Ruth Nicole Brown and Chamara Jewel Kwakye (eds), Wish to Live: The Hip-hop Feminism Pedagogy Reader

Abstract

1 The glaring dropout crisis points to the urgency of re- engaging students with learning, and a wave of educators and cultural workers, influenced by culture, technology, and globalization, has emerged in recent years and reassessed teaching methods and pedagogy. 2 Aiming to disseminate educational practices and to dispute the bias that culture is not an appropriate medium through which to engage youth in learning, Wish to Live: The Hip Hop Feminism Pedagogy Reader provides essays, poems, scholarly papers, and performances to effectively incorporate culture into current educational practice. In contrast with the vast majority of education courses and programs that are meant to serve youth, especially in low-income, marginalized, and chronically violent communities, the authors of this reader, Ruth Nicole Brown and Chamara Jewel Kwakye, offer a new jack (p.xi) feminist agenda and explore through a critical feminist lens. 3 Their book, which blends pedagogy, gender analysis and LGBT studies, presents diverse, inter-generational and multi-dimensional pedagogies. The contributors are varied, from women working within the sphere to on-the-ground feminists, alongside activists, students, writers, and scholars. Drawing on scholarship from Women's studies, African American studies, and education, Wish To Live joins poetry, autobiographical vignettes and observations into a wholehearted celebration of black girlhood and womanhood in a context of feminism and critical pedagogy. 4 As a Reader, Wish to Live is primarily a book for instruction and practice. It argues that hip-hop, given its importance and aura in the lives of youth, has great potential to influence their educational experiences and provides instances of how it can be used as a critical and culturally relevant pedagogical tool. It is divided into five parts (1: Miseducation; 2: Justice; 3: Performance; 4: People; 5: SOLHOT). The first part, Miseducation, lays the foundation for the rest of the Reader. Consisting of five chapters, it presents and promotes a feminist agenda from a black perspective and passionately illustrates, through inspirational essays (chapter 1) or spoken word performances (chapter 2) why the celebration of black girlhood and womanhood is to be considered essential. Just as importantly, it highlights the necessity for the recognition of present female and queer voices in (chapter 3), rejecting negative stereotypes and counterhegemonic discourse against what Ruth Nicole Brown referred to as hip-hop porn in her 2009 book Black Girlhood Celebration: Toward a Hip-Hop Pedagogy.