The autobiographical essays in The Girls in My Town create an unforgettable portrait of a family in Los Angeles. From her grandmother’s childhood to her own girlhood, to the present, Angela Morales contemplates moments of loss and longing, truth and beauty, motherhood and daughterhood. She remembers fighting for equal rights for girls as a sixth grader, calling the cops when her parents fought, and to Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman,” the soundtrack of her parents’ divorce. Poignant, serious, and funny, Morales’s book is both a coming-of-age story and an exploration of how a writer discovers her voice.