Although the title of this novel might suggest that it has an urban setting, it is actually set in Hammond, a town in upstate New York not far from Lake Ontario. The members of the girl gang are not bound by some sort of shared ethnic or racial identity. Instead, they all come from lower-class, dysfunctional families at a time when the suburban family was beginning to be established as the national ideal. The point of the story seems to be that although this girl gang is in many ways an anomaly, the experiences that lead the girls to join the gang are much more commonplace than mainstream American society generally wishes to acknowledge in the period in which the novel is set.
Margaret Ann “Legs” Sadovsky is the leader of the gang, the members of which tattoo each other with a flame.
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Citation: Kich, Martin. "Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 July 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12196, accessed 18 October 2024.]
