Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Eloquent Rage
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1980
WEBSITE: http://www.brittneycooper.com/
CITY:
STATE: NJ
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
http://www.brittneycooper.com/contact-me/; co-founder of the popular Crunk Feminist Collective blog; Tel: 848-932-8427
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Howard University, B.A. (summa cum laude), 2002; Emory University, M.A., 2007, Ph.D., 2009.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and academic. University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL, assistant professor, 2009-12; Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, 2011-12, assistant professor, 2012-17, associate professor, 2017–. Has been featured on national television and radio programs.
AWARDS:Darwin T. Turner Award, African American Review, 2015, for best article in any time period of African American literature and culture; Award for Excellence in Masters Level Instruction, Northeast Association of Graduate Schools, 2016; Olga Vives Award, National Organization of Women, 2016; Front Page Award, Newswomen’s Club of New York, 2016, for online blogs; Black Feminist Waymaker and Shapeshifter Award, Black Women’s Blueprint, 2017.
WRITINGS
Contributor to academic journals, including African American Review, MELUS, Meridians: Feminism, Race, and Transnationalism, and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
SIDELIGHTS
Brittney Cooper is a writer and academic. After graduating from Howard University, she earned a Ph.D. from Emory University in 2009. Cooper began lecturing at Rutgers University in 2012 after serving as an assistant professor at the University of Alabama. Cooper has published numerous articles in academic journals, including African American Review, MELUS, Meridians: Feminism, Race, and Transnationalism, and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
The Crunk Feminist Collection
With Susana M. Morris and Robin M. Boylorn, Cooper coedited The Crunk Feminist Collection in 2017. The book covers the intersection of race and gender politics with current events and pop culture. Through a popular blog they created to address these issues, Cooper, Morris, and Boylorn turned the blog posts and other essays into a collection that encourages dialogue about intersectionality, activist methods, and sisterhood. Some of the essays included in the text include “Sex and Power in the Black Church,” “Clair Huxtable is Dead,” “Five Ways Talib Kweli Can Become a Better Ally to Women in Hip Hop,” and “Dating with a Doctorate (She Got a Big Ego?).”
Reviewing the book in the Women’s Review of Books, Erin Aubry Kaplan noted that “in reading this anthology of trenchant and frequently funny blog posts, commentary, and essays by a cadre of young black feminist scholars on a mission to expand their conversation into the real world, I met a group of blunt talkers influenced by music that talks.” Kaplan stated: “Essentially the collective, and this collection, works–talks–to break down the walls between learned black feminism and lived black female experience, and also to (gasp) enjoy the enterprise. One of the best things about it is that the writers never let their appropriate sister-girl seriousness and academic cred get in the way of playing and having fun.” Kaplan observed that from “the racist remarks of the southern restaurateur Paula Deen to the movement-catalyzing crisis of Trayvon Martin’s murder,” the contributors to The Crunk Feminist Collection “do black women, and all black folks, a great service in exploring not just the broader reverberations of these moments, but their private effects, viewing them through the emotionally uninhibited lens of hip hop. Some of the most impactful pieces here are not reactions to news cycles but observations rooted in the nonevents of daily life.” Booklist contributor Courtney Jones commented that “the writings, though unmistakably political, speak to the personal with familiarity, honesty, and focus.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews labeled the account “a valuable record of the collective’s contributions to a growing cultural awareness of feminist issues and criticism, particularly for women of color.” A Publishers Weekly contributor claimed that “the range of subject matter and myriad voices is representative of a new wave of vibrant and multifaceted feminism.”
Beyond Respectability
Cooper published Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women in 2017. The account looks at the development of African American women from the late 1800s through the 1970s through the lens of public intellectualism. The account shuns he Great Race Man paradigm in favor of the intellectual achievements of a number of activists and female thinkers, such as Anna Julia Cooper, Fannie Barrier Williams, Pauli Murray, Mary Church Terrell, and Toni Cade Bambara. Cooper looks at how these individuals came to be seen as racial leadership figures through personal experience and theoretical production.
Writing in the National Public Radio Website, Genevieve Valentine said that “it’s clear early on that Beyond Respectability is a work of crucial cultural study.” Valentine stated: “Reading this book, it’s hard to escape its condemnation of history. It’s been over a century since Anna Julia Cooper named ‘undisputed dignity’ as a prerequisite for social and racial equality for black women, and nearly every woman quoted in Beyond Respectability, no matter the era, takes note of how distant that ideal remains.”
Eloquent Rage
In 2018 Cooper published Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower. The account examines the numerous problems that are created through the intersection of racism, classism, and sexism, but also concedes that feminist ideology and activism can mend many of these issues. Cooper addresses her own development as a feminist across a series of essays and taps into how anger of the current situation can serve as an important source of energy to move the agenda forward. While Cooper acknowledges that her brand of feminism can be at odds with primarily white feminists or the sexism aimed at black men, she believes in the importance of solidarity across these communities to work toward a common goal. Cooper also points to how role models Serena Williams, Michelle Obama, and Beyonce were able to funnel their anger into their personal causes to achieve great things.
