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Shapeshifters
Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship | Aimee Meredith Cox
6 posts | 3 read | 5 to read
In Shapeshifters Aimee Meredith Cox explores how young Black women in a Detroit homeless shelter contest stereotypes, critique their status as partial citizens, and negotiate poverty, racism, and gender violence to create and imagine lives for themselves. Based on eight years of fieldwork at a local shelter for women and girls, Cox shows how the shelter's residents—who range in age from fifteen to twenty-two—employ strategic methods she characterizes as choreography to disrupt the social hierarchies and prescriptive narratives that work to marginalize them. Among these are dance and poetry, which residents learn in shelter workshops. These outlets for performance and self-expression, Cox shows, are key to the residents exercising their agency, while their creation of alternative family structures demands a rethinking of notions of care, protection, and love. Cox also uses these young women's experiences to tell larger stories of Detroit's history, the Great Migration, deindustrialization, the politics of respectability, and the construction of Black girls and women as social problems. With Shapeshifters Cox gives a voice to young Black women who find creative and non-normative solutions to the problems that come with being young, Black, and female in America.
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lilpumpkin2.0

Here is the summary: The author explores how young Balck women in a Detroit homeless shelter contest stereotypes, critique their status as partial citizens, and negotiate poverty, racism and gender violence to create and imagine lives for themselves.

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lilpumpkin2.0
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Pickpick

I have to read this book as assigned reading for my CRES 110. CRES 110 stands for Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. Obviously the book says it all. I have only read the intro but will update and possibly add a blurb or quote that i choose. In addition to reading the introduction i have to turn in Reading Notes that basically dissect the book. I still have to read Chapters 1,2,4 and then ill be able to give an honest review. Stay tuned!!

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Purrfectpages
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Books about shapes, all waiting in my TBR pile. Two books have cats on the cover! Can't be coincidence! Anyone check any of these out yet? #junebookbugs #ashapeinthetitle

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ReadosaurusText
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Pickpick

I ended up being glad that this book got recalled to the library, because it made me move this brilliant scholarship on how Black young women navigate citizenship up my To Read list. The author strikes an excellent balance of scholarly but accessible writing; she is a real storyteller and her voice is a perfect guide through the experiences of the Black girls whose stories and social choreographies she brings to our attention.

9 likes1 stack add
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Greerham
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Pickpick

This book is the best book I've read all year. Aimee Meredith Cox explores how Black girls and women navigate their lives and their community in a beautiful and inspirational manner. This book is a must read!

4 likes2 stack adds
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Greerham

"We are BlackLight. We take back the world Black and the way it has been used to describe all things bad, secret, broke-down, and ugly and combine it with Light to describe the reality of blackness as an illuminator. BlackLight is the truth that darkness reveals..." (P.222)