When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost : My Life as A Hip Hop Feminist

For a smart young black woman from the South Bronx carving a niche for herself as a writer, the f-word was feminism. Joan Morgan's book debut, When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, is a passionate, funny--and occasionally self-indulgent--look at the contradictions inherent in being both a strong woman and an African American sister attempting to process the machismo of the hip-hop world through the perceptions of her own strongly feminine soul. "As post-Civil Rights, post-feminist, post-soul children of hip-hop," Morgan writes, "we have a dire need for the truth." Her book chronicles the quest to fulfill that need through a series of essays ranging from social issues like the blatant misogyny of rap music ("From Fly-girls to Bitches and Hos"), the mythic stereotype of the strong black woman ("Strongblackwomen"), and the epidemic of single motherhood in the black community ("Babymother") to wickedly witty takes on her own life ("Lovenotes," "Chickenhead Envy").

Morgan is gifted with that rarest of all talents: her own voice. Her language is vivid and imagistic, its rhythms dipping effortlessly between the beat of the street and the meter of pure poetry. In this look at hood versus womanhood, Morgan serves up many of the same conclusions that sociologists have offered in drier, more academic form--but brings them to life with the freshness of her literary talent. --Patrizia DiLucchio