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews found it to be “a timely and provocative book.” The Kirkus Reviews contributor stated: “Sharp and always humane, Cooper’s book suggests important ways in which feminism needs to evolve for the betterment not just of black women, but society as a whole.” Reviewing the book in Publishers Weekly, Brian Bantum reasoned that “in our current moment, we are faced with complex questions about the relationship between intellectual work and practical community building, the balance between difference and a sense of community, and how to think about human life and flourishing. Cooper shows us that there have been women thinking about these questions all along.” Bantun noted that “what Brittney Cooper offers so brilliantly is a critical intervention in a time when black women’s contributions to American life continue to be rendered invisible or misrepresented.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2017, Courtney Jones, review of The Crunk Feminist Collection, p. 19.
Christian Century, October 11, 2017, Brian Bantum, review of Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women, p. 46.
Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2017, review of The Crunk Feminist Collection; December 15, 2017, review of Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower.
Publishers Weekly, October 10, 2016, review of The Crunk Feminist Collection, p. 67; November 6, 2017, review of Eloquent Rage, p. 70.
Women’s Review of Books, July 1, 2017, Erin Aubry Kaplan, review of The Crunk Feminist Collection, p. 11.
ONLINE
Brittney Cooper Website, http://www.brittneycooper.com (March 18, 2018).
National Public Radio Website, https://www.npr.org/ (June 1, 2017), Genevieve Valentine, review of Beyond Respectability.
Brittney C. Cooper, Ph.D.
Education:
Emory University:
Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts,
Program in American Studies, May 2009
Women’s Studies Certificate, May 2009
Master of Arts, Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts, December 2007
Howard University:
Bachelor of Arts, English; Bachelor of Arts, Political Science
Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Honors Program Graduate with Senior Thesis in English, May 2002
Academic Appointments:
Associate Professor — Rutgers University, Departments of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies, 2017-present
Assistant Professor — Rutgers University, Departments of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies, 2012-Present
Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow—Rutgers University, Center for Race and Ethnicity, 2011-2012
Assistant Professor—University of Alabama, Department of Gender and Race Studies, 2009-2012
Publications:
Books
Cooper, Brittney. Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (University of Illinois Press, 2017)
Cooper, Brittney C., Susana M. Morris and Robin M. Boylorn. The Crunk Feminist Collection (The Feminist Press, 2017)
Cooper, Brittney. Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (St. Martin’s Press, 2018, forthcoming).
Refereed Journal Articles:
“Maybe I’ll Be a Poet, Rapper”: Hip-Hop Feminism and Literary Aesthetics in Sapphire’s Push” – African American Review (Spring 2014)
“The Stage Hip Hop Feminism Built: A New Directions Essay,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Vol. 38, No. 3 (Spring 2013): 721-737 [co-authored with Aisha Durham and Susana Morris]
“A’n’t I A Lady?: On Race Women, Michelle Obama, and the Ever-Expanding Democratic Imaginary” MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the U.S.), Winter 2010, Vol. 35, No.4
“Does Anyone Care About Black Women?” Meridians: Feminism, Race, and Transnationalism, Volume 12, No. 2 (2014): 153-155
“Percussive Feminism: Theorizing the Beat as Praxis for Hip Hop Generation Feminism” (under review)
Book Chapters (Refereed):
“Intersectionality,” The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory, eds. Mary Hawkesworth and Lisa Ditsch (New York: Oxford University Press 2015).
“Big Girls Need Love, Too: Dating While Fat (And Feminist)” Gender, Sex, and Politics: In the Streets and Between the Sheets in the 21st Century, ed., Shira Tarrant. New York: Routledge, 2015.
“Louisiana’s Race Women: Cora Allen, the Calanthean Temple, and the Tradition of Black Female Leadership in Shreveport, LA, 1899-1935” in Louisiana Women: Their Lives and Times, Vol. 2, eds. Shannon Frystak and Mary Farmer-Kaiser (forthcoming from University of Georgia Press)
“Talking Back and Taking My Amens With Me: Tyler Perry and the Narrative Colonization of Black Womanhood.” Feminist and Womanist Responses to Tyler Perry’s Cultural Productions. eds. Carol B. Duncan, LeRhonda Manigault-Bryant and Tamura Lomax (Palgrave MacMillan 2014)
“‘They Are Nevertheless Our Brethren’: The Order of Eastern Star and the Battle for Women’s Leadership,’” “All Men Are Free and Are Brethren”: Prince Hall Fraternalism and the Rise of a People, eds. Peter Hinks and Steven Kantrowitz (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013).
“Nipplemania: Black Feminism, Corporeal Fragmentation and the Politics of Public Consumption” with Kimberly Wallace-Sanders in Women in Popular Culture: Representation and Meaning, ed., Marian Meyers. Cresskill: Hampton Press, 2008.
