It contains personal experiences from a wide variety of teens in their own words. This book contains the good, the bad and the ugly about this “easy access culture”.
Shannon T Boodram – accepted pieces written by a variety of young people about their experiences with sex in their teens. Some are narratives and some are poems – but they all tell very personal stories to share their experiences.
Chapter 1 – Hookups That Fell Down (about hookups)
Chapter 2 – And Then I Saw Stars (about positive sexual experiences)
Chapter 3 – Haven’t Been Quite Right Since That Night…. (about physical consequences)
Chapter 4 – When No! Loses All Meaning (about date rape)
Chapter 5 – Save Your Cherry… or Banana (about abstinence)
Each of these chapters is broken up into several different sections. There is an introduction, a list of possible questions and answers about the chapter content, and a list of questions to ask yourself about the information in the chapters.
This book needed to be written. In case anyone has any doubts – times have changed for everyone, but times have changed much more for teens and we need to understand what they are facing and what they are doing to help teens that we care about.
I highly recommend this book – the insights are very revealing and often disturbing. I’ll also warn you that reading this book will bring back memories for each of us – that first kiss, that first sexual experience, yearning for someone when we weren’t sure if we were ready for sex, having sex and then realizing it wasn’t right for us, learning from our mistakes and our triumphs and much more.
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