Vivian's mother was a high school student in the 1990s. A determined Riot Grrrl, she stuck out and acted out in her high school football-obsessed Texas town. A junior at the same school her mother attended, Viv's high school experience is very similar to that of her mother's. But Viv, unlike her mother, generally keeps her head down and avoids making waves.
Then, football star and all-around jerk Mitchell Wilson starts picking on the new girl: Lucy is mid-answer in English class when Mitchell "coughs": " 'Make me a sandwich.' " That particular instance is not enough to get Viv to act, but it opens her eyes a little wider. The T-shirts ("Great legs--when do they open?"), dress code checks only for female students, "bump 'n' grabs" and the annual March Madness bracket to decide "East Rockport's Most F*ckable" female push Viv over the edge.
Getting the idea from her mother's Riot Grrrl days, Viv creates Moxie, a feminist zine, and passes it out anonymously. As the egregious acts of misogyny continue, the girls in the school begin to band together and Moxie becomes a movement.
Mathieu's girl revolution reads true. Viv stumbles into her feminism, wary of the "f" word and held down by societal pressures to be good. The steps taken by the young women of East Rockport are hesitant and sometimes confused as they work within their established social structures, no one wanting to be singled out, no one wanting to get in trouble. And through this organic process of finding and bonding with other young women, Viv also begins to see her whiteness and how it oppresses. Moxie is a work of solidarity, a call for change and a righteously enjoyable story of grrrl power. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness