Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship

Abstract

If there had ever been another time that was this dark, this hot, I could not remember it.The itchiness of the sweaty fabric on the couches sent most of us to the floor.We sprawled out on our backs, faces to the ceiling we could not see.The sticky carpet hardly offered more relief, but it felt good, I think, to take up more space.From the battery-powered boom box, the news commentator told us we were in the middle of what would become known as the Great Northeast Blackout of 2003.It had spread from the East Coast to parts of Ohio and Michigan, he reported, and Detroit was just one of several major urban centers covered in darkness."Who's that?Y'all heard him before."I could make out Janice's 1 silhouette as she propped herself up on her elbows and sent her question in my direction.Her generally clear, deep voice was shaky.I imagined the newscaster from the am radio station sounded caught in time to these young women, who were between sixteen and twenty years old.His tone was official, uninflected, more standardized than an automated recording.The unfamiliarity of his voice added to the sense that we were in the middle of something we would be wrong to assume we understood, an event whose outcome we could not necessarily predict, even when the lights came back on."Yeah, he sound real old.Like he just creaked his ass out a coffin."Danielle's remark won a few uneasy laughs.