Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
Pages: 224
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9
978-1-78660-254-1 • Hardback • August 2018 • $147.00 • (£113.00)
978-1-78660-255-8 • Paperback • August 2018 • $51.00 • (£39.00)
978-1-78660-256-5 • eBook • August 2018 • $48.50 • (£37.00)
Lisa Simone Kingstone is Senior Teaching Fellow in the Department of International Development at King’s College London. She has a BA from Barnard College, an MA from Columbia University, and a PhD from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in English Literature. Before coming to King’s, she taught English Literature at the University of Connecticiut and worked as a professional journalist. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications.
Acknowledgments / List of Illustrations / Preface / Introduction / Overview of the book / Terminology / Chapter 1: Tracing Race: A tour of the Racial Binary / Chapter 2: The Trial of Rachel Dolezal: The First Transracial / Chapter 3: Obama as Racial Rorschach: The First Blank President / Chapter 4: Casting Color: Black Barbie and the Black Doll as Racial Barometer / Chapter 5: Really Black: Black-ish and the Black Sitcom as Racial Barometer / Chapter 6: Talking about Race: Black, White and Mixed Focus Groups / Coda / Appendix / Bibliography
Mapping and re-mapping the cultural geography of race and identity are some of the critical, yet most complex endeavors of our time. Kingstone gives us the tools to navigate this thorny area across both recent history and contemporary culture. It is a forensically crafted masterclass of clarity - essential reading for anyone who is as confused as I am.— Dr. Gus Casely-Hayford, OBE, Historian and Curator
Beautifully written, compellingly argued, and exceptionally well-structured. Kingstone frames her richly illuminating, vital and groundbreaking questions in wonderfully theoretically incisive ways by asking, “what do our reactions and changing representations of black and white say about either our shifting perceptions or the firmness of racial categories?”— Celeste-Marie Bernier, Personal Chair in English Literature and Professor of Black Studies at the University of Edinburgh
Lisa Kingstone’s book challenges people on both sides who are entrenched and invested in the traditional binary of race. She unpacks the concept and explores the exemplars of the moment – Rachel Dolezal and President Obama – and ongoing cultural targets of analysis like children’s dolls and popular media. In her original research using focus groups, she helps us see cracks in the system and how far we have to go if we have any hope to unleash human richness, complexity, and ambiguity beyond binary.— Anita Foeman, Professor Emeritus, West Chester University
Cultural narratives around the black/white binary in America are changing. Lisa Kingstone takes different kinds of representation, including the response to Rachel Dolezal’s racial construction, to explore the tensions between persistent essentialism and notions of emerging racial fluidity. To this complex territory, she brings analytical acuity and insight in this highly readable and beautifully written book. It will be widely read.
— Peter J. Aspinall, Emeritus Reader in Population Health Centre for Health Services Studies, University of Kent