American Book Award winner Jeff Chang will visit SMU to give a lecture on his newest work, Who We Be: The Colorization of America, presented by SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts and Office of Multicultural Student Affairs.

The book examines multiple questions about race, “the greatest social divide in American life.” How do Americans see race now? How has that changed – and not changed – over the past 50 years? After eras framed by words like “multicultural” and “post-racial,” do we see each other any more clearly?

From the dream of integration to the reality of colorization, Who We Be remixes comic strips and contemporary art, campus protests and corporate marketing campaigns, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Trayvon Martin into a powerful, unusual and timely cultural history of the idea of racial progress.

Chang’s first book, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, won the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award, among others. He edited Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop and is at work on two new books: Youth (Picador Big Ideas/Small Books series) and a biography of Bruce Lee (Little, Brown).