Abstract
While Aimee Cox in her book Shapeshifters acknowledges that both black girls and black boys suffer from the obstacle of race, Cox maintains that there has been more attention given to studies of black boys than to studies of black girls. Adolescence has not always existed but was a cultural product of extended time in school prior to entry into the work force. Adolescence became the focus of scholars and was seen as problematic and studied from a “fear” point of view. There has been a distinction made between “can-do” girls and “at-risk” girls. The “can-do” girls are successful role models because they have the right attitudes and are leaders in their communities. Black girls who are in a low income bracket have a good possibility of being “at-risk” girls who are unsuccessful and are seen as failures.
Shapeshifters centers on a homeless shelter in Detroit, where Cox studied low-income homeless girls. The shelter, “Fresh Start,” was one of the programs of the major organization “Give Girls a Chance.” Cox had a chance to work in all of the programs sponsored by the organization, holding various positions during her eight-year ethnographic study of girls in the homeless shelter. Her positions ranged from volunteer dance teacher to program coordinator to director and as a worker under contract. Upon entering the organization as a volunteer dance teacher, she introduced herself as a researcher to the girls. During her years of research, from 2000 to 2008, she was able to observe and get to know the staff working for the organization, the girls who participated in the program, and those who were residents of the homeless shelter.
The overarching mission of the organization Give Girls a Chance is to help homeless and high-risk girls and young women avoid violence, teen pregnancy, and exploitation. Give Girls a Chance also helps them explore and access the support, resources, and opportunities necessary to be safe, to grow strong, and to make positive choices in their lives. The goal of the Fresh Start homeless shelter is to provide support, training, and guidance to young women aged 15 to 22 who are homeless. In order to live in the shelter, the girls had to be considered “high-risk.” There were at least a couple of girls who qualified because of overcrowded living conditions in their homes. Besides providing shelter for the homeless, Give Girls a Chance sponsors activities for low-income girls in the Detroit area.
However, Cox’s goal was deeper than simply studying homelessness. She was interested in the dynamics between race, gender, and low-income status and how these variables were read and interpreted by the young homeless black girls. In some ways it seemed that she was trying to bridge the gap between macro and micro levels of analysis. As an anthropologist, she draws on literature addressing culture and invites the reader to go beyond seeing the homeless black girls simply as failures.
Cox describes three success stories of girls who made the transition from homelessness to independent living. One girl made the transition through becoming a student at a local university. Another girl made the transition through gaining skills through the Job Corps. Another girl became a student and eventually became a dance instructor.
Janice was one of the first girls that Cox met when she started doing volunteer work for Give Girls a Chance. Cox had the opportunity of meeting three generations of women from Janice’s family. Her grandmother, Bessie, was among the southern migrants who left Alabama and went to the northern region of the country in pursuit of a better life during what has been called the “Great Migration.” The Great Migration was a time when thousands of African Americans living in the rural south moved to urban northern cities for a better way of life. Jobs with higher wages, better educational opportunities for their children, and enforced voting rights were some of the incentives behind the Great Migration. However, as Cox described Janice’s grandmother’s living conditions, it did not seem that her way of life had improved. When Cox visited Bessie, she could not walk through the front door because the porch to the front door was missing. Instead, everyone who entered the house had to go around and enter the house through the back door. Talking with Bessie, Cox found out that the jobs she had when she first arrived in Detroit were service-sector jobs that did not pay very much.
One of the highlights of the book was when Cox described taking some of the girls from Give Girls a Chance on a trip to a dude ranch in Ohio. Here, the reader gets an inside perspective of the experience from the point of view of the urban participants and their impression of the dude ranch. Most of the girls had never seen a real horse before, and during the trip they had a chance to ride a horse. Cox found that some of the girls enjoyed retelling the story of their dude ranch adventure over and over again. She found significance in this behavior and described the importance to the girls of the “narrative.” She draws upon other stories that are retold over again to further describe the significance of narratives.
Another highlight of the book was the creation of the “Move Experiment,” which was a grant-funded program designed to teach the girls to positively express themselves through dance and poetry. Some of the girls were hired as educators and trainers for the program. Their job was to teach dance movements to the participants. The finale was a show that the girls created and performed, with relatives and others invited to watch.
In terms of what was to blame for the girls’ situation, two factors were apparent in the book. Efforts were made to change some of the behaviors and attitudes of the girls. Cox created a game in which each girl living in the Fresh Start shelter was given “play money.” The girls in the shelter had to pay their money when they misbehaved. She also described the jobs in the area as primarily low-wage service jobs. This structural factor may have been the result of problems in the city associated with deindustrialization.
Cox coins the term “shapeshifters” to describe the practice of young black women reading and responding to evaluations of their social value. Accordingly, black women are, out of necessity, inherently shapeshifters due to issues of race and gender. However, some of the strategies that young black women employ to narrate themselves frequently do nothing more than strengthen the systems of containment in their lives. Cox maintains that the theoretical frame and embodied methodologies that low-income young black women use to read and respond to evaluations of their social value is uncharted territory in the literature.