Growing Up Where ‘No One Looked Like Me’: Gender, Race, Hip Hop and Identity in Vancouver

This paper examines how youth whose parents came from sub-Saharan Africa negotiate racialized forms of masculinity and femininity in Vancouver, Canada. The study is based on interviews with second generation African-Canadian men and women, and explores gendered and racialized dimensions of growing up in neighbourhoods where they were usually the only African and Black children. In this context, the second generation engages with representations of Black masculinity and femininity widely circulated through American popular culture, especially through hip hop, constituting a dominant frame of reference among adolescents that contributes to the great popularity of African-Canadian teenage boys, while girls find it much harder to fit in.