Mothering Brooklyn
Signs, sexuality, and gentrification under cover
This paper examines how Brooklyn retail signage represents how gentrifying women struggle for claiming space in public and the way
in which different intersectional identity formations are used and implicated in transforming urban space. In exploring different
ethnographic dimensions to retail storefronts, we show how women, many of whom are college-educated, married, and new mothers,
play a significant role in redefining Brooklyn and cultural norms of motherhood more broadly. Yet, as newly arriving women
emerge as key players in the gentrification project, they experience backlash against their public roles. We explore how women
also employ race, inequality, and patriarchal notions of heteronormative sexuality as a cover for their public challenges to
patriarchal power. Drawing on visual ethnography, interviews, and digital archival material we argue that the ambiguity of word
play accomplishes both the pushing of normative boundaries as well as the protective cover of public meanings.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Theory, method and two types of Brooklyn signage
- 3.“New School” mothers, language and gentrification
- 4.Mitigating gendered public space with word play
- 5.Discussion: Girls, girls, girls!
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
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