Review: Why Bushwick Bill Matters, by Charles L. Hughes

When popular culture puts its “freaks” on display, as U.S. talk shows did with gender and sexual non-conforming people during 1980s and 90s, the so-called freaks often seem more sympathetic than the audience members who spew prejudice at them.¹ Charles L. Hughes makes a similar case with society’s treatment of Bushwick Bill, a little person who was one-third of the classic line-up of Houston’s Southern rap forerunners, the Geto Boys. A strength of Why Bushwick Bill Matters is Hughes’s unflinching portrayal of how both band members and critics reduced Bushwick Bill to stereotypes about his physical disabilities. Yet, Hughes shows that Bushwick Bill rejected the goal of respectability, where “freaks talk back” to an uncomprehending audience to gain social acceptance by showing how similar they are to “normal” people.² Instead, Bushwick Bill emerges as a more complicated figure who rejected the role of poster child for anything, including...