Ride or Die: A Feminist Manifesto for the Well-Being of Black Women

by Shanita Hubbard, Tovah Ott (Read by)

Overview

Do you have a “ride or die chick” in your life? A “ride or die chick” is a Black woman who holds down her family and community. She’s that friend or family member that you can call up in the middle of the night to bail you out of jail, if ever needed, and you know she’ll show up and won’t ask any questions.

She does anything for her family, friends, and significant other, even at the cost of her own well-being. “No” is not in her vocabulary. She’s beloved by you and many others, but her ride or die trope becomes a problem when she does it indiscriminately.

Her self-worth is connected to how much labor she can provide for others. She goes above and beyond for everyone in every aspect of her life—work, family, church, and often it’s not reciprocated, and a “ride or die chick” doesn’t require it to be because she’s a “strong Black woman.” To her, love should be earned, and there’s no limit to what she’ll do for it.

In this book, Shanita Hubbard, author, adjunct professor of sociology, and former therapist, disrupts the “ride or die” complex and argues that this way of life has left Black women exhausted, overworked, overlooked, and feeling depleted.

She suggests that Black women are susceptible to this mentality because it’s normalized in our culture. It rings loud in our favorite hip-hop songs, and it even shows up in the most important relationship we will ever have—the one with yourself.

Compassionate, candid, hard-hitting, and 100% unapologetic, Ride-or-Die melds Hubbard’s entertaining conversations with her Black girlfriends and her personal experiences as a redeemed “ride-or-die chick” and a former “captain of the build-a-brother team” to fervently dismantle cultural norms that require Black women to take care of everyone but themselves.

Ride or Die urges you to expel the myth that your self-worth is connected to how much labor you provide others, and guides you toward healing. Using hip hop as a backdrop to explore norms that are harmful to Black women, Hubbard shows the way you may be unknowingly perpetuating this harm within your relationships. Hubbard urges you to pull the plug on the “ride or die chick.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668627440
Publisher:	Hachette Book Group
Publication date:	11/08/2022
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 5.60(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Shanita Hubbard is an acclaimed writer, American-based Journalism Instructor at the University of Toronto,  chair of the Freelance Taskforce for the National Association of Black Journalists, and a Soros Fellow.  Her work has been published in New York Times, Huffington Post, Guardian, Pitchfork,  ESSENCE, and a host of other publications. Hubbard’s writing has helped foster complex discourse around intracommunity sexual violence, abuse within the hip-hop community, and the complicated relationship between Black women and hip-hop.

Tovah Ott is a professional narrator who has recorded over 250 titles under multiple pseudonyms.

Table of Contents

Introduction: An Ode to Black Women 1

1 Ride or Die 7

2 The Corners 45

3 That Thing You Do 67

4 4:44 99

5 WAP 121

6 My Sister's Keeper 135

7 A Healing 157

Acknowledgments 175

Editorial Reviews

“This engaging, thoughtful book uses hip hop as a backdrop to honor our strength and healing as a collective.”

New York Times bestselling author Gabrielle Union

Hubbard debuts with a standout study of how the lionization of the ‘ride-or-die chick’ negatively impacts Black women. . . . Effortlessly blending personal anecdotes, academic scholarship, and pop culture analysis, this is an authentic and cathartic call for change.”—Publishers Weekly

“Candid and provocative, Hubbard’s examination of the unspoken truths about Black women’s lives is well rendered and liberating. An important book about significant issues that often go unexplored.”—Kirkus

“A powerful must-read book for Black women. This engaging, thoughtful book uses hip hop as a backdrop to honor our strength and healing as a collective.” —Gabrielle Union

“This beautiful brilliant Black woman bares her soul, revealing the struggle far too many of us experience. Shanita takes us into deeply intimate moments of her own life to deconstruct why being a ‘ride or die’ is problematic in ways rarely discussed. With unapologetic strength, she challenges us to see the piercing hole this generational badge of ‘honor’ leaves open and reveals why it's time to remove it and heal.”—Tamron Hall

“With clear-eyed analysis, poignant vulnerability and notable grace, Shanita Hubbard continues the decades-old work of moving the important narratives of women and genderqueer people of the hip hop generation from the margins to the center.”—Dr. Joan Morgan, author of When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost

"In a world that continues to do everything in its power to silence the voice of the Black woman, Shanita's book is the light the world so desperately needs. Ride or Die is honest and poignant about the lives of Black women. Shanita uses the beautifully complex world of hip-hop she was raised in and grew to love as fascinating entry points. But she ultimately holds that same world accountable for its shortcomings of its portrayal of Black women. It's the culture holding the culture responsible."—Justin Tinsley, author of It Was All a Dream

