Required history for young hip-hop heads—and everyone else.
A 2005 classic charting hip-hop’s rise to global prominence—while navigating the entanglements of race, class, politics, and poetics that lie at its heart—gets a long-overdue redux.
Two veteran cultural critics bring the history of hip-hop to younger readers in 2021 as the infinite futures of the genre continue to expand. Readers can feel the seeds of Chang’s cultural organizing within the storytelling of this tour de force while Cook brings his decades of experience as a pioneering hip-hop journalist to give new color to this edition. They write of hip-hop’s birth in the figurative and all-too-literal fires of Kingston, Jamaica, and the South Bronx before becoming the world’s most significant youth cultural influence. Hip-hop founding father DJ Kool Herc reminds readers of the dualities of fun and responsibility at its core in the introduction. Chapters comb through the movement’s antecedents in the 1960s, traveling from coast to coast, through the South and all around the world. The authors show the oft-underrepresented ways that Black women have shaped hip-hop, and new chapters chart its championing in the 21st century as a lifestyle built around being anti-establishment grappled with commercial success, political influence, and social change during the 2020 summer of Covid and mass protest. In addition to satisfying committed fans, this stellar work could function as a supplementary text within any social studies narration of the post–civil rights–era U.S.
Required history for young hip-hop heads—and everyone else. (reader's guide, endnotes, index) (Nonfiction 12-18)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-79051-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Small but mighty necessary reading.
A miniature manifesto for radical queer acceptance that weaves together the personal and political.
Eli, a cis gay white Jewish man, uses his own identities and experiences to frame and acknowledge his perspective. In the prologue, Eli compares the global Jewish community to the global queer community, noting, “We don’t always get it right, but the importance of showing up for other Jews has been carved into the DNA of what it means to be Jewish. It is my dream that queer people develop the same ideology—what I like to call a Global Queer Conscience.” He details his own isolating experiences as a queer adolescent in an Orthodox Jewish community and reflects on how he and so many others would have benefitted from a robust and supportive queer community. The rest of the book outlines 10 principles based on the belief that an expectation of mutual care and concern across various other dimensions of identity can be integrated into queer community values. Eli’s prose is clear, straightforward, and powerful. While he makes some choices that may be divisive—for example, using the initialism LGBTQIAA+ which includes “ally”—he always makes clear those are his personal choices and that the language is ever evolving.
Small but mighty necessary reading. (resources) (Nonfiction. 14-18)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09368-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Brief yet inspirational, this story will galvanize youth to use their voices for change.
Testa’s connection to and respect for nature compelled her to begin championing animal causes at the age of 10, and this desire to have an impact later propelled her to dedicate her life to fighting plastic pollution. Starting with the history of plastic and how it’s produced, Testa acknowledges the benefits of plastics for humanity but also the many ways it harms our planet. Instead of relying on recycling—which is both insufficient and ineffective—she urges readers to follow two additional R’s: “refuse” and “raise awareness.” Readers are encouraged to do their part, starting with small things like refusing to use plastic straws and water bottles and eventually working up to using their voices to influence business and policy change. In the process, she highlights other youth advocates working toward the same cause. Short chapters include personal examples, such as observations of plastic pollution in Mauritius, her maternal grandparents’ birthplace. Testa makes her case not only against plastic pollution, but also for the work she’s done, resulting in something of a college-admissions–essay tone. Nevertheless, the first-person accounts paired with science will have an impact on readers. Unfortunately, no sources are cited and the lack of backmatter is a missed opportunity.
Brief yet inspirational, this story will galvanize youth to use their voices for change. (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-22333-8
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
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