Strafford AB Midterm

Kailey Strafford

Dr. Pabón

WOM220_01

3/12/18

Annotated Bibliography for Hip-Hop Feminism Wikipedia Page

Durham, Aisha, et al. “The Stage Hip-Hop Feminism Built: A New Directions Essay.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society, vol. 38, no. 3, Spring 2013, pp. 721-737.

In this essay hip-hop feminism is defined and talked about as two separate categories that interact and form a relationship; creative works within hip-hop feminism are discussed and analyzed, with focus on representation within the hip-hop community. The essay outlines feminist thought in hip-hop as it is currently, and reviews the current literature in the field of study, the challenges, and also the new knowledge and current happenings within hip-hop feminism. This is a useful source because it also describes the development of feminist hip-hop, which was impacted by many different social factors: conservative movement and backlash in the 1980s and 1990s, the cut in welfare, the racial wealth gap, and many others.  It also mentions historical groups and figures that were significant within the movement, such as the Crunk Feminist Collective, gives good analysis on women of color within the movement and includes writing about queer issues within the hip-hop community, which should be written about on the Wikipedia page. This essay is a tour through feminist hip-hop with a critical analysis of groups and artists within the movement, it looks at the politics of respectability and how these affect women of color and queer people, it also discusses what artists are doing in rap to progress hip-hop feminism.

Peoples, Whitney A. “Under Construction”: Identifying Foundations of Hip-Hop Feminism and Exploring Bridges between Black Second-Wave and Hip-Hop Feminisms.”

Named after Missy Elliot’s “Under Construction,” Whitney Peoples wrote this essay thinking about how hip-hop is changing and developing, specifically in regards to feminism in hip-hop; to do this there is a prominent focus on the sociopolitcial aspect of hip-hop, the second- and third-wave black American feminists’ arguments made in response to recent hip-hop feminism, and the links between generations of black American feminists both in theory and practical aspects. Peoples writes about hip-hop feminism as it developed by black American feminists who found second-wave feminism as lacking, especially in regards to the lives of women and people of color. Instead of focusing on the interlinkage between identity of race, women, and feminism this essay brings a perspective that is often overlooked, writing about how feminists engage in hip-hop and what this means for hip-hop feminism. The end goal that Peoples is trying to come to through this essay is to understand feminist’s sociopolitical base and how hip-hop feminists use of that platform affects feminist thought, in specific black American feminist thought. This source is useful because it is unlike most accounts that address hip-hop feminism, as it looks mainly at how people are navigating within the hip-hop community, it is also credible and comes from an academic journal; therefore, it would be good to use to edit the Wikipedia page.

Henry, Matthew. “He Is a ‘Bad Mother*$%@!#”: ‘Shaft’ and Contemporary Black Masculinity.” African American Review, vol. 38, no. 1, 2004, pp. 119–126. JSTOR.

   This article is different from my other sources because it focuses on black masculinity in hip-hop, and addresses race, sexuality, gender, and other aspects that feed into the hype-fantasy image of the black male. Henry writes this paper after the news that a new version of Shaft is coming out, and addresses the representation of black masculinity in the media, which is now seen as a part of our American culture; Henry writes that in the past decades our culture has adopted the image of black men as urban and aggressive. He credits the cause of this to “the commodification of hip-hop culture,” the increased commonality of commercialized rap music as well as the videos that come along with it, and he mostly credits the popularity of “gangsta” and the artists that have performed “gangsta” as their rap persona, such as Snoop Dogg, Tupac, Dr. Dre, and others (119). This representation of the black man in hip-hop has been placed in movies, as there has been an increase in movies that use the hip-hop community as their story-line; Henry’s goal of this essay is to critically look at these movies as well as the representation of black masculinity seen in their plot-lines, and how the audience is affected by this image. This is a useful source because black masculinity should be included within the area of feminist hip-hop.     

Summary:

When I first thought about what I needed to edit the Wikipedia page for Hip-Hop Feminism, I thought that I needed a good starting essay to form my base knowledge, which I found in “The Stage Hip-Hop Feminism Built: A New Directions Essay”.  In this essay I found a good overall view of hip-hop feminism, along with some major groups and artists that were pushing for social change in the Hip-Hop community. I did not have a specific theme while looking for the sources, but ended up choosing pieces that address the history of hip-hop feminism, and address the issues of race, gender, and sexuality within the community as well as the movement.  My first two sources write largely about the history of feminism, especially addressing the causes of the movement. In Aisha Durham’s “The Stage Hip-Hop Feminism Built: A New Directions Essay,” she writes about the impact of the conservative backlash in the 1980’s and 90’s, and also writes about many other social causes. “Under Construction”: Identifying Foundations of Hip-Hop Feminism and Exploring Bridges between Black Second-Wave and Hip-Hop Feminisms,” writes that black women did not find second-wave feminism as a space where they were recognized, so they created hip-hop feminism, and the essay touches on how hip-hop feminism is a relationship between hip-hop and feminism. This source also talks about the four areas of hip-hop-breakdancing, graffiti, DJ-ing, and rapping-instead of having a sole focus on rap. Both of these sources address the history of hip-hop feminism as to how it was created by women of color for women of color, and in the first source the author writes about how it is “a feminism brave enough to fuck with the grays” which we have talked about in class. I think that it is important when editing the Wikipedia page to choose information that is centered around what feminist hip-hop was created to be, a space for the grays.

Besides the history of hip-hop feminism, another main theme that my sources address are the issues of identity within hip-hop, such as race, gender, and sexuality. My third source, “He Is a ‘Bad Mother*$%@!#”: ‘Shaft’ and Contemporary Black Masculinity”, looks at the representation of black masculinity that is found in movies centering around hip-hop culture. It is based on what we have talked about in class, the hype-fantasy image of black men, where they are seen as heterosexual, cis, urban, “gangstas.” The article also touches upon performance, which we can see in many different artists, and how that performance affects the viewers perception on black masculinity and what the black man is supposed to be. This is important to address on the Wikipedia page, because hip-hop feminism is not just about women, it addresses black masculinity and gender as a whole. All the sources that I have chosen address identity in hip-hop feminism. In the first source the author writes about respectability politics, which is “describe[d] [as] a range of strategies, largely regarding notions of honor, self-respect, piety, and propriety, deployed by progressive black women to promote racial uplift and women’s rights and to secure broader access to the public sphere” (4). These should be addressed when talking about hip-hop feminism because bodies of color, especially women’s bodies, are put under the spotlight in regards to sexuality. This source addresses how women of color are treated sexually, and also talks about how queer people are treated with silence in the hip-hop community, and how hip-hop feminism is trying to combat that issue. The second source addresses identity in a different way than the others, writing about how the people with these identities function within hip-hop and how this affects hip-hop feminism.

These sources all work together to address both the history of hip-hop feminism, looking into the causes of the movement, the groups and key figures, and the four areas of hip-hop. They also address the issue of identity in hip-hop, how these identities intersect and how hip-hop feminism makes a space for these identities. These sources are from scholarly journals found on the data-bases, so they fit the criteria for editing Wikipedia. These sources will help in adding to the Wikipedia page in both definitions and Social Change, I am also hoping to add a History section to add more to the information of the development of the feminist hip-hop movement. I also am hoping to add to the music videos section in the Wikipedia page, changing it to media and writing about black masculinity and the hype-fantasy image.