29.2 Editorial Introduction

Abstract

29.2 Editorial Introduction Patti Duncan I want to write something hopeful and healing, but these have been such difficult days . . . Since our last issue of Feminist Formations, white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, spreading hate, terror, and violence. A white nationalist drove into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer, and injuring more than thirty people. The police killed Jordan Edwards, a Black 15-year-old in the passenger seat of a vehicle driving away from a party. The US military dropped the so-called "Mother of All Bombs"—the largest non-nuclear device ever deployed in combat—in Afghanistan. Republicans in the US voted to defund the Affordable Care Act, which will leave millions of people without health insurance. An off-duty police officer killed Darrius Smith, another Black 15-year-old. When people tried to stop a white supremacist's Islamophobic rant against two young women on a commuter train in Portland, he slashed their throats, killing Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche and Ricky Best and injuring Micah Fletcher. Another white supremacist drove a truck after two young Quinault tribal members on a campground, killing James "Jimmy" Smith-Kramer and injuring Harvey Anderson. A car bomb in Kabul killed ninety and injured more than 400 people during Ramadan. Seattle police killed Charleena Lyles, after she had called them to report a burglary. Nabra Hassanen, a 17-year-old Muslim girl was assaulted and killed after leaving a mosque in Virginia. And so many more tragedies, rooted in systems of power and oppression, too many to name. Maybe you're tired of hearing this news, exhausted from reading more reports of state violence, structural and systemic inequities, too many losses to bear. Maybe you recognize that we are living in a critical moment, where the privilege to turn away from these realities exists for fewer and fewer of us. Thinking through these politics together, I believe there is hope here, represented through collective action for social justice, and exemplified by the work of the authors and artists brought together in this issue. We are fortunate to feature the beautiful work of Megan Spencer on our cover. In describing her art, Spencer states, "My paintings are in many ways informed by my interest in how the natural world offers reprieve and healing from antiblack racism, gender violence, and historical trauma." And, she writes, [End Page vii] this painting, "Greenhouses" (2015) was inspired by the poem of the same name by Nayyirah Waheed. In the poem, "Greenhouses," Waheed evokes this sense of reprieve and healing, writing: "black women breathe flowers, too. . . . we just have been too long a garden for sharp and deadly teeth. so we have grown ourselves into greenhouses."1 Our first article, "'Sliding Backwards': Structural Injustice, Sex Work, and Human Trafficking," by Corinne Schwarz, Emily J. Kennedy, and Hannah E. Britton, engages current discourses surrounding sex work and human trafficking. Through a complex dialogue between scholars working on two distinct, empirically-based research projects—one with sex workers and the other with members of anti-trafficking service organizations—the authors challenge the binary so often entrenched between scholars and activists positioned as "prosex work" and "anti-human trafficking," suggesting that this oppositional framework is itself problematic. In centering the experiences of individuals engaged in the sex industry as well as service providers with anti-trafficking organizations, Schwarz, Kennedy, and Britton shift the focus to the way "lives are harmed—and made less livable—by structural injustice, anti-immigration rhetoric, deepening poverty, incarceration, and defunding the welfare state." Hence, they focus their critique on the carceral state, neoliberal economic policies, and the structural inequalities that disproportionately affect queer and trans people, poor people, and people of color. In this issue, two articles take up the political work of hip hop artist, Nicki Minaj. First, in "Nicki Minaj and the Changing Politics of Hip-Hop: Real Blackness, Real Bodies, Real Feminism?" Margaret Hunter and Alhelí Cuenca ask how Minaj has come to be one of the most visible black women in contemporary hip hop and popular culture. Relying on Patricia Hill Collins' theoretical framing of a "new black body politics," Hunter and Cuenca suggest that Minaj offers a commodified black sexuality...