“I've never read a book that gives us as much as Ride or Die gives us. This miracle of a book challenges, affirms, heals, reveals, and loves like nothing I've ever come across before. Shanita Hubbard has opened herself to us all for the purpose of asking us to be better to and for the people around us. She is one of our preeminent master teachers, using Hip-Hop as her curriculum, and we are all better for having been given these lessons.” —David Dennis Jr, author of The Movement Made Us

“A warm insightful examination of the music and the culture that raises Black women to be leaders and then insists that they step out of the spotlight, Ride or Die is exactly what we need right now. If we're going to listen to Black women it can't just be for clues to what will serve the needs of others, it has to be to understand and support Black women. To be ready and able to show up and show out for all Black women the way we expect them to show up for their communities. Hubbard weaves together memoir, music, and motivation to be better to each other and to ourselves.”—Mikki Kendall, New York Times bestselling author of Hood Feminism

"Shanita masterfully navigates the complexities of Black womanhood through hip-hop’s problematic lens—as only a thought leader of her caliber can. As such, Ride or Die is much more than ‘a feminist manifesto,’ it's an impassioned testimony that implores each of us to reassess our participation in—and contributions to—the continuous destruction of Black women.”—Jay Connor, Senior Editor, Culture & Entertainment at The Root

"Ride or Die is that extremely rare 21st century book that radically explores the ties between the visible and invisible labor of Black women, and the language we use to really diminish that unfair burden of labor. It is as glorious as it is rugged. Shanita Hubbard got busy. And I am so thankful."—Kiese Laymon

“Easy read. Quick read. Great book.”—Jamilah Lemieux, writer, cultural critic, and editor

“This volume serves as a multifaceted challenge for Black women to pursue self-determination, to expect accountability and reparation when wronged, to be accountable to others and make amends when in the wrong, and to recognize and break toxic behaviors that place others' well-being as more important than one's own.”—CHOICE

From the Publisher

11/01/2022

Award-winning writer Hubbard (journalism, Univ. of Toronto) pens a conflicted love letter to hip-hop, arguing that the "ride-or-die chick" cultural phenomenon is a double-edged sword. Growing up, Hubbard was inspired by the storytelling in hip-hop's depictions of life in lower-income areas. She cites The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as a seminal album that made her feel seen as a Black woman. It wasn't until her worldview expanded and diversified that she began to see the misogyny in some hip-hop songs. She saw the ways in which many lyrics serve to oppress Black women and reinforce stereotypes that they should be self-sacrificing. She examines Jay-Z's 4:44, noting that public declarations of contrition are not enough. Hubbard also recounts revealing conversations with a friend of hers, who is Black, a woman, and gay, which led to her confronting her own latent homophobic attitudes that she attributes to the influence of the hip-hop lyrics she grew up listening to. Ultimately, she seeks a world where Black women are free to be themselves, without judgment for being either ride-or-die or choosing to reject that paradigm. VERDICT Perfect for fans of Brittney Cooper's Eloquent Rage and Mikki Kendall's Hood Feminism.—Barrie Olmstead

Library Journal

2022-09-23
A journalism instructor and Black feminist activist offers her perspective on the “missing narrative about Black women’s lives” in contemporary culture.

Hubbard derived much of her early views about Black womanhood from hip-hop songs like the LOX’s “Ryde or Die, Bitch,” which celebrates the self-sacrificing Black woman. The author shows how this female archetype has deep roots in both Black culture and the Black church and exists across boundaries of education and class. After finishing her master’s degree in criminal justice, Hubbard willingly became the emotional and financial support for a convict boyfriend, his young daughter, and ex-girlfriend, all while spending several days a week volunteering for her community church. The author examines the fraught nature of public spaces for Black women, especially the “corner.” Songs like Common’s “The Corner” speak of street corners as spaces of brotherhood and safety for Black men, but for women, those same spaces are rife with the possibility of harassment. “For black women and our bodies,” writes the author, “we have a complicated relationship and experience with those corners that has been…ignored in our community.” Indeed, the Black men “hunted by the police” are the ones who, along with the police, hunt Black women and girls to inflict harm upon them. Hubbard also shows how the violence Black women experience is linguistic. She suggests that labels like queen exist to keep them in their place and divide them from each other. Used by men to compliment "good," sexually modest Black women, queen does nothing more than force women to play the kind of respectability politics that turn up in the lyrics of even the most progressive women hip-hop artists—e.g., Lauryn Hill, whom the author discusses in depth—and contribute to the “collective and individual harm…[of] Black women.” Candid and provocative, Hubbard’s examination of the unspoken truths about Black women’s lives is well rendered and liberating.

An important book about significant issues that often go unexplored.

Kirkus Reviews