She's Mad Real: Popular Culture and West Indian Girls in Brooklyn
“LaBennett’s  depiction of how young girls actively and often successfully negotiate  the seductiveness of popular culture—as active and self-conscious  consumers and not just passive victims of stereotypes—is a powerful  reminder of ethnography’s analytical value…This thoughtful and  sophisticated piece of work is not about ‘model minorities’ or ‘welfare  wannabees,’ but about complicated young women learning to live in their  bodies amidst a world that sometimes uses those very bodies—in all their  racial and gendered specificity—against them.”-John L. Jackson, Jr., University of Pennsylvania“LaBennett  is deeply attuned to her subjects. Together, researcher and research  subjects explore the wide world around them: hip-hop culture,  opportunities for mobility, sexual life, issues of risk, relationships  with mom…it’s all here! LaBennett develops incisive new interpretations  of such concepts as ‘play-labor’ and ‘authenticity.’ She’s Mad Real both  joins a rich ethnographic literature and expands it in revealing  politically conscious and hip ways. A fantastic text for in-class use.”-Howard Winant, University of California, Santa Barbara