Event

Jeff Chang, We Gon' Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation

Sponsored by Peninsula Arts & Letters and Kepler's

Tuesday, September 13, 2016
7:30pm

Kepler's Books
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA 94025

In these provocative, powerful essays, acclaimed writer/journalist Jeff Chang takes an incisive and wide-ranging look at the recent tragedies and widespread protests that have shaken the country. Through deep reporting with key activists and thinkers, passionately personal writing, and distinguished cultural criticism, "We Gon Be Alright" links #BlackLivesMatter to #OscarsSoWhite, Ferguson to Washington D.C., the Great Migration to resurgent nativism.

Chang explores the rise and fall of the idea of diversity, the roots of student protest, changing ideas about Asian Americanness, and the impact of a century of racial separation in housing. Throughout these essays, Chang includes the voices of many leading activists from around the country as he charts how popular voices on the ground and in social media have been the main catalyst for protest and change.

Jeff Chang is the Executive Director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University. He co-founded and ran the indie hip hop label, then known as SoleSides, but now known as Quannum Projects, and helped launch the careers of DJ Shadow, Blackalicious, Lyrics Born, and Lateef the Truth Speaker. In 2007 Chang interviewed Barack Obama for the cover of Vibe Magazine. He's the author of "Who We Be" and "Can't Stop Won't Stop" and has written for The Nation, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Believer, Foreign Policy, Salon, Slate, and Buzzfeed, among others.