Scripts

Chapter 2 explores the period in the shelter known as the shelter renovations or takeover, when a former automobile industry executive becomes the interim executive director of the Fresh Start shelter’s parent organization. The author demonstrates how the improvements that the executive director and organization’s board mandate encompass more than the physical structure of the building and, in fact, are primarily concerned with improving the shelter residents through a specific focus on discursive and embodied practices that undergird ideas of successful Black womanhood. This chapter argues that normative models of work and productivity as well as education and social status fail to account for the needs and desires of young Black women.