About this item
Race. A four-letter word. The greatest social divide in American life, a half-century ago and today.During that time, the U.S. has seen the most dramatic demographic and cultural shifts in its history, what can be called the colorization of America. But the same nation that elected its first Black president on a wave of hope--another four-letter word--is still plunged into endless culture wars. How do Americans see race now? How has that changed--and not changed--over the half-century? After eras framed by words like multicultural and post-racial, do we see each other any more clearly? Who We Be remixes comic strips and contemporary art, campus protests and corporate marketing campaigns, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Trayvon Martin into a powerful, unusual, and timely cultural history of the idea of racial progress.
About the Author
Jeff Chang has written extensively on culture, politics, the arts, and music. His first book, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, garnered many honors, including the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award. He edited the book, Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop. Who We Be: The Colorization of America, was released on St. Martin's Press in October 2014. His next book, We Gon' Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation (Picador) will be out in September 2016. He is currently at work on a biography of Bruce Lee (Little, Brown) .Jeff has been a USA Ford Fellow in Literature. He was named by The Utne Reader as one of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World," by KQED as an Asian Pacific American Local Hero, and by the Yerba Buena Center for The Arts to its 2016 YBCA 100 list of those "shaping the future of American culture. " He has also been a winner of the North Star News Prize, and the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association's Ray & Pat Browne Award for Best Single Work by One or More Authors in Popular Culture and American Culture. With H. Samy Alim, he received the St. Clair Drake Teaching Award at Stanford University. Jeff co-founded CultureStr/ke and ColorLines. He has written for The Nation, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, The Believer, Foreign Policy, N 1, Mother Jones, Salon, Slate, Buzzfeed, and Medium, among many others. Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai'i, he is a graduate of 'Iolani School, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of California at Los Angeles. He serves as the Executive Director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University.
