Submitting Campus
Daytona Beach
Department
Humanities & Communication
Document Type
Article
Publication/Presentation Date
3-27-2024
Abstract/Description
In the introduction to the Haymarket Books collection The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (2015), co-editor Kevin Coval asserts that the anthologized poems are not simply influenced by hip-hop; “these poems are hip-hop.”1 The anthology’s focus on a genre, a cultural phenomenon, might seem like an odd fit for a special issue on placemaking. Its national frame might seem too expansive for the study of regionalism (though there is a history, established by James Shortridge, of conflating the Midwest with the nation).2 But The BreakBeat Poets is also attentive to more precise versions of “the public cultural spaces of hip-hop praxis.”3 Coval exemplifies those spaces through two long-running events in Chicago, a DJ set and an open-mic night, which leads to a discussion of literary events and spaces across the country. At the core of both this book and the series it inaugurates is a relationship between hip-hop and place. The introduction poses it like this: “Hip-hop invited us to write. To do what Gwendolyn Brooks told thousands of young writers in Chicago and everywhere: tell the story that’s in front of your nose.”4
Publication Title
American Studies
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1353/ams.2023.a927984
Publisher
University of Kansas
Scholarly Commons Citation
Oler, A. (2024). The BreakBeat Poets: Translocal Placemaking from the Windy City. American Studies, 62(4). https://journals.ku.edu/amsj/article/view/18477
Included in
African American Studies Commons, American Popular Culture Commons, Hip Hop Studies Commons, Latina/o Studies Commons, Music Performance Commons
