Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession

“[A] deliciously dry, moody essay collection” about America’s obsession with violence against women is “a lyrical meditation” (Carina Chocano, New York Times Book Review).

In this poignant collection, Alice Bolin examines iconic American works from the essays of Joan Didion and James Baldwin to Twin Peaks, Britney Spears, and Serial, illuminating the widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster men’s stories. Smart and accessible, thoughtful and heartfelt, Bolin investigates the implications of our cultural fixations, and her own role as a consumer and creator.

Bolin chronicles her life in Los Angeles, dissects the Noir, revisits her own coming of age, and analyzes stories of witches and werewolves, both appreciating and challenging the narratives we construct and absorb every day. Dead Girls begins by exploring the trope of dead women in fiction, and ends by interrogating the more complex dilemma of living women – both the persistent injustices they suffer and the oppression that white women help perpetrate.

“Bracing and blazingly smart.” —Megan Abbott, Edgar Award–winning author of You Will Know Me

“The cultural criticism serves to help us all think a little bit more about what we’re consuming—and who’s being damaged by it.” —Entertainment Weekly

“[A] sharp-eyed book of essays.” —Washington Post

“Wise and wonderful.” —Robin Wasserman, author of Girls on Fire

“Engrossing . . . eerily enthralling, systematically on point, and quite funny . . . An illuminating study on the role women play in the media and in their own lives.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Smart, thorough, and urgent, Bolin’s essays are a force to be reckoned with.” —Booklist

© 2018 Mariner Books (Audiobook): 9780062880529
© 2023 William Morrow Paperbacks (Ebook): 9780062657169

Release date

Audiobook: June 26, 2018
Ebook: November 21, 2023