Author Talk: Nitasha Tamar Sharma with Andrew Way Leon

Nitasha Tamar Sharma will discuss her writings on Desis hip hop culture and race and indigeneity in Hawai’i and the Pacific Islands. The talk will be hosted by Andrew Way Leong and will be followed by an audience Q&A.

About the book:
Dr. Sharma’s first book, Hip Hop Desis: South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a Global Race Consciousness (Duke University Press 2010), analyzes how second-generation members of an upwardly mobile and middle-class immigrant group use hip hop to develop racial—and not just ethnic—identities. The racial consciousness expressed by these hip hop artists as “people of color” facilitates the development of multiracial coalitions that cross boundaries while explicitly acknowledging “difference.”
She is also co-editor of Beyond Ethnicity: New Politics of Race in Hawai‘i (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2018) and is writing her second solo-authored book, Hawai’i is my Haven: Race and Indigeneity in the Black Pacific with Duke University Press. This ethnography is based on a decade of fieldwork including interviews with 60 people of African descent in the islands, including Black Hawaiians, Black Japanese, and African Americans.
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About the Authors:
Dr. Sharma is an Associate Professor of African American Studies and Asian American Studies; Director of Graduate Studies, Department of African American Studies; Director, Asian American Studies Program (2017-21); Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence.

About the host:
Andrew Way Leong is a comparativist who works primarily in Japanese and English with additional interests in Spanish and Portuguese. His research focuses on the literature of Japanese diasporas in the Americas as well as queer and critical theoretical approaches to the study of literary genre, gendered embodiment, and generational time. He is the translator of Lament in the Night. He is currently an Assistant Professor in UC Berkeley’s English Department.
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To purchase copies of the featured authors’ work, visit www.asiabookcenter.com

HIP HOP DESIS: SOUTH ASIAN AMERICANS, BLACKNESS, AND A GLOBAL RACE CONSCIOUSNESS: https://www.asiabookcenter.com/store/p2633/Hip_Hop_Desis%3A_South_Asian_Americans%2C_Blackness%2C_and_a_Global_Race_Consciousness_%28_Refiguring_American_Music_%29.html

BEYOND ETHNICITY: https://www.asiabookcenter.com/store/p2635/Beyond_Ethnicity%3A_New_Politics_of_Race_in_Hawai%27i.html

LAMENT IN THE NIGHT: https://www.asiabookcenter.com/store/p1106/Lament_in_the_Night_.html