New York Times Editor’s Choice
Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist
NAACP Image Award Finalist
Books For A Better Life Award Finalist
Northern California Book Award Finalist
Ray & Pat Browne Award For Best Work In Popular Culture and American Culture

“Who We Be” is ambitious in its scope, an impressive gathering of a wide range of artists of color, with their creative interventions and politically charged war stories.”

—TRICIA ROSE
New York Times Book Review

“Who We Be serves as an indispensable text to arm the current and next generation of artists…an intoxicating, revisionist reading of the near-recent past.”

—ANUPA MISTRY
National Post

“No one knows the intersection of race and culture like Jeff Chang.”

—JESSE THORN
NPR’s Bullseye

“A new book by Jeff Chang is always a cause for celebration. His voice is unique, and his issues are our issues: this changing America, this complicated, polyglot future that some are already living in, while some are fighting to tear apart. Who We Be is an important, timely book, and it’s also a terrific read.”

—DANIEL ALARCÓN
Author of At Night We Walk in Circles

“This is the book we’ve been waiting for.”

—KIESE LAYMON
Author of Long Division and
How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America

“Who We Be reveals the unsettling backstory to our most closely guarded assumptions about race. As its title suggests, it wants to tell us something important about ourselves.”

—CHRIS FAN
Hyphen Magazine

“With Who We Be Jeff Chang has emerged as a premier chronicler of the broad and unruly narrative of American culture.”

—JELANI COBB
Author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress

“The idea that art is an important part of society and of history certainly isn’t new, but the freshness of Chang’s work, his comprehensive scholarship, and his accessibility in this discussion are striking…Who We Be is at the height of its relevance and ability to answer one of the more important questions of all histories: How did we get here? ...(It’s) a book that demands to be read now."

—ERIC THURM
AV Club

“Who We Be is essential reading – not this season or this year, but until the audacity of post-racism kicks in. Which won’t be happening anytime soon.”

—ADAM MANSBACH
Number One New York Times bestselling author of Rage is Back and Go the Fck to Sleep*

"Perhaps Jeff Chang is Hip-Hop America's Howard Zinn."

—Salon

"I know of no better account of the glories and sorrows of contemporary American diversity, nor any so attuned to the outsized role that art has played in that journey.”

—TEJU COLE
Author of Open City and Every Day Is For The Thief

“Following in the footsteps of cultural historians like Ronald Takaki, Mike Davis, and Howard Zinn, Jeff Chang is a meticulous scholar adept at tackling interdisciplinary subjects and weaving it all together in an organized and cohesive narrative…he is initiating one of the most critical conversations of the American future and the 21st Century.”

—MIKE SONKSEN, KCET Departures

“As America transitions towards becoming a majority non white society in 2043, Jeff Chang’s beautiful magnum opus is a must read in order to understand the role of race in who we are and where we’re going.”

—STEVEN W. THRASHER
The Guardian

“Provocative but steady — Chang is too good a writer and thinker to resort to bomb-throwing — Who We Be asks the kind of questions too often swept under the rug: What does racial identity mean? How do you assert it in the stew of the melting pot? What have the culture wars cost us? And where are we now?"

—CHRIS VOGNAR
Dallas Morning News

”Who We Be” could not possibly be any more timely or relevant...Chang's writerly flow makes it a pleasure to read."

—ERIC ARNOLD
Oakulture

“Chang’s exhaustive and beautifully written book traces the trajectory of American multiculturalism, from its beginning as a simple descriptor for America’s increasing cultural diversity, to the complex nexus of academic programs, artistic expressions, ideas and philosophies it grew to encompass.”

—KALI HOLLOWAY
Alternet

“Who We Be is the work of a new sage thinker with his finger on the pulse…One of the best Black books for 2014.”

—KAM WILLIAMS
The Skanner

“Absolutely nothing I’ve read, seen, or heard this year is as worth your increasingly valuable time and attention. We owe it to ourselves to shut up long enough to read it.”

—ALEX DWYER
Passion of the Weiss