by Crystal Leigh Endsley
University of Texas Press, 2023
Paper: 978-1-4773-2806-4 | Cloth: 978-1-4773-2805-7 | eISBN: 978-1-4773-2808-8
Library of Congress Classification HQ1229.E54 2023
Dewey Decimal Classification 305.23082

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK

How girls of color from eight global communities strategize on questions of identity, social issues, and political policy through spoken word poetry.

Around the world, girls know how to perform. Grounded in her experience of “putting a mic in the margins” by facilitating workshops for girls in Ethiopia, South Africa, Tanzania, and the United States, scholar/advocate/artist Crystal Leigh Endsley highlights how girls use spoken word poetry to narrate their experiences, dreams, and strategies for surviving and thriving. By centering the process of creating and performing spoken word poetry, this book examines how girls forecast what is possible for their collective lives.

In this book, Endsley combines poetry, discourse analysis, photovoice, and more to forge the feminist theory of “quantum justice,” which forefronts girls’ relationships with their global counterparts. Using quantum justice theory, Endsley examines how these collaborative efforts produce powerful networks and ultimately map trajectories of social change at the micro level. By inviting transnational dialogue through spoken word poetry, Quantum Justice emphasizes how the imaginative energy in hip-hop culture can mobilize girls to connect and motivate each other through spoken word performance and thereby disrupt the status quo.