“Excavating the Love Below: The State as Patron of the Baby Mama Drama and Other Ghetto Hustles.” In Home Girls Make Some Noise: A Hip Hop Feminist Anthology, edited by Gwendolyn Pough, Elaine Richardson, Aisha Durham, and Rachel Raimist, 320-344. Mira Loma: Parker Publishing, LLC, 2007.
Book Reviews:
“Fierce Ones: A Review of Sheri Parks Fierce Angels: The Strong Black Woman in American Life and Culture.” Ms. Magazine, Spring 2010.
Book Chapters (Under Review):
“You Can’t Keep A Good Woman Down: Rihanna, Rape, and Repression,” (co-authored with Susana Morris). Black Popular Culture Studies edited by Treva Lindsey, Mark Anthony Neal and David Leonard.
Special Journal Issues:
“The Critical Matter of Black Lives,” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly. Co-edited with Treva Lindsey. (Forthcoming 2018).
“Black Feminisms,” The Black Scholar. Co-edited with Treva B. Lindsey, Joan Morgan, Tanisha Ford, and Kaila Story. (Volume 45.1, Forthcoming 2015).
“Hacking the Black/White Binary,” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology. Co-edited with Margaret Rhee (UC Berkeley). January 2015.
Afterwords:
But Some of Us Are Brave (2nd Ed.) edited by Akasha Hull, Barbara Smith and Patricia Bell-Scott (New York: The Feminist Press, 2015).
Courses
Introduction to Gender, Race, and Sexuality
Black Intellectual Thought
Hip Hop: The Birth and Evolution
Black Feminist Thought
Agency, Subjectivity, and Social Change
Graduate Colloquium
Hip Hop Generation Feminism
Gender and Media Capstone
Gender and Social Curation
Public Scholarship/Social Commentary:
Cosmopolitan.com, Contributing Writer (2016 – present)
Salon.com, Contributing Writer (2013 – 2015)
“The Women of Black Lives Matter,” Ms. Magazine, Winter 2015. 30-31.
Crunk Feminist Collective, Co-founder, Blogger
Awards:
Black Feminist Waymaker and Shapeshifter Award – Black Women’s Blueprint, 2017
Front Page Award for Online Blogs – Newswomen’s Club of New York, 2016
Olga Vives Award – National Organization of Women, 2016
Award for Excellence in Masters Level Instruction – Northeast Association of Graduate Schools, 2016
Darwin T. Turner Award for Best Article in Any Time Period of African American Literature and Culture – African American Review, 2015.
Brittney Cooper is a writer, teacher, and public speaker. She thinks Black feminism can change the world for the better.
Brittney is Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University. She is co-founder of the popular Crunk Feminist Collective blog. And she is a contributing writer for Cosmopolitan.com and a former contributor to Salon.com. Her cultural commentary has been featured on MSNBC’s All In With Chris Hayes, Melissa Harris-Perry, Al Jazeera’s Third Rail, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, PBS, Ebony.com, Essence.com, TheRoot.com, and TED.com.
Dr. Cooper is co-editor of The Crunk Feminist Collection (The Feminist Press 2017). She is author of Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (University of Illinois Press, May 2017) and the forthcoming Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (St. Martin’s, February 2018).
Cooper, Brittney: ELOQUENT RAGE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Dec. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Cooper, Brittney ELOQUENT RAGE St. Martin's (Adult Nonfiction) $25.99 2, 20 ISBN: 978-1-250-
11257-6
A professor explores the ways "sexism, and racism, and classism work together to fuck shit up for
everybody" and how feminism can begin undoing the damage.
"We [black women] are told we are irrational, crazy, out of touch, entitled, disruptive and not team players,"
writes Cooper (Women and Gender Studies, Africana Studies/Rutgers Univ.). But as her feminist
foremother Audre Lorde once remarked, this anger was not only legitimate; it was also "a powerful source
of energy serving progress and change." Here, Cooper brings together essays tracing her evolution as a
feminist while giving voice to the political (out)rage seething within. The author begins by detailing the
difficult journey that led her to "disidentify with [the] whiteness" of mainstream feminism and learn to
embrace her "particular Black girl magic." Her quest for political authenticity meant fighting with white
women over racism and black men over sexism. Participating in these separate battles did not blind her to
the need for alliances with both groups, however; they only made her more aware of the need for creating
solidarity across communities to topple patriarchy. Cooper's feminist journey also forced her to shed
cultural "baggage"--such as the racism of a white society that questioned her movements on American
streets and the sexism of black society that sought to control her sexuality through the church--that limited
her passage through the world. Once uncovered and focused, however, the rage that inevitably comes from
such injustices is of tremendous benefit to all. Cooper points to tennis star Serena Williams, former first
lady Michelle Obama, and singer BeyoncAaAaAeA@ as contemporary black feminist role models. By
learni how to channel their rage in their areas of endeavor, they have earned game-changing respect that has
transcended race and gender. Sharp and always humane, Cooper's book suggests important ways in which
feminism needs to evolve for the betterment not just of black women, but society as a whole.
