Introduction
1 The Social World of Inner City Girls
2 "It's Not Where You Live, It's How You Live"
3 "Ain't I A Violent Person?"
4 "Love Make You Fight Crazy"
Conclusion: The Other Side of the Crisis
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Subtitle: African
American Girls and Inner City Violence Author:
Nikki Jones Subject:Sociology,
Criminology,
Gender
Studies Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-4615-5 Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-4614-8 Pages:
224 pages Publication Date: December2009 Series:
Series in Childhood
Studies
Listen to Nikki Jones on a segment on KPFK's "Some
Of Us Are Brave" (Saturday, March 20, 2010)
Praise for Between
Good and Ghetto
"This book adds
invaluable information and analysis to the
gowing debate on the violence perpetrated by girls, and the
ethnographic method is exactly what is needed to further the question
of whether today's girls--particularly those most marginalized due to
class, race and neighborhood--are more violent."—Joanne Belknap, author of The Invisible Woman: Gender,
Crime, & Justice
"Nikki Jones' sharp, detailed
investigation of the way fighting, on the street and in school, shapes
the lives of young African American women combines shrewd analytical
insight and clear evocative language to give readers an understanding
of what it costs a “good girl” to stay good, and what happens to those
who “go for bad.”—Howard S.
Becker, Author of Outsiders and
Writing for Social Scientists
"Between Good and
Ghetto is an expertly written and fascinating ethnography of
the
gendered racial dimensions of violence in the inner city. Jones does an
excellent job in communicating [the] strength and sensitivity [of her
subjects] to her readers while, simultaneously, producing a work of
tremendous insight and immense sociological imagination."—Contemporary
Sociology
"A
very compelling account of daily life as experienced by poor, urban,
African
American adolescent girls. Recommended."—Choice
Description:
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”—the 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.
About the Author:
NIKKI JONES is an assistant professor
in the department of
sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
