Majoring in Tupac: His Poems Become Course Material

Original: “Majoring In Tupac: Shakur’s Poetry Inspires Course” · MTV News · no byline · September 8, 1997

Does the literary canon of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Keats have room for Tupac Shakur? “Maybe not,” MTV itself answered on September 8, 1997. Right on time for the first anniversary of his death, the network drew on the AP news agency to report on a novelty: at the University of California, Berkeley, Shakur’s poems became the subject of academic debate that fall.

A Student at the Lectern, 100 Participants in the Lecture Hall

The facts were brief: a third-year student led the course, around 100 participants enrolled, and it was graded only pass/fail. The poems Tupac had left behind were examined. His mother Afeni Shakur also hoped to publish a collection of these writings.

More details, such as on student instructor Arvand Elihu and the involvement of Tupac’s former manager Leila Steinberg, were provided by the AP report. The Las Vegas Sun printed it the same day (see Tupac in the lecture hall).

Two Years Later, MTV Published the Book Itself

MTV’s skeptical opening feels almost historic today. Tupac’s texts are now studied at many universities, and his poetry is firmly part of his image.

The collection Afeni Shakur hoped for appeared two years later: The Rose That Grew from Concrete was published on November 1, 1999, by Pocket Books under the MTV Books imprint-from the very network that in 1997 had asked whether Tupac belonged in the canon. The book gathers poems Tupac wrote as a teenager between 1989 and 1991, printed in his handwriting and typed.

In 2000, an album of the same name followed, on which musicians and actors performed Tupac’s poems. The 1997 course was thus an early step: away from the image of the gangsta rapper, toward Tupac as a poet.