A timely and provocative book that shows "what you build is infinitely more important than what you tear
down."
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Cooper, Brittney: ELOQUENT RAGE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A518491275/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=cf093cbf.
Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A518491275
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Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist
Discovers Her Superpower
Publishers Weekly.
264.45 (Nov. 6, 2017): p70.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist
Discovers Her Superpower
Brittney Cooper. St. Martin's, $25.99 (320p)
ISBN 978-1-250-11257-6
Cooper, Cosmopolitan contribu
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Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual
Thought of Race Women
Brian Bantum
The Christian Century.
134.21 (Oct. 11, 2017): p46+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 The Christian Century Foundation
http://www.christiancentury.org
Full Text:
Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women
By Brittney C. Cooper
University of Illinois Press, 208 pp., $25.95 paperback
As a student in academic theology I quickly learned the significance of intellectual lineage. People whose
theology was shaped by Karl Barth called themselves "Barthians." Those who organized their theological or
political commitments around the work of Michel Foucault were known as "Foucauldians." 1 wasn't in
graduate school more than a year before I had been exposed to several different readings--and rereadings
and readings of the rereadings--of some aspect of "Du Boisian" thought or politics. While my courses may
have mentioned or given a reading to a woman of color, they were never framed around the theoretical
assumptions or contributions of black women. There was no lineage related to black women.
The question of black women's representation in classrooms, scholarship, and society is not new. What
Brittney Cooper offers so brilliantly is a critical intervention in a time when black women's contributions to
American life continue to be rendered invisible or misrepresented. Immersing readers into the intellectual
thought of black women activists such as Mary Church Terrell, Pauli Murray, and Toni Cade Bambara,
Cooper presses us past the question of representation into an understanding of the forces and patterns that
diminish the significance of marginalized people.
Cooper frames her book with a "Cooperian" approach, building upon the theory and practice of another
Cooper, Anna Julia Cooper, an early 20th century black scholar and activist. Brittney Cooper argues that a
critical difference between the approach of A. J. Cooper and that of her more celebrated contemporary W.
E. B. Du Bois is in how they balance the competing identities of race, gender, and class. "In [A. J.] Cooper's
account of racial identity, a Black female experience of embodiment brought these competing national
identities into generative tension, whereas in Du Bois's account, competing identities threatened to
dismember the Black self." Brittany Cooper's use of A. J. Cooper highlights a theme that resounds
throughout the text: black women thinkers navigated multiple points of marginalization.
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Society's refusal (even within the male-dominated black scholarly community) did not prevent black
women from doing intellectual work. They used whatever means were available--memoirs, speeches, lists,
and even intellectual genealogies--to shape discourse about issues that were fundamental to the black
community. Even more crucially, this work was necessarily embodied. These women refused to leave the
realities of their bodies behind in their thinking and writing. The result is a legacy of "bodily discourse," a
refusal to distance intellectual questions from lived realities. Experience is not something to get past, but a
fundamental point of inquiry. In a society that sought to reduce black women to sexualized objects or render
them invisible, these thinkers had to think through their gender, their class, and their sexuality to make
sense of themselves in the world.
The intellectual and communal labor of black women intellectuals demonstrates a sobering and liberating
truth: we cannot escape the contingencies of our bodies or the discourses that shape them. Yet it is through
our bodily contingencies that we can truly find freedom. For the black women in Cooper's study, their
embodied intellectual discourse created deeper commitments to building movements, developing
relationships, navigating institutions, and mobilizing communities. Cooper challenges us to consider what
any academic project might look like if it were to wrestle with the bodily and contextual nature of our
intellectual lives.
In a way, Cooper is giving us a genealogy of #blackgirlmagic, the recent hashtag used to highlight the
accomplishment and brilliance of black women. Not simply a signal of innate natural ability,
#blackgirlmagic takes up the potentially anti-intellectual notion of magic and recasts it as the glorious
confluence of insight gleaned from study and skill wrought from practice, oriented toward an unrelenting
commitment to the beauty, thriving, and freedom of individuals and their communities.
By moving "beyond respectability," Cooper's black feminist thought takes us into the constructive
possibility that has marked so many black women's lives. This possibility is rooted in bodies that make
room for others, grounded in dignity and the recognition of their power, wisdom, and worth. Connecting
this legacy to our current moment, Cooper reminds us:
In the streets, in the academy, and online, Black women
thinkers continue to reimagine and reshape the terms upon
which Black women's knowledge production takes place....
[The Movement for Black Lives] is inherently Cooperian in
its insistence that Black women's bodies and lives (cis and
trans) offer a space of possibility and place through which
to cathect our best thinking about how to get free.
In our current moment, we are faced with complex questions about the relationship between intellectual
work and practical community building, the balance between difference and a sense of community, and how
to think about human life and flourishing. Cooper shows us that there have been women thinking about
these questions all along.
Reviewed by Brian Bantum, who teaches theology at Seattle Pacific University and is the author of The
Death of Race: Building a New Christianity in a Racial World (Fortress) and Redeeming Mulatto: A
Theology of Race and Christian Hybridity (Baylor University Press).
