african americans in popular culture

Profiles five influential Black Americans and their impact on music, dance, filmmaking, and literature in the United States. Includes color photographs, sidebars, and additional resources.

"Aisha Harris has made a name for herself as someone you can turn to for an engaging and incisive take on whatever new show or movie everyone is talking about, or should be taking about - first at Slate, then at the Times, and recently as a co-host of NPR's popular Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. Here, she turns her analytical talents inward, reflecting on the culture that raised her into the person and thinker she is today. In essays that span the personal and political, the high-brow and low, she contrasts the formative touchstones of her 90s childhood with both iconic precursors and more recent sensations to analyse the various tropes that have shaped her heart and mind. Aisha's observations invite us into her family, her adolescence, her relationships, her work. In the opening essay, an interaction with Chance the Rapper prompts an investigation into the origin myth of her name that becomes an ode to Stevie Wonder, Roots, and her parents"--Provided by publisher.

M.K. Asante, Jr. chronicles the new hip-hop movement that is changing the music industry and explores how this new style of music is addressing the social, economic, and political issues that are shaping the next generation.

Provides insights on Black popular culture including the concepts of "gangsta rap," "gangsta cinema," and basketball.

A collection of eighteen essays, memoir pieces, and poems addressing race in the United States and written in response to James Baldwin's 1962 "Letter to My Nephew" in which the author lamented that 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, it felt like African Americans were celebrating too soon.

A collection of essays addressing the history and predicament of race in an attempt to envision a better future.

Traces the history of African-American music from bebop to hip-hop, discussing how the African-American experience has often been chronicled through various forms of music.

Examines connections between African-American popular culture and politics, tracing the influence of political activists, artists, novelists, filmmakers, musicians, and others on the establishment of formal political equality and critical social spaces since the 1960s.

A collection of essays in which the author shares his thoughts on race, arguing that many of the problems often seen as unique to African-Americans are actually just human, and discussing the need for African-Americans to quit presenting themselves as victims.