Urban Girls – serie

The album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill sold over 420,000 copies in its first week, received ten Grammy nominations (winning five). Celebrating Twenty Years of Black Girlhood: The Lauryn Hill Reader critically engages the work of Ms. Hill, highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of the album. Beyond the album’s commercial success, Ms. Hill’s radical self-consciousness and exuberance for life led listeners through her Black girl journey of love, motherhood, admonition, redemption, spirituality, sexuality, politics, and nostalgia that affirmed the power of creativity, resistance, and the tradition of African storytelling. Ms. Hill’s album provides inspirational energies that serve as a foundational text for Black girlhood. In many ways it is the definitive work of Black girlhood for the Hip Hop generation and beyond because it opened our eyes to a holistic narrative of woman and mother. Twenty years after the release of the album, we pay tribute to this work by adding to the quilt of Black girls’ stories with the threads of feminist consciousness, which are particularly imperative in this space where we declare: Black girls matter. Celebrating Twenty Years of Black Girlhood is the first book to academically engage the work of the incomparable Ms. Hill. It intellectually wrestles with the interdisciplinary nature of Ms. Hill’s album, centering the connection between the music of Ms. Hill and the lives of Black girls. The essays in this collection utilize personal narratives and professional pedagogies and invite students, scholars, and readers to reflect on how Ms. Hill’s album influenced their past, present, and future.

The album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill sold over 420,000 copies in its first week, received ten Grammy nominations (winning five). Celebrating Twenty Years of Black Girlhood: The Lauryn Hill Reader critically engages the work of Ms. Hill, highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of the album. Beyond the album’s commercial success, Ms. Hill’s radical self-consciousness and exuberance for life led listeners through her Black girl journey of love, motherhood, admonition, redemption, spirituality, sexuality, politics, and nostalgia that affirmed the power of creativity, resistance, and the tradition of African storytelling. Ms. Hill’s album provides inspirational energies that serve as a foundational text for Black girlhood. In many ways it is the definitive work of Black girlhood for the Hip Hop generation and beyond because it opened our eyes to a holistic narrative of woman and mother. Twenty years after the release of the album, we pay tribute to this work by adding to the quilt of Black girls’ stories with the threads of feminist consciousness, which are particularly imperative in this space where we declare: Black girls matter. Celebrating Twenty Years of Black Girlhood is the first book to academically engage the work of the incomparable Ms. Hill. It intellectually wrestles with the interdisciplinary nature of Ms. Hill’s album, centering the connection between the music of Ms. Hill and the lives of Black girls. The essays in this collection utilize personal narratives and professional pedagogies and invite students, scholars, and readers to reflect on how Ms. Hill’s album influenced their past, present, and future.

We are living in historic times and negotiating multiple national crises. The confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic and unrelenting state-sanctioned murders of Black people has disproportionately impacted our women and girls at the intersections of employment, citizenship, housing, healthcare, and motherhood statuses. As many individuals rally for liberation on the frontlines, how might educational institutions intervene as sources of respite and reparation? Historically, racialized sexism in U.S. schools has manifested uniquely for Black girl-identified adolescents (including cisgender, queer, and transgender youth). These learners face heightened exposure to malicious discourses and exclusionary disciplinary policies. Engendering #BlackGirlJoy identifies the teaching practices that equip young Black women to locate, analyze, heal from, and ultimately thrive through the suffering they face inside and outside of schools. The book is rooted in the author’s experience as a South Los Angeles high school teacher working at her alma mater, trying to cultivate the life-affirming education that she desired as a child. Centering her students’ perspectives, Monique Lane outlines a Black feminist pedagogical framework that inspired bountiful #BlackGirlJoy in one embattled public school. This text is a heartfelt offering to educators committed to taking courageous and innovative action—in solidarity with Black girl learners—toward the betterment of their lives!