The Crunk Feminist Collection

by Brittney C. Cooper, Susana M. Morris, Robin M. Boylorn

Overview

Essays on hip-hop feminism featuring relevant, real conversations about how race and gender politics intersect with pop culture and current events.

For the Crunk Feminist Collective, their academic day jobs were lacking in conversations they actually wanted. To address this void, they started a blog that turned into a widespread movement. The Collective’s writings foster dialogue about activist methods, intersectionality, and sisterhood. And the writers’ personal identities—as black women; as sisters, daughters, and lovers; and as television watchers, sports fans, and music lovers—are never far from the discussion at hand.

These essays explore “Sex and Power in the Black Church,” discuss how “Clair Huxtable is Dead,” list “Five Ways Talib Kweli Can Become a Better Ally to Women in Hip Hop,” and dwell on “Dating with a Doctorate (She Got a Big Ego?).” Self-described as “critical homegirls,” the authors tackle life stuck between loving hip hop and ratchet culture while hating patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism.

“Refreshing and timely.” —Bitch Magazine

“Our favorite sister bloggers.” —Elle

“By centering a Black Feminist lens, The Collection provides readers with a more nuanced perspective on everything from gender to race to sexuality to class to movement-building, packaged neatly in easy-to-read pieces that take on weighty and thorny ideas willingly and enthusiastically in pursuit of a more just world.” —Autostraddle

“Much like a good mix-tape, the book has an intro, outro, and different layers of based sound in the activist, scholar, feminist, women of color, media representation, sisterhood, trans, queer and questioning landscape.” —Lambda Literary Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558619487
Publisher:	Feminist Press at CUNY, The
Publication date:	06/02/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	317
Sales rank:	407,089
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Brittney Cooper is Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University. Her forthcoming book Race Women: Gender and the Making of a Black Public Intellectual Tradition (University of Illinois Press) examines the long history of Black women’s thought leadership in the US, with a view toward reinvigorating contemporary scholarly and popular conversations about Black feminism. In addition to a weekly column on race and gender politics at Salon.com, her work and words have appeared at the New York Times, the Washington Post, Cosmo.com, TV Guide, the Los Angeles Times, Ebony.com, The Root.com, MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show, All In With Chris Hayes, Disrupt with Karen Finney, and Third Rail on Al-Jazeera America, among many others. She is also a co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective, a popular feminist blog. In 2013 and 2014, she was named to the Root.com’s Root 100, an annual list of Top Black Influencers.

Susana M. Morris is co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective and a contributing writer on the blog. She received her Ph.D. from Emory University and is currently an associate professor of English at Auburn University, where she teaches African American literature. Her book, Close Kin and Distant Relatives: The Paradox of Respectability in Black Women’s Literature, was published by the University of Virginia Press in February 2014.

Robin M. Boylorn is Assistant Professor of Interpersonal and Intercultural Communication at The University of Alabama. She received her Ph.D. from University of South Florida in 2009. She is the author of the award-winning monograph Sweetwater: Black Women and Narratives of Resilience (Peter Lang, 2013), and co-editor of Critical Autoethnography: Intersecting Cultural Identities in Everyday Life (Left Coast Press, 2014).

Table of Contents

Crunk Feminist Mission Statement

Hip Hop Generation Feminism: A Manifesto

Introduction: Get CRUNK!

Activism: This is How We Do It

“The Future is Now”

“Do You Remember The Time When You Fell In Love…with Activism”

“Making Movement Mistakes: What to do When You F@*k Up”

“For Whites Who Consider Being Allies But Find it Much too Tuff"

“On the Pole for Freedom: Bree Newsome’s Politics, Theory, and Theology of Resistance”

Family&Community: Choosing Family

“Reflections on coming out and family”

“The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Sex and Power in the Black Church”

“Fish Dreams”

“Inconceivable: Black Infertility B-Side to Robin’s Fish Dreams”

“What I Value Most”

“God’s Plan Ain’t Black Mother’s Dying Young”

“Close Kin, Distant Relatives”

“Teaching Moments”

“After the Love Has Gone: Some Thoughts on Radical Community After the Election”

“Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe”

“What Love Looks Like in Public”

Girl’s Studies: Black Girls Are Magic

“Won’t You Celebrate With Me?”

