by Joan Morgan
To my chair Dr. Jennifer L. Morgan, to whom I owe a significant debt (not to mention a dissertation) for not freaking out when I walked into her office and told her I need a few months off to write a book, thank you. Nuff love to Young Arts LA 2018 staff, writing finalists, and my co-directors Roger Bonair-Agard and Ron McCurdy for equal parts support, gracious tolerance, and inspiration. Rebekah Lengel, your chill was my calm. I’m grateful for that.
All books are born, and some births are more difficult than others. This one had some of the best midwives a writer could imagine. Akissi Britton, Daniel José Older, and Patrice Fenton, there simply aren’t enough words to express the depths of my love, respect, and appreciation for the ways you’ve held me down. I have to trust that you already know. Similar sentiments go to my fellow fly girl from The Boogie: Lisa Leone for prayers, the guest house, yoga, laughter, good wine, food, and even better coffee. Seriously Mama, who’s better than you? And really, who’s better than Jimmy? Elizabeth Sobol, thank you for the gift of shelter and the sea. To the Jacobs family: Gizelle, Schott, Nika, and Schottie, for a home away from home. And sushi. Did I mention sushi? Mitzi Miller, thanks for bringing up the rear in the ways only you can, with equal parts drama, hilarity, efficacy, and shopping. My family is an amazing bunch. Mom, thank you for giving me the space to do the work and keeping me in constant prayer. Eternal gratitude to my brother, Gregory Morgan, and sister-in-law, Angel Howard, for everything from receiving panicked phone calls to expediting forgotten notes across country and loving texts to cheer me across the finish line.
When it comes to hip hop, the contributions of women writers and cultural critics are too often treated as afterthoughts, the lone voice meant to give “the female perspective” in a discourse people still assume belongs primarily to men. I’m incredibly grateful to the writers, deejays, scholars, critics, and artists—the former 90’s fly girls whose rich contributions to this book prove we were not only there but integral to the very foundations of perhaps the most significant cultural movement of the late 20th and early 21st century: Belinda Becker, Yaba Blay, Beverly Bond, Tarana Burke, Raquel Cepeda, Michaela Angela Davis, Lynnée Denise, Joicelyn Dingle, dream hampton, Treva B. Lindsey, Karen Good Marable, Akiba Solomon, and Nadine Sutherland. Kierna Mayo, your foreword to this book set “the bar” for the bars. Thank you for making it all the things. Jayson Jackson, Schott Free Jacobs, and Robert Kenner, this would have been a very different, and frankly, incomplete book without your memories and insights. Thank you, Brethren, thank you. Douglas Galluzzo, you started out as an interview subject and ended up Fam. Your gifts are too many to mention.
Special shout-outs to Jeff Chang, Brittney Cooper, Zahara Duncan, Marc Lamont Hill, Mark Anthony Neal, and Brittany Williams. Fam is fam is fam is fam.
Finally, my greatest gratitude goes to the absolute creative genius of Ms. Lauryn Hill, without which none of this would have ever been possible.
About the Author
A pioneering hip-hop journalist and award-winning feminist author, Joan Morgan coined the term “hip-hop feminism” in 1999 with the publication of When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, which is now used at colleges and universities across the country. Joan has taught at Duke University, Stanford University, and The New School. She is currently a doctoral candidate in American Studies at NYU.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-1-5011-9525-9
ISBN 978-1-5011-9527-3 (ebook)