Joan Morgan

Joan Morgan (born May 25, 1965) is a Jamaican-American author and journalist. She was born in Jamaica and raised in the South Bronx, New York City. 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. 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. During this time she went to Howard University for a semester. In 2020, Morgan received a PhD in American Studies from New York University. Her dissertation, It's About Time We Got Off: Claiming a Pleasure Politic in Black Feminist Thought, was published thereafter. Her advisor was Jennifer L. Morgan.

Career 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, where one of her early articles, The Pro-Rape Culture, was about the Central Park jogger case. 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.

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"

From 2000 to 2002, Morgan was the executive editor of Essence magazine.

From 2008 to 2010, Morgan was the editorial director of SET Magazine.

In 2012, Morgan participated in a 12-city panel tour series called "Does Hip-Hop Hate Women", which was held at college campuses across the country at Brown University, Dillard University, Harvard Law School, Spelman College, and the University of Chicago among others. Panelists included local hosts and a rotating group that included Bakari Kitwana, Mark Anthony Neal, Treva Lindsey, Marc Lamont Hill, Akiba Solomon, Byron Hurt, and Tracey Sharpley Whiting among others.

In the Winter of 2013, she taught a class at Stanford University titled "The Pleasure Principle: A Post-Hip Hop Search for a Black Feminist Politics of Pleasure". Morgan was also an instructor at Ethical Culture Fieldston School,

Books

When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost 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.

She Begat This: 20 Years of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill In 2018, Morgan published the book, She Begat This: 20 Years of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which The Paris Review called a cultural history of Lauryn Hill's 1998 debut album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, 20 years after the record's release.

Personal life Morgan has a son.

Selected works and publications Selected works

Selected publications