“An ambitious and exciting book that examines representations of what could be considered tomboys, in U.S. fiction and film, since 1859. The scope is impressive: Abate has done a great deal of archival research to unearth the titles she examines and cites many relevant theoretical and critical texts.”-Beverly Lyon Clark, Wheaton College

Acknowledgements 
Introduction: From Antebellum Hoyden to Millennial Girl Power; The Unwritten History (and Hidden History) of Tomboyism in the United States 
1. The White Tomboy Launches a Gender Backlash: E.D.E.N. Southworth's The Hidden Hand 
2. The Tomboy Becomes a Cultural Phenomenon: Louisa May Alcott's Little Women 
3. The Tomboy Matures Into the New Woman: Sarah Orne Jewett's A Country Doctor 
4. The Tomboy is Reinvented an the Exercise Enthusiast: Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland 
5. The Tomboy Becomes the All-Americanizing Girl: Willa Cather's O Pioneers! and My Antonia 
6. The Tomboy Shifts From Feminist to Flapper: Clara Bow in Victor Fleming's Hula 
7. The Tomboy Turns Freakishly Queer and Queerly Freakish: Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding 
8. The Tomboy Becomes the "Odd Girl Out": Ann Bannon's Women in the Shadows 
9. The Tomboy Returns to Hollywood: Tatum O'Neal in Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon 
Selected Bibliography 
Works Cited 
Index 
Photographs follow page 144