First, a Nona update: I’m still at WNYC, doing some work for their music talk show, Soundcheck. And I don’t mind telling you I’ve already imbued a little feminism into the hour. I just produced a piece about Nicki Minaj, where I got Feministing blogger Lori Adelman in the studio to talk about whether she’s good for women in hip hop:

I’ll also be producing segments on neo-burlesque and bad-ass rockabilly legend Wanda Jackson in the next couple weeks, so look out for those, too. Finally, the anthology of my mom Ellen Willis’s rock criticism, called Out of the Vinyl Deeps, is coming out in May!

Now for a cryptic, Girldrive-related update: I’m planning another political road trip this year. It has a little bit to do with this, and it channels this and this. I promise to blog about it very soon. Promise!

I’d also like to announce that this site will take a broader focus in the coming months. To me, “Girldrive” means more than discovering feminism–it means getting out of your comfort zone, talking to people who haven’t grown up with the same values and expectations and circumstances as you. It means having heated conversations face-to-face rather than screaming at people over the internet. While doing Pop and Politics, we had extraordinarily intimate conversations with, among others, Black Tea Party candidate Allen West (who later won a seat in Congress), a Mexican-American minuteman, and someone from the Tohono O’odham nation whose homeland is split down the middle–people who are so much more complicated than their 5-word ID suggests. It’s convinced me more than ever that a good reporter treads on the turf of their subjects–sits down with them, shares a cup of coffee, and listens until they’re done.

So this year, “Girldrive” will be about discovery and the road in the broadest sense. About feminism, of course, but also about people who don’t often get to speak for themselves, or people who are going out of their way to pop the comfy bubble of their lives.

More soon!

The election results are in, and we’ve been following the process every step of the way. Here are the 3 hours we put together from our journey: a documentary from our road trip to Florida, another one from Arizona, and our live show at WNYC’s The Greene Space the day after the elections.

Florida: Race, Rage, and Reconciliation

Arizona: New Voters, New Challenges

The New Map: America, Redrawn and Reconceived

Cross-posted at Pop + Politics

Housing has been on this journalist’s mind lately. I just moved back to New York City after being gone for a while, and the reality of real estate here has hit me like a punch in the gut. Shiny condos that sit half empty have replaced warehouses and greasy spoons I used to know. Subsidized middle-class housing complexes have 20-year waiting lists. New Yorkers like me are priced out of their childhood neighborhoods.

Thoughts of my gentrified hometown reverberated through my head a few weeks ago when we visited Miami, a city still knee-deep in the housing crisis. This metropolitan area was one of the epicenters of the housing boom, where new constructions and sub-prime mortgages abounded a few years ago. Here we met Ruby, a Miami native whose house was at risk of foreclosure after going through a bankruptcy and several rounds of refinancing. To her, a house is everything–a place to make your mark on the world. It is a place to lay down roots and engage in a community, a place to make beautiful, to make yours.

“The American dream is now a nightmare,” she told us listlessly. A little later: “Capitalism should not mean greed, but that’s what we’ve had.” Ruby didn’t expect elected officials to do much about her situation. She waxed poetic about her house, but she was disappointed–not only by the government, but by the direction of our country. She felt alone and in limbo.

A few hours before we talked with Ruby, we met up with Max Rameau, founder of the national grassroots group Take Back the Land. Max doesn’t expect the government to do anything about the housing crisis either–so he takes matters into his own hands. Take Back the Land moves homeless people into government-owned, foreclosed homes that are standing empty.

Of course, what Max is doing is illegal. But in the vein of the sit-ins during the civil rights movement, Max believes he is challenging unjust laws. “Corporations don’t need housing to stay alive,” he told us. “They’re just pieces of paper. People need housing to stay alive.”

So is a home–a house, a place to call your own–still the American Dream? Is that even possible anymore? Max thinks that’s too narrow. “A safe, clean and stable place is more than the American dream, it’s the human dream,” he said. Not everyone can own a house, he explained, but one should at least be able to count on a roof over one’s head.

Buying a house is a classic act of American individualism. It’s saying, “I’ve made it. This plot of land is mine.” But there’s a lot of pain at stake if that dream is snatched away, or if my generation’s hope of buying a house falls by the wayside as foreclosures and unemployment rise. Should we be depending more on our communities for support rather than turning inward? Or should we learn to embrace the market rollercoaster and divorce emotion from home ownership, like Condo Vultures owner Peter Zalewski advises? Ruby, Max, and Peter all seem to agree on one thing: our culture is shifting, that we’ve reached a turning point in the way we think about homes and neighborhoods–and that something’s gotta give soon.

