Urban Black Women and the Politics of Resistance (Politics of Intersectionality)

Contemporary urban spaces are critical sites of resistance for black women. By focusing on the spatial aspects of political resistance of black women in Newark's Central Ward, this book provides new ways of understanding the complex dynamics and innovative political practices within major American cities. Activist women devote their lives to creating and sustaining clothing exchanges, sister-circles, rites of passage programs and other open and progressive spaces of struggle. In so doing, they transform blighted cityscapes into culturally symbolic homeplaces that nurture the life chances, leadership capacity of political efficacy of an emerging generation of activists. By documenting their political commitments and transformative projects, Isoke demonstrates how black women challenge, resist and transform converging systems of domination that circumscribe their lives.