63 pages • 2 hours read
The Girls Who Grew Big
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide features depictions of racism and pregnancy termination.
The Transformative Power of Motherhood
The Girls Who Grew Big portrays young motherhood as a transformative experience that forges a new, powerful identity. Mottley carefully examines the instinctual realities of being a young mother, arguing that this role can be a source of strength, purpose, and self-knowledge despite society’s snap judgments. This reframing is established in the novel’s epigraph from Camille Dungy, which speaks of reintroducing “myself to myself, this time a mother” (vii).
The centrality of unconventional visions of motherhood becomes apparent in the opening scene as Simone gives birth to her twins in the back of a pickup truck, physically and symbolically removed from the judgment she fears to endure in a hospital. When faced with cutting the umbilical cords, she rejects her boyfriend Tooth’s dirty pocketknife and declares, “I’ll bite it” (5). This raw, decisive action marks the moment when she truly “became a mother” (5). Her willingness to sever the cords with her teeth illustrates an authority derived directly from the maternal experience, starkly contrasting with Tooth’s repulsion and helplessness. For Simone, motherhood begins as a radical act of self-reliance as she boldly defines her new identity on her own terms.
With Adela’s entry into the narrative, the author tackles the first part of the journey toward motherhood, complete with the uncertainties and ambiguities involved when a woman is unsure of her way. Initially, Adela views her pregnancy as a negative “situation” and sees her transfer to Padua Beach as a form of exile. She even perceives the other young mothers as “ruthless” and fears the prospect of becoming like them. However, as her pregnancy progresses and she is drawn into their circle, her perspective shifts dramatically, and the external scorn from her parents and the town gives way to an internal sense of belonging and eventual acceptance of her new role. The shame of being a pregnant teenager is slowly replaced by the strength she finds within the community of the Girls, and her shift in perspective suggests that the shared experience of motherhood can help women to forge an identity more resilient than the one dictated by societal stigmas.
Found Family as a Remedy for Rejection
In The Girls Who Grew Big, the young protagonists are so intensely ostracized by their families and society that they turn to each other to forge a found family and seek mutual support. In a world that shames and isolates them for their youth and pregnancies, this chosen family functions as a vital system of survival, solidarity, and resistance against judgment. The group finds its physical and symbolic home in Simone’s red pickup truck, a mobile sanctuary that stands in opposition to the homes and families that have rejected them.
The formation of this alternative kinship network is rooted in the women’s shared vulnerability and their need for a space that remains free from condemnation. The community, known colloquially as “the Girls,” begins when a girl named Lucille approaches Simone at the dune lake to confess her pregnancy. This act, born from a “yearning to release” (9) her shame, establishes the group’s foundation, and as more pregnant teens rally around the core members, the group grows large enough to develop a collective personality of its own, offering each new Girl a safe space in which to vent her concerns, learn vital skills, and learn to embrace her imminent motherhood.
This found family provides essential support that their traditional families have denied them. This dynamic is firmly established in the book’s first few chapters, and Emory’s narrative vividly illustrates the social injustices involved. In her case, she must also content with her white family’s racist attitudes toward her Black boyfriend, Jayden. Her grandparents’ scorn for her decision to have a child with him fuels their ongoing verbal and emotional abuse, and when Emory’s grandmother declines to help her breastfeed, she weaponizes her disapproval by saying, “I’m teachin’ you to not go around openin’ your legs to any colored boy who walks by” (26). Desperate for anyone who might help her to properly care for her child, Emory seeks out the Girls for guidance. When Simone steps in to help Emory without judgment, her practical knowledge and encouragement counter the grandmother’s shaming and enable Emory to care for her son. This moment of solidarity and empowerment sets the stage for the many challenges to come in the novel, indicating that no matter what happens, this unique haven of like-minded women will band together to help each other amid the social censure and judgment that makes their lives so difficult. Even the leader of the group learns to lean on the strength of the family she created, for when Simone later decides to terminate a pregnancy, the Girls collectively support her decision and hold a vigil through the process. Mottley thus portrays this chosen family as a more resilient and affirming form of kinship forged in resistance to a hostile world.
Reconnecting with the Healing Power of the Land
The Girls Who Grew Big explores how the marginalized geography of the Florida Panhandle shapes identity and invites external judgment, but the narrative also reclaims that same landscape as a site of subversive resilience and community. Through the scrappy, resourceful community of the Girls, the novel transforms a setting often dismissed as a cultural and economic wasteland into a source of strength, beauty, and belonging. Although the Girls’ primary conflicts are focused on their relationships with their children, their families, and each other, these dramas take place against the broader geographical backdrop of the Florida Panhandle. Ultimately, each of the Girls must decide the extent to which she will embrace or escape Padua Beach, striking a personal balance between cherishing its nurturing coastal landscape and challenging its cultural limitations.
In her opening monologue, Simone directly links the prejudice against young mothers to the national disdain for her home state, declaring that “teen moms, like Florida, are the country’s favorite scapegoat” (6). This parallel frames Padua Beach as a microcosm of societal scorn toward young mothers, and Adela’s initial perspective reinforces the intense yet intangible aura of judgment that surrounds the Girls. Still smarting over having been exiled from her privileged suburban life in Indianapolis, Adela regards the impoverished town of Padua Beach as “the last stop on a trip to hell” (13), seeing it as a fitting punishment for her pregnancy. Her condescending view of the locals and her fear of the Girls reflect the typical outsider’s gaze that has defined the region’s reputation as a place of failure and transgression.
However, the novel subverts this external judgment by portraying the natural landscape of Florida as a source of solace, ritual, and power for the Girls. While Adela initially sees only a “wasteland” (13), the Girls find sanctuary in their environment. The dune lake, a unique ecosystem where freshwater meets the sea, becomes a sacred, communal space that bears witness to their deepest crises and their most triumphant moments. It is where they wash their clothes, baptize their children, and form their community, beginning with Lucille’s confession of her pregnancy to Simone. Over time, even Adela comes to see the value of this unique space, finding an unlooked-for source of healing and redemption among these resilient, evolving young women.
As each character undergoes dramatic inner development, the near-sentient presence of the ocean bears witness to the Girls’ struggles, appearing in the narrative as a “grandiose, endless, pure” (21) force that both humbles and empowers them. Images of waves, water, and the pull of the tides soon permeate the entire narrative, imbuing each scene with the heady scent of sea salt and the earthy overtones of the Girls’ frank talk and stark truths. By rooting their collective identity and rituals in these natural spaces, the characters reclaim their rural Florida home as a place of intrinsic beauty and spiritual significance, challenging the social norms of Padua Beach merely by continuing to raise their children alongside those who have cast them out in every way that matters. With these aspects of the novel, Mottley reframes the marginalized setting of the coastal Panhandle as the very source of the Girls’ resilience, celebrating the power and dignity that can be found in the in-between places that the world has chosen to forget.
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