Bad and Boujee: Toward a Trap Feminist Theology

by Jennifer M. Buck

This book engages with the overlap of black experience, hip-hop music, ethics, and feminism to focus on a subsection known as “trap feminism” and construct a Trap Feminist Theology. Interacting with concepts of moral agency, resistance, and imagination, Trap Feminist Theology seeks to build an intersectional theology emphasizing women’s agency in their bodies and sexuality while also remaining faithful to the “trap” context from which they are socially located. Such a project will redefine the “trap” context from one of marginalization to one of joy and flourishing within black feminist theology. This theology overlaps with black ethics in subversive empowerment that forms a new normative ethic and family system within a subsect of the black community. Trap feminism emerges out of trap culture, where the black woman is creating a space outside of the barriers of poverty harnessing autonomy, employment, and agency to allow for a reinvention of self-identity while remaining faithful to social location.

142 pages, Paperback

Published February 17, 2022

Reviews

[Lois · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is blackfishing and deeply, deeply inappropriate.
This is not okay and the very opposite of 'feminism'.
Gross

For 'trap' feminism check out Sesali Bowen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vx3t...
Her book: Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes from a Trap Feminist

Looks like this has been pulled:)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/ar...

[Victoria · Rating 1 out of 5]

Why would a white woman write this? So many steps in the publishing process and you never looked around and slapped yourself in the face to break out of it?

[Chalse · Rating 1 out of 5]

Offensive analysis of black women's liberation from a person with a purely academic background in the subject matter.

[Christina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Do not read this book. If you are white you do not have the experience or expertise to write about black life or culture. You AIN’T Black!!!!!!!!!

And further, this mindset the author must have had is purely from a colonizers perspective which is the exact point that’s being made across all social platforms regarding this egregious book. Y’all (white people) have no fcking clue about Black people or their lived experiences.

Jennifer Buck, you do NOT have the right to write about something you have not lived and claim you are redefining some shit you don’t even understand. Period. Let the Black women who are experts and have already coined the terms and experienced this life create the work.

Read these books by Black women instead:

Sesali Bowen - Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes from a Trap Feminist

The Crunk Feminist Collective - Feminist AF

Joan Morgan - When Chicken Heads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-hop feminist breaks it down

Zeba Blay - Carefree Black Girls

Mikki Kendall - Hood Feminism: Notes from the women that a movement forgot

[Bree B. · Rating 1 out of 5]

She tried it

[Miles · Rating 1 out of 5]

THE CAUCACITY IS ASTOUNDING! (Didn't read and won't be. This author won't see a cent of my money.)

[Nakecia Bowers · Rating 1 out of 5]

Only read 1 page. Trash.

[Sanjay Varma · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reminds me of Cornel West’s book Prophecy Deliverance; it’s sort of a mirror image. How so? West is a black author who lovingly "reviews the literature" of European culture and thought, links it with the history of black churches and the culture of black music, and then defines a vision of the future in which Marxism merges with the black church. The author of Bad and Boujee, Jennifer Buck, is a white author who lovingly reviews the literature of black history and black feminism, links it with the black women’s movement in the church ("womanism") and the culture of rap and trap music, and then defines a vision of the future in which unconventional family structures in black communities are acknowledged to be sources of joy, capable of flourishing, and embraced and welcomed by churches.

Buck's vision is that a radical transformation is needed in (white) churches towards acceptance of black culture. She asks her audience to consider that hip hop artists are in the prophetic tradition of liberation theology, they are prophets who call out injustice. This book also compares the eucharist as the embodied “countersign” to the devaluation and exploitation of black bodies. Buck's main point is theological: the trap community is indeed a community, and the trap queen is someone who promotes a family structure in this community, therefore she herself is a tool that divine forces use to bring joy and flourishing into the world.

I'll close with a few points about the controversy, related to Sesalia Bowen's book "Bad Fat Black Girl." Here's my two cents:

1. Just as there are black leaders who play a crucial function of helping the black community interact with white culture, so too are there white leaders who connect the white community with black culture, by helping whites the navigate conversations involving race. We see this all the time in the current Equity & Social Justice landscape with white-authored non-fiction books and white-facilitated organizational training programs. Jennifer Buck has positioned herself to be this sort of leader, but in the realm of theology for her University and church community.

2. Jennifer Buck made her work edgy by referencing rap song lyrics and the trendy word “trap” in an academic setting. Her edgy approach probably has attracted students to her classes but it has also opened up the door for misunderstanding. Once this book left academia, this book was perceived as claiming to speak from within black culture to a black audience. The general public doesn't realize this is a scholarly and theological book joining conversations started by James Cone, Cornel West, and Hortense Spillers. At a minimum, this book needed a more accurate title and cover art to signal its real focus; that is to say, Buck is speaking from within white culture to a white audience.

3. Having read Sesali Bowen's book, it is a clear overreach for Bowen to think that she has invented a new branch of feminism, or that her book was the inspiration and source material for Buck's book. It's a shame that Bowen feels disrespected but that's on her.

In conclusion, as readers we are left to ponder the basic difference in how Sesali Bowen and Jennifer Buck use the concept of trap feminism. Sesali Bowen wants to teach black woman to behave with aggressive self-interest, but to be principled when treating with their own people. Jennifer Buck wants to teach the white church to recognize that black women in a “trap” culture promote community and family, are supported by God in these roles, and might be receptive to joining a church structure.

[Bookish_B · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn’t buy it, didn’t & won’t read it. This is literary black face. I shouldn’t be shocked at how some white people are profiting off of the black experience, but I am. If you buy /support this book you are consciously supporting racism.

[Carla "Kar" Schmidt Holloway · Rating 1 out of 5]

You didn't even spell bougie right?!?!

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

White women are back at it* again.



*stealing from and speaking over black people at every opportunity.

[ShaTonya · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is absolutely ridiculous! I will always appreciate others who chose to express empathy towards marginalized groups. However, I do not feel as though Jennifer is qualified to write a book about “trap” feminism because she likes trap music. I’m a black women and yet I would not feel comfortable writing a book or give a speech on “trap” feminism because I didn’t grow up in the trap. What would make this author think that she should? The entitlement and over all lack of self awareness is mind blowing to me!

If you truly want to read about trap feminism I recommend Bad Fat Black Girl by Sesali Bowen.

[Dejia]

I just need to know who the targeted audience is. Must be one of those instances where someone outside of a culture feels compelled to explain that culture to others outside of that culture...😒Because I doubt Black people, other POC, (actually anyone!) is reading this book for purposes other than to roast it and the author.

[Mia · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a mess! Buck betrays herself with linguistic clues that reveal her internalized superiority even to someone like me who is not African-American! This book reveals, more than anything else. the typical hubris that privileged authors display. It is an exercise in metafiction -- the hubris of whiteness that believes it can speak for others -- rather than any actual reliable info about African-American culture.

Why do white women think women of color, whether African-American, Mexican (Cummins), or any other would rather read a book written by a white woman than by women actually experiencing that life? Because they think they can speak for everyone else and, as per usual, the rest of us should be quiet-- about OURSELVES -- while white women tell us what our cultures are really like.

Once again, white women prove that the bar of achievement drops like a stone to accomodate her mediocrity and, as a result, excludes others, in this case African-Americans.

What a MESS.

[Faloni ©]

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