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Bantum, Brian. "Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women." The Christian Century,
11 Oct. 2017, p. 46+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A511454701/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6a30b48b. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A511454701
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Intra-intersectionality
Erin Aubry Kaplan
The Women's Review of Books.
34.4 (July-August 2017): p11+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Old City Publishing, Inc.
http://www.wcwonline.org/womensreview
Full Text:
The Crunk Feminist Collection
Edited by Brittney C. Cooper, Susana M. Morris, and Robin M. Boylorn
New York: Feminist Press, 2017, 312 pp., $24.95, paperback
A confession: as someone of the classic R&B/disco generation, I never quite accepted hip hop as an
adjective describing anything other than a musical genre. To call not just style but an unquantifiable state of
mind or approach to life "hip hop" felt to me like a thoroughly modern conceit that, intentionally or not,
obscured the historical arc of black culture. But The Crunk Feminist Collection set me straight. Literally: it
aligned my thinking. In reading this anthology of trenchant and frequently funny blog posts, commentary,
and essays by a cadre of young black feminist scholars on a mission to expand their conversation into the
real world, I met a group of blunt talkers influenced by music that talks.
Hip hop, I realized, is a detailed, direct line of black communication, unlike R&B, whose roots in the coded
language of the blues make it more symbolic. When Aretha asked to be given "a little respect," she was
really talking about respect for all black people, as was James Brown when he called upon black folk to
"Say It Loud--I'm Black and I'm Proud." Hip hop is representational too, of course, like all black musical
forms before it, but it's also individual, person to person. It chatters and mumbles to itself; it thinks things
through out loud. And that's what these women in these pages, chiefly (but not exclusively) Brittney C.
Cooper, Susana M. Morris, and Robin M. Boylorn, are doing. One essay even starts, "Let me think this
through out loud with you"--which describes the conversational, probing spirit of the book as well as the
aim of the Crunk Feminist Collective (CFC), which has been around and online (at
http://www.crunkfeministcollective.com/) for the last seven years.
Essentially the collective, and this collection, works--talks--to break down the walls between learned black
feminism and lived black female experience, and also to (gasp) enjoy the enterprise. One of the best things
about it is that the writers never let their appropriate sister-girl seriousness and academic cred get in the way
of playing and having fun. "Crunkness was energy and life, fire and resistance, swagger and verve, going
off and showing out," the editor-authors write in the intro, explaining the grad-school, house-party origins
of crunkness and how it became the guiding light of their work. Yes to that! In giving words and voice to
swagger on a regular basis, the women are debunking the hoary but persistent stereotype that intellectual
rigor and blackness (especially the working-class variety) can't coexist, or have no use for each other. Hell
nah to that!
"Crunk," for the unitiatied, is a southern black slang word that combines "crazy" and "drunk" to mean
intense and over the top--off the chain, sometimes off the rails. In the context of the CFC it means bringing
a no-holds-barred, down-home, hip hop-flow, Socratic inquiry spirit to usually measured (read: boring)
discussions of race and gender. The CFC crew's observations on everything from public policy to sexual
liberation to Beyonce's ass are fierce and confident, but they're also open ended. The issues are engaged
piece by piece, briefly and often brilliantly, and the conversations don't ever conclude. They are not about
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planting flags--scholars advancing this pet theory or that idea--but about uprooting them and examining the
dirt at the bottom of the flagpoles.
Such open-endedness is also the nature of blogging--but it suits black dialogue and dialectic particularly
well, because we have so much unfinished business that unfolds day to day, in charged moments that are
more often than not public and up for debate, from the racist remarks of the southern restaurateur Paula
Deen to the movement-catalyzing crisis of Trayvon Martin's murder. The crunkistadoras do black women,
and all black folks, a great service in exploring not just the broader reverberations of these moments, but
their private effects, viewing them through the emotionally uninhibited lens of hip hop. Some of the most
impactful pieces here are not reactions to news cycles but observations rooted in the nonevents of daily life:
Boylorn musing on the significance of being addressed as "Dr." by colleagues and students; Morris's poem
on black respectability that brings together the personal and political "I" in verse. At the same time, in
exploding tradition the writers also extend it, by adding new chapters to a virtually unbroken historical
narrative of racial struggle and resistance in which we are always trying to figure out who the hell we are.
That's a kind of crunkness black women of all generations can use.
Intersectionality is now a well-worn term. I think of the writing in this book as intra-intersectional--that is,
within the context of blackness and feminism and all other isms, the crunk feminists look inward, talking
lovingly and critically about black folk ourselves. They leave no discomfiting topic unturned: how we
delude ourselves; how we resist; how we stand together only to fall apart (again). The writers are of course
among these folks, and this is the real point of the book and the blog: to turn the lens on themselves and
illuminate those moments virtually all black folks have lived, regardless of income or educational level--
being profiled in a shopping mall, being cut loose by the partner you thought might be the one, being a
devout church girl doubting the efficacy of God in all things. It's a tricky business to be both the analyst and
the analyzed, the critic and the object being criticized, but the CFC crew does it admirably, with heart and
sass and perhaps most importantly, vulnerability. Though obviously skilled in fem-speak, their ears are
attuned to bullshit--their own or someone else's. They call institutions (the academy, the media, the cops) on
their narrowness and call the folk (and themselves) on their unwillingness to be more radically aware about
the ways we box ourselves in, drink the kool-aid about our deficits, or otherwise fall for the okey-doke.
