Tanisha C. Ford

A really interesting book--Ford does a great job of tracing the movement of "soul style" across the diaspora, as well as focusing on its impact in the US specifically, I was a little disappointed by her engagement with the question of capitalism--she insisted that the women about whom she was writing were making choices and didn't dwell on the question of the commodification of style, which I understand and appreciated, but sometimes I felt like she was going too hard in the paint on the question of agency in a way that made me go "but what about...?" when I wouldn't have otherwise felt that way. (More focus on the self-fashioning chapter maybe would have helped with this? I don't know.) Still a really really compelling look at the ways in which the politics of style are critical to politics of liberation, and super accessible for teaching!… (més)