What do the hood girls face?

When we talk about Hood, what comes up often is that it is a dangerous place where violence reigns. We rarely think of the girls and women who live in neighborhoods right away. A few days after International Women's Rights Day, many are trying to highlight the work and reality of women who come from neighborhoods in Montreal and the surrounding areas.

Today, some of them share their experiences and opinions on those that are forgotten when we talk about women's rights in general, and the Hood in particular.

It is Thursday, the day before March 8. The sun has just set and Eya, Amélie, Amélie, Julie and Adriana join us one after the other for a moment of discussion over dinner. The subject? The girls of Hood. Coming respectively from Chomedey, Laval-des-Rapides, Pie-IX and Rivière-des-Prairies, these four young women will discover that they have much more in common than they initially thought.

Contextualize

Eya is a rapper. Wearing a long black fur coat, she introduces herself: “My artist name is Guessmi — it's also my last name,” she says. Originally from Tunisia, she works in a mostly male environment and understands better than anyone the reality of girls in Hood.

At her side, her friend Amélie accompanies her. “I am 22 years old, I come from Laval-des-Rapides and I like photography,” she says timidly. A car lover, she works for a car dealership. “When we are together on the road,” says the rapper, “she is able to name the model, the year, the power and many other characteristics of the cars, just by seeing them! ”

The two friends met last summer at an event, and Amélie's love for photography coincided with Eya's desire to produce more visual content on her social networks.

Adriana and Julie also came together. At the age of 19, Adriana is a beautician specializing in hair removal, and she owns a small marketing agency. Of Haitian and Guatemalan origin, she has lived all her life in Rivière-des-Prairies. “I did theater and dance for a very long time,” says the young Montrealer. “But my passion is bubble tea,” she adds, laughing, half-sarcastic, half-honest.

Julie recently opened PLThé, the bubble tea shop where Adriana has recently worked. Also the owner of a beauty and hairdressing salon in Saint-Michel, near where she grew up, she is the first “Hood Hero” whose portrait La Converse drew. “I am a Pie-IX girl, I am an entrepreneur and I am 30 years old,” she says simply.

For the” Hood Hero”, “coming from Hood ” is characterized by the experience we had in the neighborhood. “There are people who live all their lives in the Hood, but who have never experienced the realities associated with it in the media,” she begins. These realities are violence, poverty, and crime. “I often hear people say that they know people who know people who have been victims of violence. I saw people being shot in front of me, it affected me directly,” she said.

What does “succeed” mean

Who says plurality of experiences says plurality of opinions. This is the case of the four girls, who each see the concept of “success” differently. They tell us what success can mean for them as neighborhood girls.

When asked to share their vision of success with us, Julie does not hesitate to speak up. “Success is something that is very specific to everyone. For me, it's how I got to where I am today, when I see where I come from,” she says proudly. “I am 30 years old, I come from another generation,” she says with a laugh. When I was young, there was a lot of gangsterism where I lived. It was very poor. My parents had six jobs in total, and we were even on the streets for a while,” she recalls bitterly.

“When you come from the neighborhoods, there is always a label attached to you and your success. I have heard people say so many times that I am not going to succeed because I am from Pie-IX. I understood that to achieve my goals, I had to take action and avoid being victimized,” she said.

She explains that she also had to make a lot of sacrifices. “Always working, taking all the money I made to help my parents pay the rent, having several jobs, working seven days a week... it's very difficult. I couldn't go out with my friends. While the world Chillait, I was working all the time,” she adds firmly.

Despite everything, Julie is “happy to have done these actions”. Today, her success is the feeling of accomplishment that tints her days and the pride she inspires in her parents. “Every day, I just want my parents to be proud of me and to be happy,” she concludes, with stars in her eyes.

In the wake of Julie's words, Adriana wants to share her own understanding of success. “For others, I think success is simple: you give yourself a goal, you achieve it; it's a success. It can be something minimal in the eyes of others, like brushing your teeth when you were depressed,” she illustrates.

“Personally, I will achieve my success when I leave a legacy to my family. Black women have always had little room for success, she says. I want to create my own success and to make it so big that my grandchildren don't have to worry about who they are or whether they are a problem for society.”

Amélie, almost silent from the start, will present her vision of success to us a little later. “For a girl who comes from Hood, I think that success is something that we have made too big for what it can be. To get out of an unhealthy situation is to succeed. Buying your first car or becoming independent means succeeding. It depends on the context,” she says. La Lavalloise refers to her own story. At the age of 19, she had to leave the family home with almost nothing in her pocket. “Today, I managed to get settled. I worked hard; I even left school to support myself, but I succeeded. I have my home, my independence, my ease,” she explains. She also says that girls “are way too hard on themselves. [We] will often see the situation we are experiencing in a negative way, we are less likely to congratulate ourselves and to be proud of ourselves and what we achieve.”

