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Paul Jacobs, a professional athlete and fledgling entrepreneur, echoes Clinkscales's sentiments strongly. "As a black man, professional success validates you and gives you the ability to compete, especially against the white men of the world. It's like your check." To my surprise, if a brother was feeling insecure about his financial status, the offer only ended up making him feel worse. You should be with some nigga that can give you the world.
But it is about black women who have grown up with hip-hop defining "feminism" for themselves. I personally would never call myself a feminist because it brings up an image of bra burning, hard line, mostly white women. It's a little to "aggressive for me. But I like what Morgan terms "hip-hop feminist". Here is an excerpt for a chapter that appealed to me. My first expectation was that this would a more academic type book. It wasn't, but it was not remedial in anyway.
When Chickenheads Come Home To Roost
I think a lot of guys don't understand what being a feminist means. Just because I'm a feminist doesn't mean I'm not a woman. And sometimes women like to feel nurtured and special and feel like they're being taken care of. For most of us, however, the negotiation rarely plays itself out in a strictly monetary exchange. Trickin' is often a less straightforward affair -- the more subtle, the more socially acceptable. It's the persuasive, silent "punanny strike" you go on 'til your honey comes 'round and sees things your way.
I loved nearly every page of this book, but the "lovenote" chapter spoke to me the most, so much so that I wanted to send Joan Morgan a tithe for such reverent gospel on how Black woman should love themselves. Kristal Brent Zook Vibe Definitely not your mother's guide to the Equal Rights Amendment....Morgan's reflections are as timely as they are cogent. Due to a planned power outage on Friday, 1/14, between 8am-1pm PST, some services may be impacted. "Yeah, I'm looking for fly and beautiful," he sighs.
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It never dawned on me that sex figured prominently into this equation until one day, while longingly admiring my friend Tai's most recent acquisitions I ventured to ask exactly how her seventeen-year-old non-working and living in the projects behind could afford it all. "Girl, my man gets it for me." Then thinking of the ass-whooping I'd be sure to get if I tried to do the same, I asked what in the world she told her mom. "My motha is the one who told me," she said. "Pussy ain't free. Don't be giving up my shit to these niggas unless they give me something." So needless to say, when one of my homeboys said he discovered much fewer than six degrees of separation between himself and one of Mr. Mention's alleged mistresses, I was wide open on the details.
That part about how dudes should be able to abdicate their parental rights, and thus responsibilities, if they were clear thru a pregnancy that they didn't want to parent a child? But no matter how vehemently i disagree with some of JM's conclusions, the questions are dead on. In her attempt to auction this book as a Black feminist requirement, she’s exposed myself and several other readers to an unneeded pick-me thought disguised as feminism with a dash of "let’s try to understand Black men better". Other displeasing parts of this book include her lamentable slut-shaming of sex workers and women who partook in the sexual revolution.
When chicken-heads come home to roost : a hip-hop feminist breaks it down
"That's not the girl we marry. None of us wants to be sitting at dinner with Michael Jordan, Puffy, Shaquille O'Neal, and the new hot rapper and know they've been with your girl." Liz, a southern belle and a bit of a feminist femme fatale, is also down with erotic power. Being fully in command of one's womanly charms, she maintains, is a powerful tool when it comes to battling sexism. She calls it working the "militant feminine." "Oh, if you're a guy and you're putting me in a sexist situation, I'm sorry for you," warns the thirty-something costume designer. Not all women are as comfortable with erotic power as Queen Latifah. There are sistas like Danni, who find the idea of women exploiting the competitive edge society grants attractive people complicit and offensive.
It's really a shame because there is not enough feminist scholarship on hip hop so I was looking forward to that perspective. It reeks of heteronormativity, anti-sex work, elitism, classism, pro-capitalism, and at times, leaving a ton of patriarchy burden on women. I found the 'baby mother' chapter filled with assumptions and personal opinions about the black family, motherhood, and parenting.
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Her labeling this text as feminist is feigning to the mission of feminism and misleading to young women and people that stumble upon this book without having fully-formed their politics thinking this book could be a germane guide in their respective foundations. Still fresh, funny, and irreverent after eighteen years, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost gives voice to the most intimate thoughts of the post-Civil Rights, post-feminist, post-soul generation. Martine Bury Jane It's a bold, cheeky, self-affirming read, and for black women in this society, there's hardly enough affirmation.
In otherwords, it never gets so abstract that it loses personal relevance. Reading this book is not so much like learning or studying Black feminism in the era of hip hop, with a culture and climate steeped in bold misogyny wrapped in a tight flow over a fly beat. It's more like listening in on your older cousin and her girlfriends discuss life in the 90s as 20 or 30-somethings, trying to find their way as women with obstacles that their foremothers couldn't have blueprinted even if they tried.
I wouldn't do it for like $50,000 or something 'cuz you could really make that on your own -- but $300, where's a black woman gonna make that kinda money legally? It's not like you'd be selling out for a couple of pairs of Manolo Blahniks. I read this book during my college years and it was quite insightful. During that time I was completed engulfed in Hip-Hop culture, this book help me define who I was a woman in such a movement. Too much talk of the "independent woman" v. the "gold diggers" which felt like slut shaming misogyny rather than an uplifting contribution to feminism.
More often than not a pretty, young chicken who tricked her way through her twenties may find herself out of the game by thirty. "Successful" chickens are usually a mere fraction of those who ass out trying. Let's face it, money and the ability to spend it freely is one of society's strongest assertions of power -- and power is a very sexy thing.
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