J Girls

<p><b>Jocelyn Jodie Jennifer Jacqui Joelle.</b><b> Ignoring the optimistic advice of elders these five working-class teens in the Rust Belt band together in their embrace of bad behavior and poor taste as they navigate sexuality and identity with loud-mouthed joy and clear-eyed cynicism.</b><br /> <br />Winner of the 2021 Blue Light Books Prize Rochelle Hurt's <i>The J Girls: A Reality Show</i> is a tribute to the grit and glitter of millennial girlhood and a testament to its dangers and traumas. Hurt's creative genre-bending mix of poetry fiction and screenplay brings the girls to life with campy performances of monologues soap opera clips mock interviews talk shows commercials and even burlesque. Vulgar rhapsodic language serves as costume and shield allowing the J Girls to script their own images and project glowing outsized versions of themselves into the safe space of the TV screen. <br /><br />Playful and poignant <i>The J Girls</i> is a flashy ode to performance and a nostalgic elegy for adolescent friendships.</p>