Author (Your Name)

Chyann L. Oliver, Colby College

Date of Award

2004

Document Type

Senior Scholars Paper (Open Access)

Department

Colby College. Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program

Advisor(s)

Bryant, Cedric Gael

Second Advisor

Pamela Thoma

Third Advisor

Margaret McFadden

Abstract

"Ghetto Feminism: Neo-Black Feminism for the Black Hip-Hop Generation (s)" is a feminism that addresses the simultaneity of race, sex, and class oppressions that subjugate black people of the hip-hop generation who reside in the urban ghetto or ghetto like conditions. It is a feminism that deconstructs the hypersexualized, racialized and classist representations of black people in hip-hop culture. The goal of this feminism or feminist thought is to raise the black hip-hop generationer's critical consciousness in order to encourage resistance to distorted images of themselves. Continuing with the tradition of multivocality or heteroglossia, Ghetto Feminism uses poetry, scholarly essays, and prose to create a "speakerly text" that can speak to all people, but most importantly the people that this project is written for: the hip-hop generation(s). In six chapters divided into three parts the essays and poems critique and deconstruct the representation of commercialized hip-hop culture and monolithic mass-produced rap, the hypersexualized, colonized black female body, and the pathologized black male sexual predator. Ghetto Feminism is another voice among many that seeks to help the black hip-hop generation(s) reclaim their culture, communities and identities.

Keywords

Feminism -- United States, African American women -- Social conditions, United States -- Race relations, United States -- Economic condions, African American youth -- Social life and customs, Poetry, Essays

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