Ann Muno recently gave a talk at Third Place Books in Seattle promoting her new book Powerful Girls: Raising Strong, Just, and Compassionate Young Women.
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Ann Muno describes her new book Powerful Girls as a love note to the field of girls’ empowerment and to the girls themselves—“those we’ve worked with, those we’ve raised, those we’ve lost, and those who continue to show us what courage looks like as leaders of today in these complex, unimaginably challenging times.” She chronicled the process as a labor of love that has been the culmination of a journey that began 30 years ago.
Growing up in a small Midwest suburb, Muno’s world was shattered when her sister Kim was murdered at just 16 years old. After a day of work at the local mall, a boy that Kim knew asked for a ride home. Several local teens described the boy as creepy, but Kim ignored her intuition and agreed to drive him home. That decision would cost her sister her life. An absolutely devastating event that Muno wants to prevent from happening to other girls and their families.
This became the inspiration for Muno’s life’s work. “Over the past 30 years, I’ve learned so much about how we can create a healthy girl culture and give them a very different version of what their adolescence can mean—one that is grounded in their power,” Muno said. She envisions a world where community interventions center girls as change agents. Since, “I wear two hats – that of a mother and a girls’ advocate,” Muno said, this work serves the dual purpose of addressing the harms of the past while aiming to prevent future harm.
Muno and her family have lived in Madrona for the past 30 years. They have two daughters, Bella and Lena, that were born in Seattle. And two daughters, Betelhem and Adanech, that were born in Ethiopia and adopted after losing both of their birth parents. The girls are all grown now, but the family values their time in the neighborhood: attending Madrona K8 and Garfield High School, walking to the grocery store, visiting the local parks, and even hearing Amharic along the way. “There are too many things to count when it comes to how much I cherish where we live,” Muno said.
While raising her four daughters, Muno was building the Justice for Girls* Coalition of Washington State. “Countless lessons gleaned from my work had a profound impact on our home life and establishing a healthy girl culture was a daily commitment,” Muno said. According to the organization’s website, the vision is to make our state “a leader in offering practices, programs, and policies tailored for girls facing adversity so they can overcome obstacles, access opportunities, and secure a purposeful future.”
Powerful Girls: Raising Strong, Just, and Compassionate Young Womenis an invaluable guide to cultivating powerful, compassionate young women by nurturing confidence, identity, and a passion for justice. In the book, Muno reconnects with fifteen young women who had participated in the Powerful Voices program and discovered that the eight essential powers they had developed in their girlhood groups decades earlier were still vibrant forces in their adult lives today. The shared conversations stressed the urgency to ensure that younger sisters, neighbors, and coworkers developed and asserted these same powers. With the additional caution that not intentionally sharing these powers is the equivalent of “sisterhood malpractice.”
Later this year: on October 25, Justice for Girls is launching the 5K. Held on the International Day of the Girl, participants are invited to join a worldwide movement addressing gender inequity and celebrating girls’ achievements and potential here in Washinton state. For more information or to become a Team Lead, contact justiceforgirls.wa@gmail.com
*Justice for Girls uses the term “girls” inclusively, referring to cisgender girls, transgender girls, gender non-conforming youth, genderqueer, and any girl-identified youth. They foster a collaborative and open environment where feedback is encouraged and consider racial equity, youth voice, and ally-ship the fabric of their work. More information at https://www.jfgcoalition.org/