Adversity

“A few months ago, a young man was shot and killed right outside the living room. My employees came to me in a panic in front of the scene, and I acted as if nothing had happened. I told them to keep working, and that nothing was serious! ” says Julie.

She says she needed time to understand that none of this was normal. “It took me time. Over the years, I realized that everything I had experienced when I was younger was not the norm, she says. Gunshots were normal for me. But for my employees who come from Longueuil or Laval, this is not normal! ”

This sinister introduction makes girls think about the challenges that neighborhood women face. “It's easier for a guy to talk about his Strugles only for a girl. A girl has to deal with more repercussions than a guy,” Eya then declares unfiltered. And all the girls present nod their heads to show their approval of these words.

But where is she going with it? She continues: “I am talking about my personal experience. In general, even if I felt it more in my culture as a North African woman, the woman should behave well, she should never say too much, she should have a good image,” starts Eya. “I did stupid things about it,” she continues, “but my mother would never allow me to go in front of a camera and talk about it. Do you understand? ”

“I understand these women who tend not to spread out, like men in the Hood. It's a gear, a Pattern, and it's very hard to get out of it. I also think that there is a question of ego, which affects men more than some women,” she adds.

Double standards

“Do you think we no longer excuse a guy's crap? ” This is the question that is asked immediately after Eya's last words. She immediately replies: “Of course. A guy with a criminal record, he's cool, he's a Bad Boy. A woman with a criminal record, she missed her life. Is she the mother of tomorrow? ” she continues, sarcastically.

She is also supported in her words by her friend Amélie, sitting right next to her, who wishes to emphasize the fact that expectations of men are very different from those of women, especially when it comes to the difficulties of living in neighborhoods.

“There are already very different expectations between men and women in society. Tout court. So when you come from a neighborhood, it's worse,” she begins. “When you think of a girl from Hood Who succeeds, we immediately think of an entrepreneur in a hyper-feminine field such as aesthetics, but never of a girl in a field such as construction or cars,” she compares.

Even if every career has its ups and downs, Amélie, who works in the automotive industry, a very masculine environment, sees the difference. “We are less applauded, we are less encouraged, we are less encouraged,” she says sadly. However, we put in just as much effort to succeed. Expectations are different.”

Get out of Hood, it's difficult

When asked about their personal perspectives in the Hood, many are hesitant. If Julie invested in Saint-Michel by opening her salon there, Eya wants to leave the Hood. “I did everything I needed to do here,” she says.

Amélie is more optimistic. She insists on the mutual support that exists between the girls of her generation who come from the neighborhoods, without however denying that there are disadvantages to staying in these areas. “The world is small, everyone knows each other; it is therefore normal to think that we have gone around and that there is nothing left for us,” she said in response to Eya. But in 10 years, I still see myself having a foothold in Laval-des-Rapides.”

Aged 22, she only knew her neighborhood. “I left my parents' house, but I stayed in the neighborhood. I am attached to it, I grew up here, I spent my life there. Even if I hope not to be there 100% of the time, she says with a laugh, I would always like to be able to come back.”

The future of the girls of Hood ?

At first shy, Eya became more and more comfortable as the evening went on by speaking up. In fact, she is the first to propose a response to all the concerns shared by the girls around her. “As racialized women, we face difficulties related to the fact that we are women and that we are racialized,” she recalls at first.

“There will always be misogyny. You don't have to normalize that, but learn to overcome it,” she said. At the dawn of her 24th birthday, the Laval native recognizes that there is a long way to go. “I know that sounds extreme, but when you have experienced so much, you look at yourself and you can't even think about what needs to be done,” she admits.

On the subject of this feeling of powerlessness, Julie also looks back on a friendship that marked her a few years ago. “We were 18. A good friend of mine had problems similar to mine related to poverty. She became a dancer to make more money quickly. I told her that we should not take that path, but she answered me something that I will never forget: “You are lucky to be good at school, you are lucky to manage and to be a good saleswoman”, she recalls.

“In fact, we don't all have the same doors”, realizes Eya immediately after the entrepreneur's testimony. Amélie agrees and adds that she has only one wish for the future of girls like her: “I really hope that we will get by. That we are going to develop personally and as a community.”

‍