Solhot & Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown, Pioneer

Ruth Nicole Brown Sharon R. Mazzarella General Editor B LAC K q ~elebration TOWARD A HIP-HOP FEMINIST PEDAGOGY PETER LANG PETER LANG New York· Washington, D.C/Baltimore • Bern New York· Washington, D.C/Baltimore • Bern Frankfurt am Main· Berlin· Brussels· Vienna· Oxford Frankfurt am Main· Berlin· Brussels· Vienna. Oxford Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brown, Ruth Nicole. Black girlhood celebration: toward a hip-hop feminist pedagogy / Ruth Nicole Brown. p. cm. - (Mediated youth; v. 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. African American girls-Education-Social aspects. 2. African American girls-Conduct of life. 3. African American girls Life skills guides. 4. Feminism and education-United States. 5. Critical pedagogy-United States. I. Title. LC2731.B757 371.829'96073-dc22 2008015053 ISBN 978-1-4331-0075-8 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-4331-0074-1 (paperback) ISSN 1555-1814 Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek. Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the "Deutsche Nationalbibliografie"; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de/. For Maya Sanaa Your two-year-old will reminds me that it is always worth the fight if you need it and that the presence of little Black girl beauty only brings joy unparallel to the struggle. Cover photograph by Candy Taaffe The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council of Library Resources. © 2009 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006 www.peterlang.com All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited. Printed in the United States of America TABLE OF CONTENTS Series Editor's Preface ix Foreword xiii Acknowledgments xxiii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Power! Not Programs! 19 Chapter 2: Theorizing Narrative Discrepancies of Black Girlhood 31 Chapter 3: Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths/We are SOLHOT! 57 Chapter 4: Little Sally Walker 87 Chapter 5: Our Words, Our Voice 111 Conclusion: Toward a Critical Hip-Hop Feminist Pedagogy 133 Bibliography 147 Index 157 SERIES EDITOR'S PREFACE So, here I sit, a White feminist Girls' Studies scholar of a certain age, attempting to write a preface for a book about Black girlhood. Had I written this preface a few short months ago, I probably would have begun by reciting what Aisha Durham (2007) calls the "wave metaphor"-the oft-recited history of the evolution of feminist activism from the first wave of early twentieth-century suffragettes, through the second wave of "women's libbers" of the 1960s, and on to the third wave of riot grrris in the 1990s. Most likely, I would have written that Girls' Studies as a field emerged partly from this third wave form of feminism, heeding its call for scholars, policy makers, educators, and all manner of adults to listen to the voices of girls. I am guessing I also would have written that the field of Girls' Studies is, in part, a response to the prolif eration of girls-in-crisis tomes such as Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia (1994) that dominated both the academic and public discourse about U.S. girls 1 in the 1990s. In fact, I know I would have written these things because I have done so before. Girls' Studies equals third wave, or so the received history of the field would have us believe, and so I thought until I read Aisha Durham's manuscript "All Up in My Kitchen! Fingerwaves, Sistercurls and Extensions of Hip-Hop Feminism in the Third Wave" (2007). Although I was the respondent on Durham's panel at the 2007 National Communication Association conference x SERIES EDITOR'S PREFACE SERIES EDITOR'S PREFACE XI in Chicago, and was supposed to be applying my scholarly expertise and years In explaining SOLHOT (chapter three) and in working toward a hip-hop of experience to evaluating her manuscript, it was Durham who challenged my feminist pedagogy (chapter six), Brown shakes up our understanding of Girls' understanding of the evolution of Girls' Studies; who exposed for me what the Studies as an academic field, challenges traditional "empowerment" programs wave model of feminist history leaves out; and who laid bare what she calls "the for girls, and deviates from the conventions of "appropriate" academic contentious interrelationship between hip-hop feminism and the third wave." writing style. Nowhere is this more evident than in chapter three in which Her paper exposed, in part, how the unquestioned regurgitation of the wave Brown "enacts" SOLHOT's "resistance to being completely organized" and model of feminism's history (Durham prefers the term "herstory") has served to "commitment to freestyle." Specifically, instead of describing SOLHOT in reproduce and perpetuate the invisibility of Black female bodies, lived experi standard, dry academese, Brown includes, without elaboration or explanation, ences, history, culture, and