Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship

Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship
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Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship is a book by Aimee Meredith Cox. It is set in Detroit homeless shelter and focuses on how young Black women chose to contest stereotypes, critique, and analyze their society's position. They look to find ways to overcome racism, gender violence, and poverty, consequently allowing them to dream of a better future and see themselves positively. This essay is a critical analysis of chapter five of the book titled The Move Experiment.
According to Aimee Meredith Cox, black youths living along the poverty lines are under siege. She feels that most of the time, when people hear black youths' experiences, they assume the focus is on boys and young men. Understandably, young men find it hard to be a working part of society. Their underperformance results from incarceration, absentee fathers, racial profiling, police brutality, and the public education crisis. Cox tries to drive across that young black girls are rarely mentioned unless it's as victims of the black men or why black men have it so hard. Cox uses her book to illuminate the factors and circumstances affecting black girls in the United States. Chapter five, in particular, discusses the Move Experiment and Blacklight Project.
The Move Experiment was a shelter project where residents were hired and trained to develop and lead creative writing and self-care workshops. Young black girls hired as peer educators managed to move the program outside by leveraging the performance, community engagement, and political engagement. The move experiment and Blacklight Project was all about reclaiming oneself through aesthetics, choreographed movements, and the body. It helped the young girls to reevaluate their assumptions regarding their position as young and adult women in society. Consequently, the program offered a safe space for young black girls to tell their stories and aspirations in life.
Cox shares the perspectives of five girls who possess the underlay desire to identify themselves. Self-definition was an integral part of the process of defining the parameters of The Move Experiment. As they identify themselves, all girls except Ashley use their bodies and racial identity as an identifier. For Rachael, her full figure is very much the center of her description. She calls herself pretty and...