lizbarr's review
2.0
The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television was a highly frustrating book of essays about, yes, The Wire. And urban decay. And American television. Frustrating because these are proper academic essays, yet they repeatedly failed at feminism and intersectionality.Like the essay on The Wire‘s depictions of African-American motherhood, which didn’t mention Kima and Cheryl, or the essay that acknowledges that Zenobia is a girl (and a very feminine girl, too, I note, whose delinquency is marked by using her comb as a weapon), but for the purposes of this essay she’s a boy? It was weirdly tone deaf, especially when there’s a lot of academic writing about the erasure of black femininity. The book also describes Rhonda Pearlman in sexist clichés (married to her job!), and barely mentions Kima at all. Some poor editing there, imho.
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