Michele Elam: The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics and Aesthetics in the New Millennium [Johnson Review] |
Sherry Johnson, Assistant Professor of English
Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan
“What are you?” The question can often comes out of nowhere One can be going about her quotidian activities, or she might have just finished a meeting at work. “What are you?” The question is disorienting for most, but for others who are racially ambiguous it is commonplace. The ostensibly benign question suggests that it is about the person being asked. However, one might argue that it is more about the one who does the asking. In The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millenium (Stanford University Press, 2011), Michele Elam critically discusses the rise of the Mixed Race Studies. To demonstrate the new sub-genre of cultural studies in both art and academia Elam shows elements of what mixed-racedness looks like in the classroom, as well as in the public sphere here at the turn of the 21st century…
Read the entire review here. Listen to the interview (00:59:00) here.
Tags: Michele Elam, New Books in African American Studies, Sherry Johnson