Girls Fight Back! | Book Review: Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Publication Date: September 19th, 2017
Is it a part of a series?: No, a Standalone
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary, Feminism
Buy Links: Kinokuniya Malaysia | MPH Online
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Source: Huge thanks to Pansing Distribution for providing me a copy in exchange for an honest review
Rating:

Synopsis

Moxie girls fight back!

Vivian Carter is fed up. Fed up with her small-town Texas high school that thinks the football team can do no wrong. Fed up with sexist dress codes and hallway harassment. But most of all, Viv Carter is fed up with always following the rules.

Viv’s mom was a punk rock Riot Grrrl in the ’90s, so now Viv takes a page from her mother’s past and creates a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates. She’s just blowing off steam, but other girls respond. Pretty soon Viv is forging friendships with other young women across the divides of cliques and popularity rankings, and she realizes that what she has started is nothing short of a girl revolution.

The story follows with Vivian Carter who has been living in East Rockport for her entire life. She is fed up with the boys in football team always get away with everything they do in high school from those who wear a shirt with disgusting words on display while the girls are always about dress code, giving nasty comments, degrading women and worse is school administration not doing anything about it. Hence,  inspired by her mom's Riot Grrrl stuff from the '90s that she decided to do a Moxie zine anonymously for girls to stand up and fight back. Which I think that's super cool!

"This is what it means to be a feminist. Not a humanist or an equalist or whatever. But a feminist. It's not a bad word. After today it might be my favourite word. Because really all it is girls supporting each other and wanting to be treated like human beings in a world that's always find ways to tell them they're not." (Moxie, Jennifer Mathieu)

Vivian is a quiet and shy girl. She rarely speaks in her class, her grandparents have always seen her as a dutiful girl but because of those issues happening at her school, she decided to make a change by creating a Moxie zine for every girl and everyone can be a Moxie girl too. Although, she's afraid at first, however, she's slowly built courage to do more of the zine and there's nothing can stop her from doing it. Vivian is really passionate about to bring justice for all the girls and stand firm on her opinions and decisions. 

Just so you know, it's been a while I'm at lost of words during writing a review because there are so many things to say here but I could not find the right words for it. I'm also afraid I might saying wrong or giving a wrong meaning to you. 

Moxie has really lighted the fire in me and empowered me in every way it has. Moxie is about every girl should support each other and stand together for anything that been set against them. For your information, I have no idea what is a feminist before I read this book and I'm still learning what is it actually means. 

I have to say that Moxie story comes out strong, address a real problem that does happen in our life, all the girls unite no matter what cliques you are in, whether you are a white person or a POC - they are all united (!), and also I like Seth's character on how he is still learning to understand the movement and how he is very supportive of the girl he loves.

All in all, it was an amazing read. I truly enjoy reading and literally excited when all the girls put on bathrobes for the purpose of the dress code check that school made only for the girls but at all means, I'm all excited when all the girls are united. It was great seeing how they support each other and fight together for the injustice that been put on them. I really recommend you to read Moxie.