Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence

by Nikki Jones

With an outward gaze focused on a better future, Between Good and Ghetto reflects the social world of inner city African American girls and how they manage threats of personal violence. Drawing on personal encounters, traditions of urban ethnography, Black feminist thought, gender studies, and feminist criminology, Nikki Jones gives readers a richly descriptive and compassionate account of how African American girls negotiate schools and neighborhoods governed by the so-called "code of the street"ùthe form of street justice that governs violence in distressed urban areas. She reveals the multiple strategies they use to navigate interpersonal and gender-specific violence and how they reconcile the gendered dilemmas of their adolescence. Illuminating struggles for survival within this group, Between Good and Ghetto encourages others to move African American girls toward the center of discussions of "the crisis" in poor, urban neighborhoods.

Genres: Nonfiction, Race, Feminism, Social Justice, Academic, Womens, Ethnography

228 pages, Paperback

First published October 20, 2009

Reviews

[kitkat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another book I had to read for my Race, Class, and Gender Course. It was really illuminating. Everything I had heard about inner-city neighborhoods up until I read this were told from the male perspective. This provided a much needed qualitative analysis on the female experience. Jones uses case studies and anecdotes to create a nuanced depiction of what it is like to be a Black female in these communities.

[Manda]

Good read. If you want to understand what is happening with girls today, this is the book.It takes a complex story of girl on girl violence and makes it understandable to us all.

[May · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended for people interested in ethnographies, intersectionality, race and/or gender issues, urban sociology, and inner-city violence.

[Nadine · Rating 5 out of 5]

A much needed examination into the lives of Black girls and the inner-city experiences that shape them. Jones lets the girls tell their own stories about their lives, their decisions, and their daily struggles all the while encompassing a rich sociological tradition of top quality ethnographic research. She brings to light the importance of focusing our lens on this important - but all too ignored - group and shows how they navigate deeply troubling structural circumstances to survive. This book is accessible even to non-academics, although the academic analysis is top notch. Like all good research, it raises more questions than it answers, but one thing it most definitely does is point to the need for immediate action in these communities and for the sake of these girls (and their families). Appropriate for graduate level classes or advanced undergrad classes in criminology, sociology, public policy, and urban studies (and I would argue also urban education). But this is also a high quality methodological piece, and Jones' appendix is a rich resource for those interested in better understanding the process of ethnography and qualitative research in general. I highly recommend this book for both scholars and those interested in making the world a better place.

[Rizzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for a class during my anthropology degree. I've only just now remembered to put it on my list (5 years later, oops).

It's unusual to read an ethnography of a culture not very distant from your own. Most of them deal with far off tribes or unusual foreign social structures. But here we have the same type of methodology applied to the people right next door, and it almost feels just as foreign. I was genuinely surprised by a lot of this book's conclusions. It shed light on just how ignorant one tends to be when it comes to vulnerable groups of people. Just about every assumption one might make about these girls turns out to be far more complicated (as human problems tend to be). I recommend it for anyone looking to expand their knowledge on an area that your brain is usually persuading you to not think about.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nikki Jones's ethnographic study of young Black women and girls in Philly makes for a fairly easy-to-digest book. As she invokes in the appendix from field researcher Howard Becker: "what is the story?" And ultimately, this is the girls' story. What it takes to navigate a patriarchal world, particularly as poor Black girls, and the negotiations and concessions made.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant and compassionate look at the structural, situational, and interpersonal forces that shape survival and violence for young black girls living in an impoverished inner-city.

[Ms. Online]

Weaving black feminist theory with urban ethnography, Jones intimately describes neighborhoods where women and girls literally fight for their lives. Her study of violence and survival focuses attention on the destitution of inner-city
childhood.

[Allison Greene · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this book is actually a good one for teachers of inner-city schools to read. Some may be able to relate and understand students better after reading this. The book describes the violent and scary world that inner city teens deal with on a daily basis.

[Zakiyyah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read! Explores topics very well

[Mills College Library]

305.23089 J784 2010