“It’s Bigger Than Hip-Hop”: Recognizing Hip-Hop Literacies as Critical Youth Cultural Capital

• In Event: Amplifying Youth Voices in Hip-Hop Literacies and Sonic Storytelling

Abstract

This study builds on a body of scholarship that underscores the power and potential of Hip Hop literacies through the use Afrodiasporic approaches (Dernikos et al., 2023) for lyrical re-storying. This empirical project used video ethnographic methods (Sikand, 2015; Tobin & Hsueh, 2007) to produce a shortform documentary that tells a visual narrative of four Black and Latinx boys at a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) camp and how they leveraged resistance and subversion to re-orient the camp curriculum around their cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1991). Findings outline the way youth used their Hip Hop literacies to remix the writing workshop model and record a rap inspired by a painting by Black American artist Purvis Young.

Author

• William J. Fassbender, Montana State University