theorizing. Moreover, she challenged feminists to a diverse collection of texts written by herself and/or others. Emails, poetry, "theorize feminism through alternative modes of intellectual production," and song lyrics, letters, newspaper article reprints, meeting agendas, activities, to focus on the role cultural representations play in the identity development of and theory jumble together to create a dynamic and thoroughly evocative Black girls. More important, she positioned hip-hop feminism not as a reaction picture of SOLHOT In this way, she both confronts what she calls "the prob to third wave or other White-centered feminisms, but rather as "the develop lem of language" in trying to describe SOLHOT and also allows the reader to ment of Black feminism and U.S. third world feminism in the contemporary." experience SOLHOT rather than simply read about it. Clearly, there are pages missing from the feminist intellectual history books, Lest the reader think this book is simply a description of a single program in and Durham along with other hip-hop feminists, including Ruth Nicole Brown a single community, I should clarify that Black Girlhood Celebration is not about in Black Girlhood Celebration, are challenging all of us to rethink this history SOLHOT Rather, SOLHOT is the vehicle through which Brown articulates and, for those of us White feminists, to acknowledge our own complicity in its a hip-hop feminist pedagogy-a pedagogy that has implications far beyond perpetuation. SOLHOT Black Girlhood Celebration is both theory-driven scholarship and In chapter two of Black Girlhood Celebration, Brown (citing the work of theory-building scholarship, culminating in Brown's compelling and success Marnina Gonick, 2006) contests what have become the two dominant yet ful attempt to work toward a criti<;:al hip-hop feminist pedagogy in chapter competing discourses of Girls' Studies, the "Reviving Opehlia" and "Girl Power" six. (I am purposely not providing a definition of hip-hop feminist pedagogy schools of thought. Specifically, Brown argues that, like the wave metaphor, in this preface, as it is best left for chapter six, after one has read all that has these "discourses also effectively silence and exclude the experiences of girls preceded it.) Black Girlhood Celebration is also activist, but not in the prescrip of color in general, and Black girls in particular." Yet she is "not interested in tive, "how do we save girls" sense. Black Girlhood Celebration is part of a dynamic squeezing Black girls into the Reviving Ophelia and Girl Power paradigm." process of an ongoing dialogue that genuinely includes the voices of Black girls. Rather, like Durham, who is not interested in incorporating Black girlhood Showing how a hip-hop feminist pedagogy is neither about "programming" nor into the wave metaphor, Brown argues instead for the creation of a discourse "mentoring" nor "girl-empowerment," Black Girlhood Celebration takes us on a that places Black girls at the center. This is precisely what she does in Black journey celebrating Black girls of all ages. Girlhood Celebration. Black Girlhood Celebration is now the fourth book published in the "Mediated Defining Black girlhood as "the representations, memories, and lived Youth" series. Interestingly, though not a series focusing specifically on girls or experiences of being and becoming in a body marked as youthful, Black, and Girls' Studies, all four books thus far have been about girls, each in its own female," Brown takes us on an intellectual and celebratory journey that is part way adding something to the dialogue on girls and each listening to the voices feminist theory, part social narrative, part performance-based autoethnography, of girls themselves. Black Girlhood Celebration is the first book in the series to part poetry slam, and part dance cipher. It is, as she describes it, "activist focus specifically on Black girls and to incorporate hip-hop feminism into the driven scholarship" articulated through the example of Saving Our Lives Hear discussion, thereby greatly expanding the scope of Girls' Studies as a field. In Our Truths (SOLHOT), a Black girl-centered program located in a small, fact, several months ago, when I first read Brown's proposal for Black Girlhood Midwestern university town. Celebration, I wrote a note that the book had the potential to be "groundbreaking XII SERIES EDITOR'S PREFACE in terms of its topic, its theoretical grounding, and its methodology." I have not been disappointed, and neither will the reader. Sharon R. Mazzarella Series Editor May 31,2008 PINKY SWEAR: SOLHOT & DR. RUTH Note NICOLE BROWN, PIONEER I focus specifically on U.S. girls in this preface since this book is about Black girlhood in the u.s. References Durham, A. (2007, November). All up in my kitchen! Fingerwaves, sister curls and extensions of hip-hop feminism in the third wave.

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