Our Red Book: Intimate Histories of Periods, Growing & Changing

Summary

A collection of essays, oral histories, and artworks about periods and coming of age, compiled by the editor of the New York Times bestselling anthology My Little Red Book.

In 2009, right after Rachel Kauder Nalebuff graduated high school, she decided to take a year off before attending college. She spent that year asking people—family members, artists, writers—about their first periods. She heard from her great aunt, who got her first period while on a train fleeing Nazi-occupied Poland. She heard from artists. She heard from celebrities. The stories, many of which had never been shared before, poured out of people, and Rachel decided to compile an anthology of these first period stories. She was able to wrangle an impressive list of contributors, including Gloria Steinem, Cecily von Ziegesar, Joyce Maynard, and more, turning their stories into the New York Times bestselling book My Little Red Book.

Now, more than a decade later, Rachel is returning with an even deeper and more expansive exploration of menstruation and coming of age, taking you through first periods and beyond. With ten essays from the original anthology—including from Gloria Steinem and Judy Blume—and more than seventy new pieces from Reyna Grande, Madame Gandhi, Sarah Ruhl, RL Stein, Trinidad Escobar, and others, and with Rachel’s own voice as a guide, A Small Flood peels back the physical, emotional, and cultural layers of growing up. The result is a people’s history of menstruation, told through a multitude of perspectives and identities that span the globe.