Rooted in the Hood is a photo essay celebrating the community gardens of New York City and the people who create, cultivate, and enjoy them. The late '60s and '70s witnessed the devastation of New York City, with many buildings in low-income areas left unattended, burned, and reduced to rubble. Drug dealers, gangs, and junkies soon moved in making those neighborhoods unsafe to live. This is a book about ordinary people, dreamers, and visionaries rising against these unsafe conditions by clearing empty lots, planting trees and vegetables, and slowly creating small havens for the community. By drawing attention to these local gardens, the book wishes to provide awareness of the importance of green spaces, not only in our great New York City, but across the country and around the world. There is an urgent need to protect these unique enclaves from further development.

The question "Do black landscapes matter?" cuts deep to the core of American history. From the plantations of slavery to contemporary segregated cities, from freedman villages to northern migrations for freedom, the nation’s landscape bears the detritus of diverse origins. Black landscapes matter because they tell the truth. In this vital new collection, acclaimed landscape designer and public artist Walter Hood assembles a group of notable landscape architecture and planning professionals and scholars to probe how race, memory, and meaning intersect in the American landscape. Essayists examine a variety of U.S. places—ranging from New Orleans and Charlotte to Milwaukee and Detroit—exposing racism endemic in the built environment and acknowledging the widespread erasure of black geographies and cultural landscapes. Through a combination of case studies, critiques, and calls to action, contributors reveal the deficient, normative portrayals of landscape that affect communities of color and question how public design and preservation efforts can support people in these places. In a culture in which historical omissions and specious narratives routinely provoke disinvestment in minority communities, creative solutions by designers, planners, artists, and residents are necessary to activate them in novel ways. Black people have built and shaped the American landscape in ways that can never be fully known. Black Landscapes Matter is a timely and necessary reminder that without recognizing and reconciling these histories and spaces, America’s past and future cannot be understood.

In a place where drugs, domestic violence, Incarceration, H.I.V-Aids, and murders are found and encountered on a daily basis, America tends to omit the struggles of the ghetto.This is a book that will reveal the definition of the hood through three sentiments.Antoine is young, ambitious, stubborn, and fearless. Being the stepson of a pastor, at thirteen Antoine gets fully introduced to the street life. 70 percent of Antoine's outlook tells him to "get it how you live", while the other 30 percent says "never lose your integrity". In a world that's full of gunshots, sirens, and rap music, Antoine gets caught up - But regardless of the crime, a son's love for his mother will always be justified.Monique represents the female sentiments of the ghetto. Being from the projects, Monique and her home girls are only the typical clubbing click. Even though Monique would rather stay at home and cater to her man Lester, if Lester is never at the house himself, what else is there for her to do? While one of Monique's home girls lives the life of promiscuity, Monique only wants her man - But if Lester skeletons come out the closet, should she still want him?What's a hood without its glitter? Jersey Phat will represent the silver and gold glitter of South Side Baton Rouge. Jersey Phat theory is simple; get money, stay out of jail, and shine hard! While Jersey Phat is no doubt a trendsetter, he encounters the rich and famous, and will go down in history as another ghetto legend.

Girlz in the Hood is the unsentimental, moving, and surprisingly humorous account of a girl and her ten siblings who grew up in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Mary's mother was a fierce matriarch, a single mom who raised eleven children with the help of welfare checks and a fire arm hidden in her bra. Drugs, guns, and pregnancies were everyday occurrences, but Mary and her siblings took it all in stride, spying on the grown-ups, playing in the streets, and helping to take care of the new babies when they were born. The dubious yet colorful cast of characters that came into their lives (the Jehovah Witnesses, the whores, the addicts, the "fathers"), and the never-ending series of hardships (the jail terms, the knife fights, the mental illness, and homicides), couldn't shake the core of the family. This is the story of Mary, but, even more so, it's the story of her mother, a uniquely strong and extraordinary woman who was able to survive moments of pain and disappointment by laughing at the comedy of human missteps, miscalculations, and downright stupidity. This is also a story about race and of poverty and how, over time, it can wear you down and destroy you, because, although Mary got out okay, her sisters and brothers were not so lucky.

A collection of well-known tales, retold from a Hispanic American perspective.