It's complicated. In "Jesus Wasn't a Slut Shamer, or How Conservative Theology Harms Black Women,"
Cooper describes herself as a feminist who loves Jesus, almost an oxymoron in secular academic circles.
She admits church is where many black women absorb oppressive notions about gender roles and identity,
but instead of blasting the faith, she vets the church. "Express homophobic views, tell me that God requires
me to let a man rule my house because I have a vagina, or spout prosperity theology premised on the idea
that poor folks are poor because they lack faith, and you are likely to see me get up and walk out," she
writes.
In "Fish Dreams," Boylorn takes the feminist article of faith that women don't need childbearing to feel
complete and turns it--well, not quite on its head, but on its side. The daughter of a single mother, not
having a baby during high school was her greatest blackgirl success, she says; pregnancy was a blackgirl
dream-killer, a kind of curse that would "limit my options, embarrass my family, and guarantee me a
lifetime of struggle." Boylorn made it through to the other side and became a college graduate, a triumph by
several measures. Years later, she remains not regretful, but wistful. "Sometimes I fantasize about my life as
a mother, imagining the face of my butterscotch brown baby boy while detouring through the baby section
of a department store or scrolling through the infant updates on my Facebook newsfeed," she writes. "I don't
linger long enough to feel baby blues for a loss that is only theoretical, an absence that is intangible."
The collection is full of suddenly poignant reflections like this, reminding us that going out on a limb in true
crunk feminist fashion doesn't just mean getting jiggy or sassy or funny. It also means exposing fault lines
and uncertainties that rarely get exposed by scholars and activists, who tend to circle the wagons around
causes, especially racial justice causes that, #BlackLivesMatter notwithstanding, are constantly under threat
of attack. But crunk ultimately means being real--i.e., human--and that humanness ranges from shouting the
truth to the world to whispering it to yourself like nobody else is around.
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One of the collection's recurrent themes is the black obsession with respectability, known in an earlier era as
integrationism: hewing to white notions of black worthiness that blacks have at this point deeply
internalized. Crunk feminism (and some hip hop, for that matter) is, in this sense, actively antirespectability.
Boylorn argues at one point that "rachet" feminism, a pointedly unschooled, street-level feminism rooted in
black female friendship and often dressed in the hip-hop garb of bamboo earrings and the like, is as
legitimate a model of respectability--minus the mainstream baggage of that idea--as Cosby Show mom
Claire Huxtable.
But the divisions are not black and white, or more accurately, black and black. Once again, it's messy. In
"Disrespectability Politics: On Jay Z's Bitch, Beyonce's 'Fly' Ass, and Black Girl Blue," Cooper muses on
the gray area. "Black feminists have long pointed to the limitations of respectability politics, steeped as they
are in elitist, heteronormative and sexually repressive ideas about Black womanhood," she writes. "When
disrespect becomes where we enter, we confront a reality that is pretty dismal for Black womanhood. But
when we enter at respectability, there we confront limitations too. I mean, Michelle Obama, the country's
leading lady, can't even get no respect." Cooper concludes that the longed-for "'quiet, undisputed dignity of
our womanhood' is simply not forthcoming. We're gonna have to fight for the dignity that's rightfully ours.
So, um, #nodisrespect, but excuse me while I # takeoffmyearrings"--and get ready to mix it up.
I started out by saying that the CFC opened my eyes to the true aesthetics of hip hop. I thank it for that, and
I want to thank it now for two other eye-openers. First, Boylorn's succinct, salient critique of former
President Obama's 2014 My Brother's Keeper program, in her essay "My Brother's Keeper and the CoOptation
of Intersectionality." Obama's sole black policy initiative, focused on young black men, had many
shortcomings. However, the one I did not see at all was the total absence in it of black girls. I've been
trained to sublimate my needs, especially in relation to black men, but didn't realize it until I read Boylorn's
piece and found myself gasping in recognition.
Second, I thank CFC for making it okay not to be an iconic strong black woman whose middle name is
always "I got this." For the last year and a half, after my husband's unexpected death, I've been battling
inertia that set in like a long winter. I've had many good days, but I can tell you that I've been losing the
battle. I haven't overcome. I often don't have a game face and am still bollixed by the casual question from
friends and strangers, "What's going on?" I don't know what's going on and am not sure when I will.
