The Spoken Literature

    For about a week now we as a class have been working on our literature papers. The first step in that process was to write our thesis statements for the paper. The directions for the paper was to, "write a paper in which you present your argument about what literature is, what it does, how and why it does that, and what it offers us...". When I first sat down and thought about what to write for my thesis I was thinking one-dimensional. I was only thinking about literature = writing, but that's not necessarily true after I got some feedback from Mr. Mullins and my mom. Literature can also be the spoken word as well. Two key example of that for me would be poetry and hip hop/rap music. But I only want to focus on how hip-hop/rap can be considered literature.

    The origin of hip-hop started in the Bronx during the 1970s among African American youth. It was their way of talking about the struggles of being an African American male in the United States during that time. They felt this was the most creative and best way to reach many different types of people especially other youth who were going through the same thing. Doing this spread the hip-hop culture around the country and today it is considered pop culture because it is the most popular culture right now. My definition of literature from my thesis was any written or spoken work which includes the author's input, reader's or listener's interpretation, and the dynamic in between. When we listen to hip-hop, we get the author's input through the music they produce to us as consumers. The listener's is interpretation is our own interpretation of the music we hear. The second part of that definition would be that literature stimulates the mind of those who come in contact with it and it somehow changes their beliefs surrounding them. That's what happens when we listen to music, it stimulates our minds changes how we think, act, everything. So the connection between my definition of literature and hip-hop is very real.