Hip Hop's Li'l Sistas Speak

Book excerpt: This book has received the AESA (American Educational Studies Association) Critics Choice Award 2013. Through ethnographically informed interviews and observations conducted with six Black middle and high school girls, Hip Hop's Li'l Sistas Speak explores how young women navigate the space of Hip Hop music and culture to form ideas concerning race, body, class, inequality, and privilege. The thriving atmosphere of Atlanta, Georgia serves as the background against which these youth consume Hip Hop, and the book examines how the city's socially conservative politics, urban gentrification, race relations, Southern-flavored Hip Hop music and culture, and booming adult entertainment industry rest in their periphery. Intertwined within the girls' exploration of Hip Hop and coming of age in Atlanta, the author shares her love for the culture, struggles of being a queer educator and a Black lesbian living and researching in the South, and reimagining Hip Hop pedagogy for urban learners.