A hip-hop feminist breaks it down

 :  A Review, Retrospective and Rave

I wrote this review about book which I say- with only the slightest hint of hyperbole- changed my life!

Happy Black History Month and hope you enjoy!

 Her mission with this book was to break down ‘the keys that unlock the riches of contemporary black female identity” against the backdrop of rap becoming pop culture.

Mission Accomplished!

Academia is a space for learning and cultivating taste. It is vast and expansive but for those surviving on the margins, it can be intimidating.  For them, they are tasked with Strenuously sifting and struggling through texts bogged down by intentionally alienating and inaccessible jargon designed to isolate laymen into ‘imposter syndrome’. This is why Joan Morgan is a reprieve and refreshing spec of colour in a world of muted blacks and whites.

Her anecdotes, essays, letters and musical musings written decades ago have a renewed sense of relevance and raw realness when re-contextualised against our current socio-political landscape. Morgan- through her beautifully unvarnished lyricism- masterfully manages to tell the stories that amplify herself and her ‘sistas’. From dalliances to perils, from loves to losses and heartbreak with ‘brothers’, she spotlights her feminism in revolutionary expository prose.

This is an unapologetically Black and Academic book that explores everything from abuse to shifting gender dynamics symbolised in tricky first date etiquette.

As a Hip-Hop feminist, Morgan is unabashed in colouring her masterpiece with AAVE (African American Vernacular English).  Terms like ‘chickenhead’ and ‘trickin’ are honoured alongside words like ‘quagmire’ and staggering and carefully selected statistics about AIDS, interracial marriage and income inequality. Her displaying her wealth of knowledge works perfectly in union with her sultry singular voice, adding legitimacy to an invisibly influential dialect so often dismissed, misunderstood and discriminated against. By making this bold and I’m sure no-brainer creative choice, this Hip Hop feminist presents the possibility of a blackness, womanhood, black womanhood liberated from monolithic expectations. 

What does it mean to take a holistic and non-stereotypical approach when investigating the state of black people as a collective whilst affording us individuality?

Magic, phenomenal, boundary pushing, rich, poor, deprived, targeted, hunted, messy, volatile, complicated… too much to be encapsulated in these inherently limited terms.

What does it mean to see beyond, past or completely re-imagine what we have always complacently accepted as inevitable black and whites, and finally explore the intriguing and various shades of grey?

What does it mean to be a feminist but find feminist men unappealing?

What does it mean to feel like a stranger in the One community that’s meant to be home.

What does it mean to be ‘strong’ ‘black’ and a ‘woman’ without being pigeonholed and/ or pigeonholing yourself to the ‘Strong Black Woman’ trope? What does it mean to be loyal to your race and gender?

Joan Morgan asks those questions.

We answer them.