–Nona

Crossposted at Pop + Politics

When the media cover “the border,” they pit Mexico against America, Spanish against English, two increasingly melding cultures separated by a porous partition. But what happens when a border cuts straight through your own people’s land? What happens when you’re the forgotten voice in a three-way conversation–which hurts doubly, since you were there first?

The Tohono O’odham nation, one of the largest native reservations in the country, straddles the U.S.-Mexican border. Our team spent the day in Sells, Arizona, soaking in the landscape, eating short rib stew and prickly pear smoothies at the local cafe, and, before talking with Sells native Art Wilson, checking out the border. A far cry from the looming wall in Nogales, the border here is marked by some wire and posts barely taller than my chin.

Art explained that the border meant little to him as a child, that he inhabited both countries freely. “It was more like a a fence that kept the livestock from crossing over,” he said. “It was like crossing into somebody’s backyard.” He didn’t think of his world as a U.S.-Mexico duality, instead thinking of it in terms of “O’ohdam and white.”

After our conversation with Art, he generously shared a private moment with us–a ceremony in the middle of the desert memorializing the anniversary of his mother’s death. Here, we had a rare breath of calm amid our frenetic schedule, an hour enveloped in a prehistoric landscape that stood in stark relief against the cacophony of New York City.

These are the moments I’m glad I’m a journalist. These are the reasons to go on the road–to appreciate the vastness of our country, to force ourselves to see colliding identities, to get out of our comfort zones and glimpse into another person’s reality. Right before we got back in our cars, Farai mused, “You can never really walk in anyone’s shoes. But once in a while, you can stand where they’re standing.”

More soon…

-Nona

The moment I read about this project, I thought of Girldrive. It’s a way to let people speak for themselves, and to treat geography as a character all its own. It’s meant to really get the stories of the local people and activists on the ground–as Farai puts it, it’s not “your typical horserace reporting.” And by including voices that people don’t normally hear on public radio, the project seeks to expand radio to a younger, more diverse audience.

I’ll post updates as I go along…more soon!

When I came home to St. Louis for Thanksgiving break last fall, I found my sister’s copy of GirlDrive sitting on the coffee table in the living room.  I flipped through a few pages and quickly got hooked on the idea of traveling, woman-focused journalism —marauding through the country in search of women’s stories.

I was living in Arkansas at the time, in a house with eight fellow students – all young women.  One of them, Ashley, was in my Gender and Sexuality in American Politics class.  We’d spent all our free time that semester sitting around the house, discussing our readings and asking our roommates all sorts of brazen questions about womanhood, femininity, sexuality, love, faith, self-esteem, and sex.  Inspired by the book and by our roommates’ openness, Ashley and I decided to take on our own GirlDrive: Southern Edition for two weeks in January.

I sent out a flurry of Facebook messages to friends from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, asking for connections.  Although Ashley and I called our plan the “Southern Feminist Road Trip,” we didn’t seek out feminists.  In fact, our only qualification was that the person be a woman raised in the South who was willing to talk with us.  And with little more than the promise of a free hot beverage and a thoughtful conversation, more than a dozen women in ten cities and towns across the South agreed to meet with us.  We started in New Orleans’ famous Café du Monde and ended in a series of Starbucks, with a few local coffee shops in between.

My classmates had warned me that Southern women are famously prudish and private; they’d make my Missouri upbringing seem like a beacon of liberalism.  In a way, the friends were right.  I was blown away by the sexual and social conservatism of many of the women we met with.  But the interviewees were generally receptive to the broad range of personal questions we posed.  The women were also strong, independent, thoughtful, open, and likeable.  Most were deeply, deeply religious, and although their faith unsettled me, I felt connected to each of them by the time our conversations ended.Here’s a snapshot: A gorgeous, quirky journalist made us turn off the tape recorder before she admitted, hushedly, that she supported abortion – although not divorce.  Two tennis teammates from a community college discussed their marriage prospects.  A 29-year-old virgin told us how her family’s harsh religious views led her to believe, until age 16, that having a boyfriend was a sin.  A misfit at Ole Miss explained that her gay male friends served as her chastity belt.  A sorority sister from Mississippi told us that the best thing about Southern men was that they were expected to “take care of” their wives and daughters – by paying for frequent manicures and hair colorings for them.

