Book description
A Village Voice Best Book "spirited debate among African American artists and cultural critics about issues from essentialism to sexuality"
Why read it?
1 author picked Black Popular Culture as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I am recommending this book, because it is the first edited volume, and, really, the first academic book to directly engage black popular culture as a field of study. It was avant-garde. It gave a name to cultural productions that, at that time, during my first semester of graduate school in 1997, I had no idea had a collective name. I love this book, because I encountered it simultaneously to learning concepts like “high” and “low” art. The book, in my opinion, made a compelling argument for why the popular, the folk, the vernacular, and so-called “low” art matters.
From Simone's list on The best books on Black popular culture.
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