American Studies
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Item BROWNGIRL NARRATIVES: EXPLORING COMING OF AGE IN THE GOLDEN ERA OF HIP HOP (1986-1996)(2012) Chae Reddy, Melissa Kim; Williams-Forson, Psyche; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)&ldquoBrowngirl Narratives&rdquo seeks to gain a clearer understanding of what we can learn from textual evidence about experiences of browngirls coming of age during the post-civil rights Golden Age of Hip Hop (1986-1996) by examining contemporary literature, film, social media and music produced by and about these black women. It is an inquiry into the ways in which browngirls coming of age in the United States negotiated the dominant scripts existing in their lives to craft their own stories. The aim is to utilize an interdisciplinary, black female-centered framework to fully problematize phenomena such as self-creation, empowerment, and sexual exploration in the lives of black women coming of age during 1986-1996. This study is an examination of black female bidungsromane&mdash black female cultural texts illustrating the coming of age/development processes. Additionally, it is an investigation into what we can learn about the ongoing individuation processes for post-civil rights browngirls by engaging various texts. This project shows pieces of their narrative by examining hidden scripts amongst Ntozake Shange's choreopoem, for colored girls who have considered suicide| when the rainbow is enuf; Tyler Perry's feature film adaptation, For Colored Girls and the dialogue which surfaced as a result; the life, work and politics of artist Erykah Badu, and; social media texts such as blogs. The selected narrative texts can be unpacked and analyzed using the bildungsroman as a lens to view concepts of self-discovery--&ldquotracing the development of complex and multidimensional&rdquo browngirls, exploring &ldquowho she is and how she became that way.&rdquo What do these stories reveal about the journey toward a self-defined identity for browngirls marginalized by race, gender, class and sexuality coming of age in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s? What can the cultural texts tell us about how their experiences growing up during this particular period shape their sense of love relationships, family, community, and the self? The research discloses important overlooked narratives&mdash &ldquomeaningful and endearing stories about their experiences that are not solely focused on heterosexual romance&rdquo&mdashalong with hidden transcripts or subtexts that reveal important phenomena for this particular group of women regarding identity construction, black female representation and sexuality.Item "Don't Believe the Hype": The Polemics of Hip Hop and the Poetics of Resistance and Resilience in Black Girlhood(2009) Oliver, Chyann Latrel; Parks, Sheri L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)At a time when Hip Hop is mired in masculinity, and scholars are "struggling for the soul of this movement" through excavating legacies in a black nationalist past, black girls and women continue to be bombarded with incessant, one-dimensional, images of black women who are reduced solely to sum of their sexual parts. Without the presence of a counter narrative on black womanhood and femininity in Hip Hop, black girls who are growing up encountering Hip Hop are left to define and negotiate their identities as emerging black women within a sexualized context. This dissertation asks: how can black girls, and more specifically, working class black girls, who are faced with inequities because of their race, class, and gender find new ways to define themselves, and name their experiences, in their own words and on their own terms? How can black girls develop ways of being resistant and resilient in the face of adversity, and in the midst of this Hip Hop "attack on black womanhood?" Using myriad forms of writing and fusing genres of critical essay, poetry, prose, ethnography, and life history, this dissertation, as a feminist, artistic, cultural, and political Hip Hop intervention, seeks to address the aforementioned issues by demonstrating the importance of black women's vocality in Hip Hop. It examines how black women in Hip Hop have negotiated race, class, gender, and sexuality from 1979 to the present. It addresses the disappearance or hiatus of the black female rapper and the subsequent rise and reign of the video vixen, and the implications this has for black girls coming of age during this hyper-commercialization of Hip Hop. It discusses how creative writing workshops, which teach black girls between the ages of 12-17 about the importance of vocality and feminist resistance through poetry/spoken word, can become a new method for investigating black girlhood and exploring issues of resistance and resilience.