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Theorizing Histories of Rhetoric ed. by Michelle Ballif (review)

music steadfastly critiques how institutionalized racism and poverty limit one’s access to power. Ultimately, the focus on moving beyond the seeming contradiction between a love of God and all the trappings of sin makes Utley’s book an important contribution to an understanding of how people mobilize cultural resources in ways that give meaning to their lives. Utley’s writing is engaging and accessible, and is inviting to audiences for whom hip hop culture is more than an academic interest, and rather a central aspect of their lived experience. Her writing is most persuasive when she reads the religious themes put forth by particular artists in the context of their bodies of work and public personae, something that she does admirably in her discussion of gender and sexuality in rap music. At other times, the breadth of her archive threatens to overwhelm her analysis, as she breezes through the songs of multiple and often radically different artists without accounting for the different strands of hip hop they represent or justifying why they should be read alongside each other. Despite this, throughout this book, Utley reminds us that rap music has much to say about myth, power, meaning, and social justice in contemporary America. Moreover, that it does so in ways that playfully embrace doubleness— always skirting the line between blasphemy and praise—makes it a compelling object of study. Utley’s analysis is powerful, precisely because she is irreverent toward such binaries, as she observes that “[T]he rapper’s power over the word creates new rhythms and meanings in the same way that God’s words created the heavens and the earth” (28).