“You Don't Have to Claim Her”

This article explores the ways in which females who identify with hip-hop often develop and construct their identities in relation to media representations of blackness and femininity in hip-hop music and culture. In order for educators to support female students in constructing identities of empowerment and agency, they should be willing and able to engage with hip-hop texts in the classroom. The use of critical hip-hop literacies can create spaces for discussions of power and identity that provide young people with culturally relevant tools for disrupting a system that maintains the silence and marginalization of young black girls.