Our conversations were like speed dating in a way, or CouchSurfing: moving past the BS of everyday chit-chat to discuss deep issues with people from vastly different backgrounds.  As the trip wore on, Ashley and I found ourselves in lengthy, personal conversations with practically everyone we met, male of every gender.  At a dinner stop in Starkville, Mississippi, our Mexican-American waiter told us his life story, by way of explaining his unexpected Minnesota accent.  It was like Ashley and I flicked on an internal empathy switch and started emitting high-frequency “tell me everything” signals.

Our interviewees’ candor was an honor to us, even when they told us things we didn’t like to hear.  (The classic, from one of the tennis teammates: A woman can’t be president because she would get PMS and be unstable.)  We relished the conversations, even when we they said things that didn’t make sense at first, like the Mississippi woman’s definition of “care”.  It took three full minutes of explanations, with Ashley’s cultural translation services, before I understood that the kind of “care” in question was primarily financial and aesthetic.  But having the opportunity to discuss grooming rituals with a true Southern Belle – and to discuss abstinence with a 29-year-old virgin, and to discuss liberal politics with a closeted Democrat – let me get a peek behind the wall of stereotypes that guided my understanding of the South.

Our trip was funded as an experiential learning project by Hendrix College, so our lodging and food – not to mention all the cups of coffee we bought during interviews – were paid for.  But I would have waited tables and scrounged pennies (as it sounds like Nona and Emma did) for months in exchange for those conversations.

I’ve posted before about how I regret rushing through the South on our original road trip–especially since it was one of the most fascinating stretches of the whole Girldrive experience. I’ve been doing an off-and-on Southern series to fill in the gaps, and it looks like two ladies from Hendrix College in Arkansas have helped me out. Katie had a feminist awakening in a Gender, Sexuality & American Politics class and started talking about feminism with her friend Ashley. Then they got a frickin grant from their college to travel across the South and interview young women! YES. From Katie’s blog:

…I started reading outside of class — Reviving Ophelia, Full Frontal Feminism, Cunt, etc. — and talking almost non-stop about what it means to be a young woman in the 21st century.  Living in a house with seven other women, we had plenty of discussion material and lots of other voices to involve in our conversation.

The road trip plan crystallized when I went home for Thanksgiving break and read a book my sister had bought, Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism.  After reading about what Nona Aronowitz and Emma Bernstein did, driving across the U.S. and speaking to more than 100 women, I told myself, I could do that. And moreover — I should do that. I was inspired by their search to understand the female American experience … The book was a great consolation to me, because that very week my plans to go to India had gotten cancelled…

The nitty-gritty planning is just now taking place.  One of the piles on my roommate’s bed is all the travel gear I expect to need – GPS, inflatable travel pillow, suitcase, etc.  The past three days has been a flurry of phone calls and Facebook messages, talking with Hendrix friends across the South about whether I could stay with them, speak to them, and meet their friends … We’ve got two weeks to cover all that ground and speak to as many people as possible to try to answer the question, What is it like to be a young woman in the South?

The girls went to Lafayette and New Orleans, La.; Hattiesburg, Jackson, Columbus and Starkville, Miss.; Sulligent and Birmingham, Al.; Peachtree City and maybe Decatur, Ga.; and Nashville and Memphis, Tenn. Read more here and here.

I’m SO sad I didn’t know about this before!! (They did the trip in January.) But I’m determined to get these two ladies to guest-blog for Girldrive. Who’s with me?

Also check out the interview I filled out on the website (one of those pieces of paper where the readers can see your handwriting, celebrity-style)!

Given that 2010 is a General Election year in the UK, now is the time to find out what’s on women’s minds.  This blog will document the discussions we have in each city, recording women’s views and mapping the nature of feminism across the country at this politically significant time … Reading [Girldrive] prompted the question, ‘What would a UK Girldrive look like?’ Given the re-emergence of feminist movement in the country over the past few years, and amidst a recession and other upheavals in UK politics generally, we feel it is a particularly pertinent time to gather women’s thoughts on feminism and the issues that affect them.

The blog is a little bare right now (they’re not leaving til summer), but I cannot wait to see what they come up with! Good luck ladies!!

Also, a couple more recent Girldrive-related links:

A great review by Jennifer Bartlett in BOMB magazine…

An interview with Matt Rothschild over at Progressive Radio…

And a few other things coming up in the next week or two! I’ll give the update when they happen.