A Black Girl Bookshelf Staple: Joan Morgan’s When Chickenheads Come Home To Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down (1999)
When it came to getting back into fundamental reading, I’d set the goal of diving into authors that like myself, are descendants of the diaspora (the African one, just to be clear). Joan Morgan’s When Chickenheads Come Home To Roost had been something I’d come across plenty of times in youth when searching for new reads. However, I vaguely remember having a sense that the subject matter may have been a little too mature for me at the time (I also don’t think my love of music, hip-hop specifically, was fully realized). This surplus of time at home allowed me to finish the novel that debuted, at this point, twenty years ago; and boy what a difference circling back during this stage of young adulthood has made. Why is it a staple for your BGB (Black-Girl-Bookshelf)? Because Joan Morgan kept it real with us whilst calling out misogynoir, and patriarchy’s endless reign, from a self-proclaimed hip-hop feminist perspective in 1999. The 18th anniversary reissue, featuring a foreword from Brittney Cooper (professor at University of Rutgers, and co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective) is gold, as it also includes a recent interview with the author that is both insightful and fun as hell.
A hip-hop feminist, the term coined by Morgan when Chickenheads was published, is a young feminist born after 1964 who approaches the political community with a mixture of feminist and hip-hop sensibilities. Feminists advocate for social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men. Among all of its gems, Chickenheads drives home this point: misogynoir (the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls, directed towards Black women, where race and gender both play roles in bias) has for so long contributed to the community’s social stigma of feminist philosophy. Let’s not get it twisted, we have living OGs that birthed movements, prioritizing Black women throughout generations. However, when you are constantly told that you’re Black first, woman second (often as a response to pointing out misogynoir and its effects), fighting for equal rights for Black women specifically gets muddled into (and muffled by) different sectors: feminism (even though our white feminist counterparts rarely pass the mic), and the fight against injustice for Black lives (even though terrifying statistics show that lives we fight for are more likely to harm us). Now that terms along the lines of “tone policing” are being recognized and addressed more often, Chickenheads can uniquely go down in history as the young, Black woman’s manifesto for making it to the top; and also for being before its time (as it introduced now recurrent themes), but right on time too!
When we talk sisterhood, we talk sex. When we address patriarchy, we seldom forget to mention one of its favorite and most brutal tools, sexism. Patriarchal societies have an inability to consider women’s humanity before obsessing over women’s sexuality. Morgan wrote, “Punanny is the one thing women control and men have an unlimited desire for. That makes it, even in these post-feminist times, one helluva negotiating tool (198).” A few pages further, she goes on to say that though we may have a pretty powerful tool as well, it has its limitations. Chickenheads analyzes the effects of sexism in a society where though sex is always selling, patriarchy has its many ways of manipulating the factors mentioned to disadvantage any/all forms of womanhood. From her hip-hop feminist stance, Morgan discusses what it feels like to embrace independence and reject double standards, while also still longing for all the things we’ve been conditioned to dream of. Which traditions have changed—which ones usually stay, and which ones must go, what awaits Black women once we unlearn; it’s all relative and painfully real.
On a lighter note, this book is rich in absolute quotables. We all love literature that leaves its mental marks. The first one that had me hollering was, “I will not fall in love with a man’s potential. When it comes to romance, sistas need to eliminate the words “if only” from our vocabulary. What Dude will be in five years “if only” he got therapy, healed his relationship with his mother, stopped tricking bitches, eased up on his hustle, focused, or got over his commitment anxiety is really none of our business. Potential is a relationship between an individual and God (150).” I’m thankful for the lightbulb that went off. I’m only 23 and have already experienced being ran raggedy in the name of “potential.” Listen, we’ve all done it; and some of us ain’t gon’ stop doing it. For our own sake, we have to accept the present state, and act accordingly. There’s a difference between being there with encouragement (which should be reciprocated when needed) to complete goals—goals that have been at least introduced, and staying because you somehow see someone’s destiny that they can’t even see themselves. Their growth is determined by forces that will leave your presence (and choices) to determine your own growth; and subscribing to free labor (of any kind) while we hold onto the hope of gratification is a disservice. At the end of the day, focusing on your own potential yields far better results.
In a lot of ways, Joan Morgan cracked the code for a BGB staple. Is it timeless? For the most part, yes! With the exception of some slang from back in the day, it was such a surreal experience to read her words from twenty years ago and be able to relate, engage with the text, bookmark so many interesting points made, and still be able to “Mmmhm,” “Tuh,” and “I know that’s right!” There was a community call for what Joan Morgan was putting down in 1999, and the feeling of transparency when talking about topics deemed uncomfortable is still apparent today.
A talent of Morgan’s is her ability to bring out the intellectual, cultural commentator in us all. Casual tone and AAVE show up to support eye-opening statistics and articulate, never simplify. Morgan touches on this in her interview for the reissue,“In that sense, [Chickenheads] it’s much more hip-hop than it is scholarly. The academy is a particular kind of self-replicating beast. There’s a monitoring and policing of not just how you produce ideas but how you are allowed to introduce new ones. I realize that I would have never written this book if I had gone straight from Wesleyan to a Ph.D. Everything that’s fly and free about it would’ve been beaten out of me in the name of proper scholarship (239).” This is something that “scholarly” institutions fail to recognize as the valuable asset that comes with Black authors telling Black stories. With academia too often enforcing the canon of white, cishet male authors (and the academy being a predominantly white institution in itself) racism and other forms of discrimination usually slink their way into literature under the bullshit guises of things like “relatability,” or “lack of sophistication.” Twenty years ago, a young, Black, hip-hop feminist author and scholar saw through the foolishness too and released something revolutionary into the world. Give Joan Morgan her flowers!
For the Black girl reader looking to roar with the best of them (or listen to them just as hard), Morgan’s Chickenheads feels like participating in a warm, wise ki. It’s a powerfully potent read, just as vibrant and creative as it is academically innovative and educational, as it presents and analyzes information crucial to both community and culture; flavored like the experiences our mamas tell us about.
Feel free to recount your Chickenheads experience in the comments; let’s chat!