“Meeting Girls Where They Are”

“How It Feels To Be…”

“Overcoming A-stigma-tism: (An Affirmation) For Blackgirls Who Have Considered Suicide When Closed Eyes Are Enuf”

“Baby Hair: For Gabby, Blue Ivy, Tiana&Me”

“When Everything Hurts: Black Pain, Silence&Suicide Tries”

“When the Church Fails Its Women: 7 Truths We Need to Tell About Creflo Dollar, Black Daughters and Violence”

“Unbreakable or The Problem with Praising Blackgirl Strength”

“What If We Were Free? Riley Curry and Blackgirl Freedom”

Gender: @#$% the Patriarchy

“Dear Patriarchy”

“How did I become a feminist?”

“Do we need a body count to count?: Notes on the serial murders of Black women”

“8 Reasons Why Formenism Can Ruin Your Love Life”

“Invisible: Black Women&HIV”

“The Evolution of a Down Ass Chick”

“A Theory of Violence: In Honor of Kasandra, CeCe, Victoria, Savita and Jyoti”

“On Being Called Out My Name”

“On Black Men Showing Up for Black Women at the Scene of the Crime”

“What Does Black Masculinity Look Like?”

“Jesus Wasn’t A Slut-Shamer or How Conservative Theology Harms Black Women”

Hip Hop Feminism: Feminism All the Way Turned Up

“Lensing The Culture: (Hip Hop) Women Behind the Camera”

“Sticks, Stones&Microphones”

“Ten Crunk Commandments for Re-Invigorating Hip Hop Feminist Studies”

“Confessions of a Backslider”

“It’s a f#@%g compliment”

“Disrespectability Politics: On Jay-Z’s Bitch, Beyoncé’s ‘Fly’ Ass, and Black Girl Blue”

“Five Ways Talib Kweli Can Become a Better Ally to Women in Hip Hop”

“#CFCTaughtMe: 5 Lessons on Life&Relationships On the Occasion of Our 5th Birthday”

Love, Sex,&Relationships: Black Feminist Sex Is …. the Best Sex Ever

“Birthday Sex”

“A Broken-hearted Feminist” – by Crunkista

“A (Hetero) Black Feminist F(ordin)airytale”

“Single, Saved, and Sexin’: The Gospel of Gettin’ Your Freak On”

“A Love Poem for Single Mothers”

“She Got A Big Ego?: Thoughts on Dating with a Doctorate”

“no strings”

“Being Single: On Mary Jane, Gabrielle Union&Those of Us Who Are Imperfect”

“On the Glorification of the Side Chick”

“What’s Up With Dudes Not Being Able to Give Compliments?”

“The Contract”

“How Chris Brown is Effing Up My Sex Life: A B-Side to Dating While Feminist B-side to Dating While Feminist”

“Please Accept My Sincere Apology”

Politics&Policy: The Personal is Political

“Conflict is forever: Can we change attitudes about diamonds?”

“The Power of Words: Racially Coded Political Rhetoric”

“The Wait of the Nation”

“Health care reform, politics and power: Is the Supreme Court Crunk?”

“ Reproductive Injustice and the ‘War on Women’ or, An Ode to the Intersections”

“My Brother’s Keeper&the Co-Optation of Intersectionality”

“Reflections on Respectability”

“Citizenship and Silence: Speaking the Stories Aloud”

“Teachers are Not Magical Negroes”

Pop Culture: The Rise of the Ratchet

“Nicki’s World”

“Man Down: On Rihanna, Rape, and Violence”

“Olympics Oppression?: Gabby Douglas and Smile Politics"

“(Un)Clutching My Mother’s Pearls, or Ratchetness and the Residue of Respectability”

“Girl, Bye: Why This Moment is Bigger than Paula Deen”

“The Unending Heartbreak of Great Expectations: Why I Can’t Watch The Mindy Project Anymore"

“Bringing Back Wonder Woman"

“5 Reasons I’m Here for Beyoncé, the Feminist”

“On bell, Beyoncé, and Bullshit”

“Clair Huxtable is Dead”

“A Scandal and A Lawn Chair: Why Olivia Pope Can’t Save Us From Racism”

“Tyler Perry Hates Black Women: 5 Thoughts on The Haves and the Have Nots”

Race and Racism: ALL Black Lives Matter

“The Gifts Among Us”

“Refereeing Serena: Racism, Anger, and U.S. (Women’s) Tennis”

“SlutWalks v. Ho Strolls”

“Re-Nigging on the Promises: #Justice4Trayvon”

“Trayvon Martin and Prison Abolition”

“What Violence Does”

“On Kimani Gray—Or To Be Young, Guilty, and Black”

“Fuck Sears, or When Mall Cops Attack”

“The Western Gaze: On Photography in the Two-Thirds World”

“Working While Black: 10 Racial Microaggressions Experienced in the Workplace”

“Waiting to Exhale”

Identity: Intersectionality for a New Generation

“You’re Pretty for a Dark-Skinned Girl”

“[Sigh]…I am so tired.”

