Black, Lesbian, Womanist

      As a Black woman coming of age during the hip-hop era, I saw the answers that Shante and Salt-N-Pepa put to wax as more than just temporary jams to get the body moving. They let me know I could have a voice as well. They offered the strong public presence of Black womanhood that I had seen in my mother and her friends but had not witnessed in my generation in such a public forum. Before I ever read bell hooks’s Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, I heard Shante and Salt-N-Pepa rapping and securing a strong public voice for women’s issues in general and young Black women’s issues specifically.