Throughout this course I’ve been interested in the liminal space of questions that cannot be answered easily – questions that involve taking a both/and perspective, expanding preconceived notions, and looking beyond the surface. I am also forever a student of connection and relationship. These quotes demonstrate my curiosity in the realm of indigenous feminisms and exploration of dual meanings that are inherent in my experience as a feminist. I chose these quotes to reflect my desire to look into the author’s motives behind writing, especially what the author desired to uncover throughout their article. 

The quotes that deal with connection and disconnection in the hip-hop community bring up important questions such as – what is the purpose of community in the hip-hop world? This question leads into Tricia Rose’s quote about identity and how identity is so important in hip-hop. The identity topic also relates to land ethics and Navarro’s quote about settler colonialism, and the quote from Mcfarland about the hip-hop diaspora. Exploring indigenous hip-hop was a highlight of this class for me, and I’m glad we got to cover this topic.

Another aspect of my quote collection is the duality, or the desire to transcend the duality into a both/and perspective that sees wholly and in totality. Many of the authors that I quoted explore this. Being able to “see the forest and the trees” relates to many of my quotes as well – as throughout this course the experience of a black woman in hip-hop was illuminated to me as being an experience of needing to be extremely aware of everything. There is little room for naivety or unconsciousness in the hip-hop world as a female or else there’s a lot of danger to encounter – the sexism is extremely multilayered, especially from the perspective of media awareness and popular culture. Throughout this course I’ve learned the ways female MCs and artists need to express themselves in order to be accepted in the hip-hop community. This is part of the story I wanted to tell with these quotes – the difficulty in being a woman in hip-hop. Embodying a feminism that “fucks with the grays” is part of this story, too.

These quotes resonate with a part of me that longs for a more well-spread realization of the power that hip-hop has in holding multiple perspectives. Just because a female rapper might be rapping about her “goodies” does not mean that she is not a feminist, but it’s also necessary to question and look deeper into why a song like that is selling. It’s also important to me to witness the roots of hip-hop and the role that the African diaspora and Indigenous hip-hop has impacted/influenced hip-hop’s conception in the US. In attempting to see the origin story and not simply the final result I’ve come to realize that hip-hop, and hip-hop feminism, is so multilayered just like Diaspora experiences and native experiences. I believe my quotes demonstrate this eternal seeking and questioning I have found essential to this course / this course material 🙂

“The music held spaces of possibility for unity and cross-cultural understanding that made it powerful. Yet the contradictions between the dual visions at the core of the culture would be replayed throughout global hip hip history.” by Emma Elisabeth

“There have been scarcely any long term ethnographic studies of rap music in the daily lives of black youth in the United States. Textual analysis of rap lyrics has dominated popular and academic discussion on both the right and the left. Much of this by Emma Elisabeth

“The knowledge held by female MCs regarding the multilayered black woman’s experience does not occur magically. They are taught the difference between unaware women and naive ones, and they are informed that they cannot afford to be either.” by Emma Elisabeth

“We wanted to re-center feminist and queer critiques and female and queer performance in order to re-calibrate hip hop’s center.” by Emma Elisabeth

“Identity in hip hop is deeply rooted in the specific, in the local experience, and one’s attachment to and status in a local group or alternative family.” by Emma Elisabeth

“Hip Hop as a continuation of Indigenous African culture in diaspora is by definition conscious labor focused on the betterment of people of the African diaspora.” by Emma Elisabeth

“We must pull back the veil on corporate media’s manipulation of black male and female artists and the impact this has on fans and the direction of black cultural expression.” by Emma Elisabeth

“It’s called being able to see the forest and the trees.” by Emma Elisabeth

“A Native feminist land ethic, therefore, immediately asserts an ethic that emerges organically, locally, and is one that consciously operates against the history, politics, and logics of settler colonialism in the United States.” by Emma Elisabeth

“(Re)building the cypher requires a process of (re)connection.” by Emma Elisabeth