Hero's Fight

Patricia Fernandez-Kelly is senior lecturer in sociology at Princeton University.

• Preface to the Paperback Edition xi Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1 D. B. Wilson 20 2 Baltimore: From Factory Town to City in Decline 38 3 Big Floyd 54 4 Intersections of Poverty, Race, and Gender in the American Ghetto 72 5 Shaping the Inner City: Urban Development and the American State 95 6 Distorted Engagement and Liminal Institutions: Ruling against the Poor 113 7 Little Floyd 132 8 Down the Rabbit Hole: Childhood Agency and the Problem of Liminality 151 9 Clarise 172 10 Paradoxes of Social Capital: Constructing Meaning, Recasting Culture 192 11 Towanda 213 12 Cultural Capital and the Transition to Adulthood in the Urban Ghetto 232 13 Lydia 253 14 Faith and Circumstance in West Baltimore 275 15 Manny Man 296 16 Divided Entrepreneurship and Neighborhood Effects 315 Conclusion: Distorted Engagement and the Great Ideological Divide 342 Appendix 357 Notes 361 Bibliography 375 Index 405

Finalist for the 2015 C. Wright Mills Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems "[T]his thought-provoking book--and the comprehensive research behind it--could, if heeded, help alleviate some of society's most intractable problems."--Publishers Weekly "[A] compelling and nuanced examination of the intersections of race, gender, and poverty... The author makes a significant theoretical contribution to the poverty literature that moves beyond the bifurcated arguments of blaming the poor, or blaming the state for restricting opportunities to the poor."--Choice "The Hero's Fight develops a historically informed and ethnographically robust sense of the troubled social, economic, and political waters urban black Americans face and navigate. Fernandez-Kelly successfully illustrates how the potent combination of being black, American, and living in the urban places shapes the souls of black folk today. Well-written, rich in detail, and intersectional in its approach, The Hero's Fight is a wonderful addition to sociology, political science, anthropology, African American studies, and urban studies classrooms, debates, and scholarship."--Marcus Anthony Hunter, Social Service Review