Cherise Adams

BIOGRAPHY

I grew up in Cloetesville but now reside in Idas Valley. I completed my undergraduate degree and honours at Stellenbosch University, where I am currently a first-year masters student & a facilitator for the course Visual Studies 178. When I am not doing copious amounts of research to perfect the craft that is academia. You can haphazardly find me indulging in young/new adult novels, astrology, critiquing mainstream R&B albums, and dancing barefoot in the kitchen to Florence + Machine as I wait for my noodles to come to a boil.

RESEARCH

In her excellent portrayal of Hood Feminism and the problems with conventional feminism, novelist, activist, and sporadic feminist Mikki Kendall served as my primary inspiration. Although I refer to Hood Feminism as Ghetto Feminism in a South African setting, my goal was to make it a reality. In my masters thesis the aim is to create a Ghetto Feminists archive. As a former mainstream feminist myself I am ashamed to say that I believed that there was no feminism in the ghetto, but there indeed is, it has been overlooked and neglected under the guise of mainstream feminism. My research is predominantly centred around what is the feminism I see in the ghetto, and what makes it uniquely ghetto? Therefore, through social research I have recruited womxn from the ghettos of the Winelands and the Cape flats to give an outstanding, non-monolithic, visual and a ghetto fabulous account of what it means to dala what you must, survive, love, show vulnerability and navigate the ghetto. These womxn’s stories have never been told in academia and through the Ghetto Feminist archive I hope to accentuate that their stories matter, deserved to be heard and does not have to juxtapose the ideals of mainstream feminism in order for it to be valuable or feminist.