Yeshiva Girl Stories — Perle Besserman

A collection of linked stories,Yeshiva Girl explores the little-known world of American Orthodox Judaism from a young girl's perspective. A feminist coming-of-age story paralleling the experiences of Chaim Potok's yeshiva boys, Besserman's collection depicts the limited intellectual and social expectations, and stunted future promise, of precocious girl-children like Pnina, who, from her earliest days in a strictly orthodox, all-girl yeshiva (Jewish parochial school) finds herself first questioning, and gradually rebelling against, family constraints as she seeks to forge a new identity in the secular (gentile) world outside her community before ultimately coming to terms with her own.