Hip-Hop Lyric Writing as New Literacies, Therapy, and Healing

• In Event: Reclaiming and Remixing Their Stories: Amplifying Youth Literacies Through New Media Production, Distribution, and Invention

Abstract

Over the last two decades, arguments for placing the culture of young people at the center of teaching and learning have become more vocal and visible than ever before. Researchers who have had lived experiences in urban classrooms as students and teachers have navigated the treacherous terrain of higher education and established emerging new platforms to call attention to issues in urban education that have previously been swept under the rug and left unaddressed.

As traditional “experts” in the field of education continue to use urban communities as no more than the background for research that could be conducted anywhere, a new cadre of education researchers are challenging the status quo by asking new questions and arguing for classroom practices that are deeply rooted in the culture of those marginalized by the machine of schooling and academia. This new cadre of scholars are working with youth to use new tools that are rooted in their culture to speak to the oppressive nature of educational research and the effects of poorly prepared culturally disconnected educators in an effort to help them heal from the traumas inflicted by schools and schooling.

There are groups in the United States that are consistently underserved by mental health professionals and educators (Vakalahi, Wells-Wilbon, & McPhatter, 2015) who rob them of opportunities to give voice to their own realities using their own cultural tools and norms. Consequently, many have responded by creating their own spaces to address their own needs.
In this paper, I employ historical trauma theory to make sense of the way that schools and schooling instill a cross-generational transmission of trauma from historical losses and how particular literacies (like hip-hop) are essential for healing and learning. Scholars who are part of the hip-hop generation are working with youth to use hip-hop to speak back to systems of oppression by reframing what has been historically described in education as their inadequacies and shortcomings as their strengths and expertise.

In this paper, I uncover how the process of lyric writing over hip-hop beats to produce songs of freedom push back against existing discourse in educational research. Youth lyrics indicate that they do not lack grit, resilience or emotional intelligence - they have an excess of it. Their lyrics show that the issue is, and has always been, that their strengths have not been recognized by scholars who are blind to the fact that youth brilliance exists in forms that are unfamiliar to those looking for them.

There is an abundance of grit in the Black boy who, despite living with poverty that the researcher could not imagine, comes to school every day with a bright smile and matching outfit. There is emotional intelligence in the Latina immigrant who may have trouble speaking English but understands it perfectly as she smiles while teachers insult her to her face in the same tongue she is expected to master. Allowing for these youth to use hip-hop literacies to express these truths is an essential next step in contemporary education.

Author

• Christopher Emdin, Teachers College, Columbia University