Hello!! YELL-Oh Girls!, an anthology of young Asian girl writers, ages fifteen to twenty-two, is one of the best collections of writing I have ever read. The full title of the anthology, published just last year, is Yell-Oh Girls!: Emerging Voices Explore Culture, Identity, and Growing Up Asian American, edited by a former managing producer at AsianAvenue.com and news team coordinator at Teen People, Vickie Nam. As an Asian chica and writer who is a decade older than some of these grrrls turning ink into weapon, I was blown away by the eloquence, creativity, sass, wit, and sheer nerve of these precocious young female writers who humbled and inspired me at the same time. Perhaps, the reason why I took so long to actually read the eighty-six total pieces of writing, whether they be essay or spoken work or letter unsent or political manifesto or true story or fictionalized truth or satire or analysis, is the fact that I had to pause at the power of the words that directly related to my own experience growing up Asian American in the "Little India" suburb of Edison, New Jersey.

Those South Asians, who may be concerned that YELL-Oh Girls will not represent their experiences as ‘brown girls,’ need not worry. While the anthology consists of writings predominantly by East Asians, plenty of fierce South Asian female writers, such as Anjali Nath ("Marvin Gaye/The Trials of Being"), Diya Gullapalli ("Funny Girl"), Kamala Nair ("Learning to Love My Skin"), Niru Jayaraman ("My First Film"), and Rupal Patel ("Coalition Building Among People of Color") are included, as is a roundtable discussion transcript, "Who We Are: South Asian Girls Speak Out."

YELL-Oh Girls! feels so familiar to me, and yet so new. The themes that the anthology structures itself around are blueprints of my own life; I know them so well that they almost seem cliché. And yet, to read the voices of these young women writers who speak at a period in their lives when others may keep diaries secret, is an adventurous frontier in itself–there is nothing passé about it. But, YELL-Oh Girls! goes far beyond revealing the autobiographical; the anthology journeys from childhood memories to critical analysis of cultural identity confusion to activist in-your-face-Asian rebellion than I was unable to initiate as a thirteen- year-old constantly harassed by my white classmates. YELL-Oh Girls! is a tribute to how far the second-generation Asian girl has come along.

Impressively, each piece of writing of this anthology is strong, and here begins a kaleidoscope. The anthology gives each writer’s name followed by her age and her hometown in the U.S. June Kim, 19, Pacific Palisades, California, writes: "Hearing English words mixed with native tongues/Tasting foods loaded with thick flavor and warm spices…To accept a blend of opposites…" Jennifer Sa-rlang Kim, 20, Glen Mills, Pennsylvania turns the tables on a woman who asks where she is from: "Where are You From?/a sweet/elderly/German-Polish/woman/inquires/Glen Mills./oh,/but/Where are you/Really from?…" Sarah Chang, 17, Douglaston, New York in her piece, "Watching America with a Coke" gives us a new twist to Jack Keroac’s On The Road. Gloria Ang, 21, Davis, California visits Angel Island, where Chinese-Americans were detained and interrogated by the government from 1910 to 1940–the haunting scenario echoes again in 2002 with Arab American immigrant detentions by the INS. Elena Cabatu, 21, Hilo, Hawaii wants to tell you "Paradise Ain’t Shit So Why Don’t You Jus’ Shut Yoa’ Mout’."

The slices of life I take from these writings are from just the very beginning of the anthology. I could go on, but to take a real journey–and you don’t need to be Asian to discover this journey–I suggest that you take up YELL-Oh Girls! for yourself. These young women writers break all the stereotypes about the meek Asian role model citizen. Her revolution has begun.

Alpa Patel is a multi-media artist who writes erotic poetry, started a `brown girl` comics strip, and made a short movie, Love Stinks, to be shown at the Women of Color Film Festival held at the University of Santa Cruz this April. She is a graduate student in Media Studies at the New School in Manhattan.