Masculinity and hip hop are two topics that have been gaining wide attention in recent years. However, research has often been limited to solely criticizing the hip hop movement and examining the culture from a very parochial outsider’s perspective. An in-depth study of the relationship between hip hop and black masculinity, with commentary from the very men who are affected by it, is missing from the academia. It is with this thought that I have written my book. I wish to give a voice to those who have not yet been heard from, to examine and bring to light the damaging as well as positive affects that hip hop has on black men by talking to every day black men themselves, and to show that the hip hop phenomenon can be used as a great political tool for mobilizing this generation. This book examines stereotypical definitions of black manhood and looks at how specific images and lyrics in hip hop promote these stereotypes. I discuss how young black men, often growing up without fathers, look to the males in hip hop as role models. I argue that negative aspects of hip hop are really affecting young black men and that artists need to be more conscious of their impact and role in the black community. I also discuss many positive hip hop artists and music and that conscious hip hop is kept underground intentionally by corporations. I have integrated a case study throughout the book, where I interviewed young black men on ideas of masculinity, education and hip hop. I end by discussing the positive in hip hop, and by giving examples of how it can be taken so much farther, especially to connect the young urban community with politics and social awareness.

A brief commentary on the necessity and the impossibility of black men’s participation in the development of black feminist theory and politics, Black Men, Black Feminism examines the basic assumptions that have guided—and misguided—black men’s efforts to take up black feminism. Offering a rejoinder to the contemporary study of black men and masculinity in the twenty-first century, Jared Sexton interrogates some of the most common intellectual postures of black men writing about black feminism, ultimately departing from the prevailing discourse on progressive black masculinities. Sexton examines, by contrast, black men’s critical and creative work—from Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep to Jordan Peele’s Get Out— to describe the cultural logic that provides a limited moral impetus to the quest for black male feminism and that might, if reconfigured, prompt an ethical response of an entirely different order.

Hip Hop’s Amnesia is a study about aesthetics and politics, music and social movements, as well as the ways in which African Americans' unique history and culture has consistently led them to create musics that have served as the soundtracks for their socio-political aspirations and frustrations, their socio-political organizations and nationally-networked movements. The musics of the major African American social and political movements of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s were based and ultimately built on earlier forms of "African American movement music." Therefore, in order to really and truly understand rap music and hip hop culture we must critically examine both classical African American musics and the classical African American movements that these musics served as soundtracks for.

The Hip Hop Movement offers a critical theory and alternative history of rap music and hip hop culture by examining their roots in the popular musics and popular cultures of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement. Connecting classic rhythm & blues and rock & roll to the Civil Rights Movement, and classic soul and funk to the Black Power Movement, The Hip Hop Movement explores what each of these musics and movements contributed to rap, neo-soul, hip hop culture, and the broader Hip Hop Movement. Ultimately, this book’s remixes (as opposed to chapters) reveal that black popular music and black popular culture have always been more than merely “popular music” and “popular culture” in the conventional sense and reflect a broader social, political, and cultural movement. With this in mind, sociologist and musicologist Reiland Rabaka critically reinterprets rap and neo-soul as popular expressions of the politics, social visions, and cultural values of a contemporary multi-issue movement: the Hip Hop Movement. Rabaka argues that rap music, hip hop culture, and the Hip Hop Movement are as deserving of critical scholarly inquiry as previous black popular musics, such as the spirituals, blues, ragtime, jazz, rhythm & blues, rock & roll, soul, and funk, and previous black popular movements, such as the Black Women’s Club Movement, New Negro Movement, Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Movement, Black Power Movement, Black Arts Movement, and Black Women’s Liberation Movement. This volume, equal parts alternative history of hip hop and critical theory of hip hop, challenges those scholars, critics, and fans of hip hop who lopsidedly over-focus on commercial rap, pop rap, and gangsta rap while failing to acknowledge that there are more than three dozen genres of rap music and many other socially and politically progressive forms of hip hop culture beyond DJing, MCing, rapping, beat-making, break-dancing, and graffiti-writing.

Essays from the New York Times–bestselling author who inspired the film The Glorias, a “woman who has told the truth about her life and ours” (Los Angeles Times). With cool humor and rich intellect, Gloria Steinem strips bare our social constructions of gender and race, explaining just how limiting these invented cultural identities can be. In the first of six sections, Steinem imagines how our understanding of human psychology would be different in a witty reversal: What if Freud had been a woman who inflicted biological inferiority on men (think “womb envy”)? In other essays, she presents positive examples of people who turn gendered stereotypes on their heads, from a female bodybuilder to Mahatma Gandhi, whose followers absorbed his wisdom that change starts at the bottom. And in some of the most moving pieces, Steinem reveals some of her own complicated history as a writer, woman, and citizen of the world. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Gloria Steinem including rare images from the author’s personal collection.

A major figure in African American social justice movements and Black theological praxis and theory, Rev. Dr. Prathia Laura Ann Hall (1940–2002) had not been the subject of a book-length critical study until Courtney Pace’s Freedom Faith: The Womanist Vision of Prathia Hall was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2019. Now with the publication of Beyond Eden: The Collected Sermons and Essays of Prathia Hall, Pace provides a volume of seminal importance to the fields of womanist theology and ethics, Black church history, and African American history. Beyond Eden explores Hall’s preaching and research, curating a collection of her work to expand scholarship on her influence on American religion and Black churches. Hall pioneered womanist preaching, embodying the necessary interconnections among theology, social science, history, and practical ministry. She was a master organizer, not only leading her congregation but facilitating collaborations among national, regional, and local organizations to serve Black churches and Black communities. The sermons and essays in this volume showcase Hall’s womanist preaching brilliance, the seamless connection between church and the academy in her work, and her understanding of the gospel as Freedom Faith. A trailblazer in the womanist movement of the 1980s and 1990s, Hall merged Christian ethics with Black feminist thought during decades of civil rights activism and preaching. Although she had very few publications due to the demands of her multifaceted vocation, health limitations, and familial responsibilities, her extensive work has been transcribed from handwritten notes and audio recordings by editor Courtney Pace.

This book is intended to provide a guide to exploring a more meaningful life than we otherwise might have in its absence. Not because the author knows or understands more, but because the author invites the reader to grow in as many ways she or he finds important and relevant. Certainly this may not be a journey that is for everyone, some may find that it contradicts some fundamental beliefs the reader holds dear, in which case it may not be as helpful as intended. In addition, this guide requires a level of humility, effort (intellectual, psychological, spiritual etc.,) and self-evaluation that may be more than some are willing to invest. There is no short cut to embarking on a journey that leaves the world better because we were here. The challenges and questions introduced in this book are no less perplexing for the author as they may be for the reader. There are a plethora of methods available to each of us to employ for self- improvement at any given time. This book is offered as an available aide to individual growth and development. Hopefully this piece encourages a pattern of inquiry that leads the reader to experience life with a joy that resonates from within. Moreover, it is the intention of this work to support the finding of a deep sense meaning and peace that exist totally unconnected to the material world. It is the hope of this author that each reader sees not only who we are when we look in the mirror but also be encouraged to imagine who we could be.