Crunk feminism says all that's okay. What we are tempted to see as a problem to be vanquished is just a
process. "Blackgirls are not unbreakable," Boylorn reminds us in a piece about Amber Cole, a fourteenyear-old
black girl who was ridiculed on the internet for an oral sex video made at the behest of a former
boyfriend. "There has to be a way to be okay without having to be so damn strong. We have to make room
for Blackgirl emotional fluidity. We have to make room for sadness, for anger, for hysteria." And for
everything else. More crunk to come.
Erin Aubry Kaplan is a columnist and writer based in Los Angeles. She has been an opinion columnist for
the Los Angeles Times and is the author of the essay collection Black Talk, Blue Thoughts and Walking the
Color Line: Dispatches From a Black Journalista (2011) and J Heart Obama (2016).
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Kaplan, Erin Aubry. "Intra-intersectionality." The Women's Review of Books, July-Aug. 2017, p. 11+.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500134714/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f8acba4d. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A500134714
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The Crunk Feminist Collection
Courtney Jones
Booklist.
113.9-10 (Jan. 1, 2017): p19+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
The Crunk Feminist Collection. Ed. by Brittney C. Cooper and others. Jan. 2017. 312p. Feminist, paper,
$24.95 (9781558619432); e-book (9781558619487). 305.42.
The Crunk Feminist Collective's blog, established in 2010, was on the front lines of intersectional feminist
online discourse, existing in the heyday of black Twitter and hashtag activism. "Crunk" is a mashup of crazy
(or chronic) and drunk, and it implies extreme intoxication. For the collective, crunk recalls awareness to
the point of inebriation, formed in the era of Queen Latifah and Lauryn Hill--a time in hip-hop and neo-soul
where female artists relayed their truth openly, creating the language for young women of color to speak of
their oppression and advocate for their rights. The works in this collection cover a wide swath, from
#Blackgirlmagic, to heady dissections of policy and reform, to critique and analysis of black thought
leaders--including bell hooks. Though the essays exist in witty, digestible passages--many are adapted from
blog posts--it's clear most of the authors are academics. That said, the writings, though unmistakably
political, speak to the personal with familiarity, honesty, and focus. --Courtney Jones
YA: Budding crunk feminists will certainly appreciate the gaps filled in here as well as the forward-thinking
discourse that takes their futures into account, too. CJ.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Jones, Courtney. "The Crunk Feminist Collection." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2017, p. 19+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A479077881/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5a36a49d.
Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479077881
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Cooper, Brittney C.: THE CRUNK
FEMINIST COLLECTION
Kirkus Reviews.
(Jan. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Cooper, Brittney C. THE CRUNK FEMINIST COLLECTION Feminist Press (Adult Nonfiction) $24.95 1,
10 ISBN: 978-1-55861-943-2
A collection of feminist essays on sex, gender, pop culture, politics, and friendship.Originally founded in
2004 by three like-minded graduate students at Emory University, the Crunk Feminist Collective was
revived in 2010 as a blog and outlet for the members' opinions, cultural analyses, and personal stories in the
age of digital feminism. Bringing together their most popular posts from 2010 to 2015, the book is a diverse
assemblage of essays, missives, rants, and confessions. Though the pieces range in style and subject matter,
they all mix a deeply passionate and intellectual backbone with informal, accessible language that addresses
feminist issues of gender, politics, and race and racism. Before delving into these topics, the collection
includes a mission statement, manifesto, and an introduction to getting crunk, which proclaim the group's
mission to "create a space of support and camaraderie for hip hop generation feminists of color, queer and
straight, [with]in the academy and without," and define crunkness as "our commitment to feminist
principles and politics." Their "mode of resistance" is to rail against patriarchal power structures, defend
and humanize Black Lives Matter, and dissect African-American representation in the media. (There are
several essays on Beyonce.) The group also tackles sensitive personal subjects for communities of color,
such as coming out, reproductive rights, and mental health. The writers of the collective exhibit an
extraordinary breadth of intellectual range, but their critiques often favor anecdotal evidence rather than a
more substantive argument. Nonetheless, there is plenty to provoke thought, and the collection serves as a
call to action for enlightenment-seekers. The editors also include a "Crunk Glossary" to define relevant
terms, including "genderqueer" and "misogynoir," which "refers to the unique hatred that Black women and
girls experience in American visual and popular culture." A valuable record of the collective's contributions
to a growing cultural awareness of feminist issues and criticism, particularly for women of color.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Cooper, Brittney C.: THE CRUNK FEMINIST COLLECTION." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2017. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A475357248/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f9df9bed. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A475357248
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The Crunk Feminist Collection
Publishers Weekly.
