- Written by Common
- Common is an Oscar and Grammy award winning hip/hop rap artist
- Wrote Letter to the Free as a soundtrack to The 13th (Documentary)
- Lynn (Common) began rapping in the late 1980s, in Chicago
- Common is an advocate for criminal justice reform
- Worth $45 000 0000
- “13th,” addresses the issue of mass incarceration in the United States
- The 13th is an amendment that says slavery is abolished unless someone commits a crime
- “Letter to the Free” is his rally call against racism and the different forms of slavery still being used in America.
Quotes
“We staring in the face of hate again
The same hate they say will make America great again“
-referring to how certain politicians talk about making America great but their plan is to incite unfair rules and plans.
“Slavery’s still alive, check Amendment 13
Not whips and chains, all subliminal”
-Talking about how slavery still exists in America but its just in a different form
“Sweet land of liberty, incarcerated country”
-Saying how America is supposed to be land of the free but its not really
“Shot me with your ray-gun
And now you want to trump me”
Postcolonialism
is specifically looking at identity and representation through the lens of Empire and Colonialism
Postcolonial critical thought emerged as a distinct category in the 1990’s, with an aim to undermine the universalist claims that ‘great literature has a timeless and universal significance [which] thereby demotes or disregards cultural, social, regional, and nations differences in experience and outlook’ (Barry, 2017: 194). In other words, postcolonial criticism challenges the assumption of a universal claim towards what constitutes ‘good reading’ and ‘good literature’; questioning the notion of a recognised and overarching canon of important cultural texts – book, poems, plays, films etc – much of which is institutionalised into academic syllabi.
the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism
-Edward Said Culture and Imperialism, 1993: xiii
He asked if ‘imperialism was principally economic‘ and looked to answer that question by highlighting ‘the privileged role of culture in the modern imperial experience’ (1997:3)
Edward Said-
- known for the book Orientalism (1978), a critique of the cultural representations that are the bases of Orientalism
- Said’s theory was that Western writings depicted Orient as an irrational, weak, feminized ‘Other”