Review Cities as feminist spaces? Towards experiments in thinking and living the urban differently

摘要

Leslie Kern's book Feminist City: A Field Guide takes readers on a journey through alternative renderings of the urban. Writing largely from her own perspective, Kern provides accessible critiques of the ways systems of oppression are felt by people embodying marginalized identities. In particular, this book thinks through womanhood and motherhood in the city while supplementing these personal experiences with research being done by critical race theorists, disability theorists, LGBTQ scholars, and others, representing an array of perspectives on city life. Kern uses an amalgam of resources, including personal observation supported by material from social media, journals, and news archives in order to weave together a relatable, multifa-ceted narrative of the urban dispossession of womanhood. Through each chapter in Feminist City, Kern makes it increasingly clear that the city of Toronto and cities in general are not designed for women and do not function with women in mind. As articulated by urban feminist geographer Jane Darke, the city is 'patriarchy written in stone' (1996,98).