New York: Anchor Books / Doubleday, (1996) dj. Hardcover first edition - Journalist Gini Sikes spent a year hanging out with girl gangs in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and San Antonio, and the result is a "vivid, honest portraits of gang girls - too long ignored - which raises themes that are crucial to all young women: power and loss, self-determination and constraint, violence, despair, and ultimately, hope." (Peggy Orenstein) Girl gang members are in fact often as emotionally closed off and dangerous as their male counterparts, but among the differences are abortion, teen pregnancy and teen motherhood, endless beatings and the humiliation of being forced to have sex with a lineup of male gangbangers during initiation, haphazardly raising kids in a household of drugs and guns with a part-time boyfriend off gangbanging himself. Author's note. xxv, 276 pp. ISBN: 0-385474318.