When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost

A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down

Joan Morgan

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780684868615
• eBook ISBN: 9781439127407
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: African American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

"Morgan has given an entire generation of Black feminists space and language to center their pleasures alongside their politics." —Janet Mock, New York Times bestselling author of Redefining Realness "All that and then some, Chickenheads informs and educates, confronts and charms, raises the bar high by getting down low, and, to steal my favorite Joan Morgan phrase, bounced me out of the room." —Marlon James, Man Booker Prize–winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings Still as fresh, funny, and ferociously honest as ever, this piercing meditation on the fault lines between hip-hop and feminism captures the most intimate thoughts of the post-Civil Rights, post-feminist, post-soul generation. Award-winning journalist Joan Morgan offers a provocative and powerful look into the life of the modern Black woman: a complex world in which feminists often have not-so-clandestine affairs with the most sexist of men, where women who treasure their independence frequently prefer men who pick up the tab, where the deluge of babymothers and babyfathers reminds Black women who long for marriage that traditional nuclear families are a reality for less than forty percent of the population, and where Black women are forced to make sense of a world where truth is no longer black and white but subtle, intriguing shades of gray.

index

A note about the index: The pages referenced in this index refer to the page numbers in the print edition. Clicking on a page number will take you to the ebook location that corresponds to the beginning of that page in the print edition. For a comprehensive list of locations of any word or phrase, use your reading system’s search function.

abandonment, 122, 126–28

abortion, 36, 59, 164, 168, 171, 172, 179, 180–81

abstinence, 167, 181

adoption, 171, 172, 173, 179–80, 181

AIDS, 53, 61, 102, 104, 167, 182

alcoholism, 73, 124–25, 147

Ambersunshower, 110–11

Badu, Erykah, 143–44

Berry, Mary Frances, 175–76

birth control, 59, 168, 180, 182

bitches, 70, 74–75, 76, 77, 78

black female identity, 25–26

careers in, 160

complacency concerning, 21–23

feminism and, 20

independence and, 20–21, 186–187, 193, 194

self-esteem and, 77–78, 81

see also chickenheads; STRONGBLACKWOMAN (SBW) image

black feminism

attitudes toward black men and, 49–62

black-on-black love and, 70–71, 139–40

current generation of, 52–53

examples of, 22, 34–35, 36–38

questions of, 57–58

stereotypes of, 55–57

truth and, 61–62

see also feminism

black men

all-black male schools, 123

careers of, 186–87, 206, 225

chickenheads and, see chickenheads

confusion about fatherhood, 168–170

disrespect for women, 121–23, 139

as fallen heroes, 54, 80, 101–2, 118...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Epigraph
• Foreword
• Intro.: Dress Up
• The F-Word
• Hip-Hop Feminist
• From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos
• Strongblackwomen
• Strongblackwomen -N- Endangeredblackmen . . . this is not a Love Story
• Lovenote
• Babymother
• Chickenhead Envy
• Beyoncé, Black Feminist Art, and This Oshun Bidness
• Afterword
• One Last Thing Before I Go
• Reading Group Guide
• About the Author
• Source Notes
• Index
• Copyright