Girls Who Persist: Girls, Literature for Girls, and the Politics of Persistence

In February 2017, Senator Elizabeth Warren was admonished, silenced, and removed from the floor of the US Senate during then-Senator Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearings for the position of Attorney General. During the hearings, Warren attempted to read a letter written by Coretta Scott King in 1986, in which King protested Sessions’ nomination for a federal judgeship, to demonstrate that Sessions’ judicial record had long been questioned. Senator Mitch McConnell, in his then position as Senate Majority Leader, cut Warren’s speech short, citing a rule that forbids Senators from “demeaning” one another (Victor). McConnell stated, “Senator Warren was giving a lengthy speech. She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted” (“Senate” S855). While McConnell clearly intended to silence Warren, his admonishment had the reverse effect. As Washington Post Correspondent Amy B. Wang notes, women “bristled at the sentiment – essentially, to sit down and stop talking – and noted it was hardly unfamiliar to them.” Indeed, McConnell’s final sentence – “Nevertheless, she persisted” – immediately became a feminist rallying cry. Together with its accompanying hashtags “#ShePersisted” and “#LetLizSpeak,” that three word sentence – “Nevertheless, she persisted” – rapidly spread around the world, described by Daniel Victor of the New York Times “as a hash-tag ready motto for women at the ready to break barriers.” As Megan Garber observed in The Atlantic, the sentence “was applied to images of not just Warren and King, but also of Harriet Tubman, Malala Yousafzai, Beyoncé, and Emmeline Pankhurst, and Gabby Giffords, and Michelle Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and even Princess Leia. It accompanied tags that celebrated #TheResistance.” Although he intended to reprimand Warren for violating an obscure Senate rule, McConnell inadvertently