263.41 (Oct. 10, 2016): p67.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Crunk Feminist Collection
Edited by Brittney C. Cooper, Susana M. Morris, and Robin M. Boylorn. Feminist, $24.95 trade paper
(312p) ISBN 978-155861-943-2
The brilliant founders of the Crunk Feminist Collective bring together some of their website's most popular
and thought-provoking essays on race, sisterhood, sex, and pop culture. As "hip-hop-generation feminists of
color," the authors describe their politics as a "remix" incorporating the best of multiple movements,
offering a truly diverse, intersectional series of viewpoints. They subvert paradigms--maligning stereotypes
such as the "angry black woman" and the "side chick," while also supplying useful neologisms such as
blackgirl and disrespectability politics. They take on black masculinity, "infighting" liberals, and misogyny
in rap lyrics, and more personal subjects, including infertility, child abuse, and depression. Cooper's
perspective as a born-again Christian is particularly nuanced, as she discusses the church's "harmful gender
ideology," homophobia, and insularity. Cooper also penned a heartbreaking plea for justice after the death of
Trayvon Martin and a brilliant defense of ratchet culture as the antithesis of the "pathology of ...
respectability." Another highlight contributor, writing under the pseudonym Crunkista, relates an infuriating
incidence of racial profiling by mall security. Beyonce is given ample space, as is Nicki Minaj and prolific
showrunner Shonda Rhimes. These essays are extremely relevant, educational, and a genuine pleasure to
wrestle with. 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. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Crunk Feminist Collection." Publishers Weekly, 10 Oct. 2016, p. 67. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A466616195/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=58f1bf32.
Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466616195
In 'Beyond Respectability,' A History of Black Women As Public Intellectuals
June 1, 201712:00 PM ET
GENEVIEVE VALENTINE
Beyond Respectability
Beyond Respectability
The Intellectual Thought of Race Women
by Brittney C. Cooper
Paperback, 187 pages purchase
You know what a performative utterance is, even if you've never heard the term before. "I now pronounce you" at a wedding is one; "I christen this ship" is another. Performative utterance carries a particular power — it's the thing you want to make true.
And performative utterance is at the heart of Brittney C. Cooper's Beyond Respectability, which profiles several black feminist intellectuals who not only fought against the idea of "respectability" as a prerequisite for being heard, but against the tendency of white feminists and black men to erase their contributions.
For the thinkers and activists Cooper writes about — whose work spans over a century of public intellectualism — verbally laying claim to public space was a crucial step in legitimizing their ideas. And since these women were struggling against both racism and misogyny, that legitimacy was critical; performative utterance became lifeblood. Through actions like listing – creating "lists of prominent, qualified Black women for easy consumption," Cooper writes, these women gave context to their own history, granting "intellectual, political, and/or cultural legitimacy to the Black women speaking their names."
... it's clear early on that 'Beyond Respectability' is a work of crucial cultural study.
While this is a rewarding read, it's an academic history rather than a chatty one. It takes its material seriously and expects you will, too, and though you don't have to be particularly well-read on this history going in, expect to be rereading certain sentences, flipping to the end notes for further reading, and double-checking the definition of terms like cathect. (It means "to invest with mental or emotional energy," and that's as good a description of this book as any.)
But it's clear early on that Beyond Respectability is a work of crucial cultural study. It introduces concepts of the black woman as a public citizen in post-Restoration America, and explores women whose work pushed against the dominant narrative — Fannie Barrier Williams speaking of black women as a political body, Mary Church Terrell documenting resistance over the course of decades, Pauli Murray's discussions of queerness, Toni Cade Bambara's 1970s anthologies of black women's writing — and draws us through that history to the present.
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That's no small task; the book lays out the complicated history of black woman as intellectual force, making clear how much work she has done simply to bring that category into existence. By the turn of the 20th century, educator and activist Williams was already adamant about the necessity of seeing black women as public citizens. In "The Club Movement Among Colored Women of America," she wrote of the "organized anxiety of women who have become intelligent enough to recognize their own low social condition and strong enough to initiate the forces of reform," urging black women to organize and agitate for power — and credit — within the wider body politic.
And Cooper deftly addresses the complex forces at work as the movement developed. The idea of "respectability" itself is one of the book's major concerns; some of the writers she profiles held to the idea that being seen as respectable enhanced their political message; later writers and activists would argue that respectability too often equaled a demure and ineffective silence. Cooper chronicles generational shifts in the methods of dissent, divisive issues of queerness, and debates about activism as intellectualism when the first is necessary in order to make space for the second.
Reading this book, it's hard to escape its condemnation of history.
Beyond Respectability also connects this history to the ways contemporary black women spearhead public discourse, from Melissa Harris-Perry to the use of social media as an activist platform, as when Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi introduced #BlackLivesMatter. Sometimes the veil between Then and Now is even thinner — take Mary Church Terrell's 1905 essay "The Mission of the Meddler," in which she exhorts the political meddler to "ask disagreeable questions about the political corruption which makes a single white man in one section equal to seven in another."
Reading this book, it's hard to escape its condemnation of history. It's been over a century since Anna Julia Cooper named "undisputed dignity" as a prerequisite for social and racial equality for black women, and nearly every woman quoted in Beyond Respectability, no matter the era, takes note of how distant that ideal remains. But the other thing this book makes clear is the value and crucial importance of black women intellectuals making a record for themselves — performative utterance, legitimizing a legacy that history might otherwise forget.
Genevieve Valentine's latest novel is Icon.