Home with Hip Hop Feminism: Performances in Communication and Culture

Aisha S. Durham, co-editor of Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminism Anthology (2007) and Globalizing Cultural Studies: Ethnographic Interventions in Theory, Method, and Policy (Peter Lang, 2007), presents hip hop as not only a mode of expression, but as a tangible sense of “home” for black women. Durham explores the expression of hip hop in the body as the place where the real and the imagined collide, while also proving hip hop as a space where black women can explore identity, representation, gender, power, and dominance. She explores hip hop feminism and defines it as “a sociocultural, intellectual, and political movement grounded in the situated knowledge of women of color from the broader hip hop or U.S. post-civil rights generation who recognize culture as a pivotal site for political intervention to challenge, resist, and mobilize collectives to dismantle systems of exploitation.” Durham delves into these topics, and much more, through her own lived experiences in relation to others around her growing up in her community. Annotation ©2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)