Growing Up Berkeley: Changes and Choices

At that critical juncture in a teenage girl's life, when she is about to enter high school and has fallen in love for the first time, Lilly Autumn Matthews' life suddenly changes in unexpected ways. She realizes that she needs to make some changes of her own. Otherwise, in the words of Bob Dylan, she is in danger of sinking like a stone. Or, as her hippy best friend, Hope, warns her, if she doesn't learn to speak up, according to Simon and Garfunkel, she could become an island. Or worse, she could be swept away in silence. For a shy person, speaking up to defend your rights after your grandmother moves in and you're forced to share a room with your French fashion freak sister, let alone having to make new friends because your one and only best friend is moving away, is a challenge. But when Lilly writes her first high school history report on the 1964 Free Speech Movement that took place twenty-one years ago at Cal Berkeley, only two miles from her house and in which her parents participated, she finds the courage to stand up for herself and for who she is. It might be the mid-eighties, but Lilly is determined to be as tough and as outspoken as the youth of the sixties.