Monday, June 5th, 2006

Me On PBS.com: Hip-Hop And American Identity

Hey fam, PBS.com’s Border Talk series has given me a chance to blog on the topic of Hip-Hop and American Identity this whole month. Who knows if that was such a good idea, but hey! You get to decide.

(Apologies to the great Nelson George, BTW, because it looks like they bit your book title for the blog. Sorry for that.)

Over the next month, we’ll hear from people like Reginald Hudlin, president of entertainment at BET, and Cristina Verán, Rock Steady Crew member turned UN writer on indigenous people’s movements, and many more.

Here’s a teaser from today’s entry:

Is it strange for an Asian Pacific Islander who grew up in the suburbs of Honolulu to be writing about hip-hop? I didn’t think so.

But when I went out to promote my door-stopper of a book last year, I found out differently. Seemed like everyone wondered how someone of my background might have come to write a 500-plus page biceps-enhancer on the topic. (Thankfully, I never met the ones who didn’t think there were 500-plus pages worth of the topic.)

I mean, did they live on the same planet as me?

When I got over being so defensive, I realized that unpacking that question could actually be quite interesting…

Read it all here. And definitely comment if you feel the spirit.

posted by Jeff Chang @ 12:39 pm | 0 Comments

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