“How a Big Girl Like it, Daddy?”

“Does This Make Me Look Fat?”

“Does This Make Me Look Latina?”

“Color(ism) Complex(es): An Ode to Dark (Skinned) Girls”

“20 Things I I Want To Say To My Twentysomething Self”

“Memories, Survival and Safety”

“Lady Gaga, Beauty, Ugliness and the Call for a Real Body Revolution”

“Getting to Happy, or The Myth of Happily Ever After”

“When You’re 'the One'"

Sisterhood: She’s Not Heavy, She’s My Sister

“Antoine Dodson’s Sister: On Invisibility as Violence”

“The Joy(s) of Being A (Black) Woman”

“Is It Ever Okay to Tell a Sister to Go Kick Rocks?: Black Women and Friendship”

“Happy Galentine’s Day!: A Little Love (In Whatever Form) Is All We Need”

“Tu(r)ning to Black Love”

“Beauty Parlor Politics”

“Remember Their Names: In Memory of Kasandra, Cherica&Others”

“Mama’s Feminism”

“So, Two Feminists Walk into a Bar…”

“How Talking to Your Homegirls Can ‘Liberate’ Your Sex Life”

Self-Care: Thus Saith the Lorde

“Crunkista’s Top 5 Unfeminist Moments”

“For Educated Black Girls Who’re Just Tryin to Maintain when Degrees Ain’t Enuf”

“Life is Not a Fairytale: Black Women and Depression”

“These Days I Hate Going to the Gynecologist”

“Putting My House in Order: Some Thoughts on Self-Care”

“Back-to-School Beatitudes: 10 Academic Survival Tips”

“Taking It All Off: Black Women, Nudity, and the Politics of Touch”

“Love Me Like You Love Your Lover”

“How to Not Die: Some Survival Tips for Black Women Who Are Asked to Do Too Much”

“Loving Ourselves: The Case for Radical Empathy”

“Black Autumn: On Black Anger, Tiredness, and the Limits of Self-Care”

“Disappearing Acts, Unreciprocated Interest(s)&Other Rhythms to My Blues”

“How To Say No and When To Say Yes”

Conclusion: Outro

Editorial Reviews

"Refreshing and timely." —Bitch Magazine

“Our favorite sister bloggers.” —ELLE

“By centering a Black Feminist lens, The Collection provides readers with a more nuanced perspective on everything from gender to race to sexuality to class to movement-building, packaged neatly in easy-to-read pieces that take on weighty and thorny ideas willingly and enthusiastically in pursuit of a more just world.” —Autostraddle

“Much like a good mix-tape, the book has an intro, outro, and different layers of based sound in the activist, scholar, feminist, women of color, media representation, sisterhood, trans, queer and questioning landscape.” —Lambda Literary Review

“A valuable record of the collective’s contributions to a growing cultural awareness of feminist issues and criticism, particularly for women of color.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The range of subject matter and myriad voices is representative of a new wave of vibrant and multifaceted feminism, at home in the academy and the beauty parlor.” —Publishers Weekly

"Witty, digestible passages. . . . the writings, although unmistakably political, speak to the personal with familiarity, honesty, and focus."—Booklist

"The pieces made me laugh from my gut, cry for hours, and really reckon with the fact that there will be no freedom, no liberation, no American deliverance without a wholehearted embrace of crunk feminist consciousness. One of the most important books I have ever read." —Kiese Laymon, author ofLong Division

"We are made better because of these scholars-in-sisterhood and their collective commitment to live, love, dance, desire, dissect, imagine, challenge, and give testimony. I'm 'bout it!" —Janet Mock, author ofRedefining Realness

"A must-read for anyone interested in feminist discourse produced by Black women from the hip hop generation." —Beverly Guy-Sheftall, author ofWords of Fire

"Erudite, revolutionary, and most definitely crunk, this book is poised to become a classic tome of feminist writing that speaks to many generations to come." —Gwendolyn D. Pough, author ofCheck It While I Wreck It

From the Publisher