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This selection from Donna Tartt’s essay “Basketball Season” centers on her time as a high school cheerleader. The social dynamics of the cheerleading squad, Tartt found, resembled books like 1984 and Animal Farm, which she had been assigned to read that year.
“Though there was a sharp distinction between the older girls and the younger ones, we were also divided, throughout our ranks and regardless of age, into two distinct categories: those of snob and slut.”
Photograph: “Three Cheers,” from user Clotho98 (2014) via Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0