Hood Feminism Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot - Mikki Kendall Page 0,3

practical purposes, between the university warning students away from engaging with the neighborhood and the lack of information about how someone could even begin to access the opportunities that the university offered to people who weren’t us, the ivory tower might as well have been the moon. Getting a job as a caregiver, as a custodian, or in a dining facility was relatively transparent, but as for accessing anything else? There was no clear path. The feminism at the University of Chicago on offer to the low-income Black women living in the neighborhood might as well have been a scene from The Help. The idea that we might have greater aspirations than to serve the needs of those born into a higher socioeconomic level didn’t seem to be more than a fleeting thought for most; for a very few who were committed to a sense of equity, access came with the price of respectability. It was like getting the proverbial Golden Ticket of Willy Wonka fame, only the odds were probably better at the Chocolate Factory.

Hyde Park has gone through a lot of changes, for the better in terms of services as the population grows, and financially for the worse as gentrification means the housing prices are going up and pushing out the very people who need those services the most. Resources for residents are pouring in as many long-term residents are being forced out. Currently, the university is slightly more welcoming to locals, but is still primarily interested in being accessible to those who are (or aspire to be) middle class or wealthy. I don’t know how the new Hyde Park will engage with the locals who remain the working poor, but so far all signs point to heavier policing and a complete lack of interest in maintaining the area as mixed race and mixed income.

These days, although Postcollege Me is welcome and has, in fact, spoken several times at the University of Chicago, I doubt that the girl I was would be able to even see the ivory tower, because gentrification would have forced me so far away from this beautiful area. It wasn’t until I went to college at the University of Illinois that I really engaged with feminist texts as things that were meant to provide guidance and not simply to be part of the same literary canon as all the other books in the library that reflected a world I had not been able to access. There were some exceptions, but so many feminist texts were clearly written about girls like me, instead of by girls like me. By the time I reached a place to engage with feminism versus womanism—the former being paying more lip service than actual service to equality, the latter being closer but still not inclusive enough of people who were engaged in sex work, in vice, as a way to pay the bills and as a way of life—neither felt like they fit me or my goals completely. Girls like me seemed to be the object of the conversations and not full participants, because we were a problem to be solved, not people in our own right.

This book is about the health of the community as a whole, with a specific focus on supporting the most vulnerable members. It will focus largely on the experiences of the marginalized, and address the issues faced by most women, instead of the issues that only concern a few—as has been the common practice of feminists to date—because tackling those larger issues is key to equality for all women.

This book will explain how poor women struggling to put food on the table, people in inner cities fighting to keep schools open, and rural populations fighting for the most basic of choices about their bodies are feminist concerns, and should be centered in this movement. I will delve into why, even when these issues are covered, the focus is rarely on those most severely impacted. For example, when we talk about rape culture the focus is often on potential date rape of suburban teens, not the higher rates of sexual assault and abuse faced by Indigenous American and Alaskan women. Assault of sex workers, cis and trans, is completely obscured because they aren’t the “right” kind of victims. Feminism in the hood is for everyone, because everyone needs it.

SOLIDARITY IS STILL FOR WHITE WOMEN

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