Joan Morgan (born May 25, 1965)[1] is a Jamaican-American author and journalist. She was born in Jamaica and raised in the South Bronx. Morgan coined the term "hip hop feminist".
Early life and education
Morgan was born in Westmoreland Parish, Jamaica, where her father was one of the founders of the Jamaica Labour Party and later was president of the Jamaican Freedom League in the Bronx. In 1968, she moved to the South Bronx neighborhood of the Bronx when she was two years old.[2] Her father worked at Montefiore Medical Center in security and her mother, Maud Morgan, worked at Montefiore as a nurse, also teaching at the community center, Clermont Center.[2]
Morgan went to the elementary school, PS 2, on Fulton Avenue, then to junior high on 148th on Washington Avenue. During that time she went to the Clermont Center in the Clermont projects. In 1979, Morgan went to the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx, where she had previously attended a summer school enrichment program. She graduated from Fieldston in 1983.[2]
Morgan has been a freelance journalist since 1988. She has worked at SPIN as a columnist and as an editor. Morgan has written articles for Working Mother, More, Ms., Interview, and GIANT magazines.
Morgan began her journalism career at The Village Voice,[6] where one of her early articles, The Pro-Rape Culture, was about the Central Park jogger case.[7] In 1991, Morgan covered the Mike Tyson rape trial for The Village Voice. Morgan received an Excellence Merit Award from the National Women's Political Caucus.[8]
From 1993 to 1996, Morgan was an original staff writer for Vibe Media Group's Vibe magazine.
In 1999, Morgan coined the phrases "Black girl magic" and "hip hop feminist"[6] through her groundbreaking book When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost.[9]
From 2000 to 2002, Morgan was the executive editor of Essence magazine.[8][10]
From 2008 to 2010, Morgan was the editorial director of SET Magazine.
Morgan's most famous work is found in her 1999 book When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, in which she examines the complexities of feminism for women who have grown up with hip hop. She examines the perceived hypocrisies in being a feminist woman who supports black male-centric movements like Farrakhan's Million Man March and hip-hop - which she argues has many male-centric elements. She explores the dynamic of ascribing to feminism while simultaneously enjoying some aspects of patriarchal culture, focusing on how one balances and reconciles these seemingly conflicting ideas.[14]
She asks herself questions like "Can you be a good feminist and admit out loud that there are things that you kinda dig about patriarchy?" and "Suppose you don't want to pay for your own dinner, hold the door open, fix things, move furniture, or get intimate with whatever's under the hood of a car"? She additionally cites music artists such as R. Kelly, Jodeci, Lil' Kim, and Queen Latifah as vehicles through which she makes her point about some of the dualities that come with feminism.[14]
She Begat This: 20 Years of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
National Woman's Political Caucus, Excellence Merit Media Award (EMMA) for Mike Tyson trial coverage
2013: Stanford University, Dr. St. Clair Drake Award for Outstanding Teaching for the course "The Pleasure Principle"[16]
Selected works and publications
Selected works
Morgan, Joan (1999). When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life As a Hip-Hop Feminist. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN978-0-684-82262-4. OCLC246337979.
Morgan, Joan; Cooper, Brittney (foreword by); Lindsey, Treva B. (afterword by) (2017). When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down (New ed.). New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN978-0-684-86861-5. OCLC1018087707.
Morgan, Joan (2018). She Begat This: 20 Years of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. New York, NY: 37 Ink/Atria, Simon & Schuster. ISBN978-1-501-19525-9. OCLC1041212001.
Morgan, Joan (2020). It's About Time We Got Off: Claiming a Pleasure Politic in Black Feminist Thought (PhD). New York University.
Selected publications
Morgan, Joan (9 May 1989). "The Pro-Rape Culture". The Village Voice. pp. 39–40.
Kennedy, Lisa; West, Cornel; Morgan, Joan; Wood, Joe; Lester, Julius; Tate, Greg; Wallace, Michele; hooks, bell; Stewart, Frank (photographs by) (17 September 1991). "Black Like Who? Notes on African American Identity". The Village Voice. pp. 32–33, 36, 38.
Morgan, Joan (3 March 1992). "A Blackwoman's Guide to the Tyson Trial". The Village Voice. pp. 37–.
Morgan, Joan (13 February 1996). "Fly-Girls, Bitches, Hos: Notes From a Hip-Hop Feminist". The Village Voice. pp. 32–33.
Morgan, Joan (August 1997). "Baby's Mama". Essence. pp. 84–86.
Morgan, Joan (1 December 1998). "Give It Up!". The Village Voice.
Morgan, Joan (Winter 2015). "Why We Get Off: Moving Towards a Black Feminist Politics of Pleasure". The Black Scholar. 45 (4 - On the Future of Black Feminism). Taylor & Francis, Ltd.: 36–46. doi:10.1080/00064246.2015.1080915. JSTOR24803042. S2CID143330163.
References
^"Morgan, Joan, 1965-". VIAF Virtual International Authority File (VIAF). Retrieved 19 July 2020.
^ abMorgan, Joan (1999). When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life As a Hip-Hop Feminist. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN978-0-684-82262-4. OCLC246337979.: 49–62