Race and the American Story

In Race and the American Story, Stephanie Shonekan and Adam Seagrave provide a unique window into race relations in contemporary America. Shonekan, a Black woman who grew up in Nigeria and Trinidad before emigrating to the US and Seagrave, a white man who grew up in California's Napa Valley, have entwined their life histories to shed light on how Americans experience race. This book explores the authors' insights into the personal and social effects of racism and contains both an open acknowledgment of the realities of racism and a hopeful approach to confronting it. Race and the American Story provides a historically sensitive, culturally informed, and refreshingly novel treatment of race in the US. Combining the power of storytelling with the authors' expertise as scholars of politics and culture, this book shows how two very different personal stories relate to the American story--a story that is in danger of disintegrating in the twenty-first century.

Stephanie Shonekan is Professor of Ethnomusicology and Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland. Her doctorate in ethnomusicology/folklore is from Indiana University. Shonekan's heritage combining West Africa and the Caribbean allows her to straddle the Black world comfortably. She has published articles and chapters on Fela Kuti, hip-hop, soul and country music. Her books include The Life of Camilla Williams: African American Classical Singer and Opera Diva (2011), Soul, Country, and the USA: Race and Identity in American Music Culture (2015), Black Lives Matter & Music (2018), and Black Resistance in the Americas (2018).

Adam Seagrave is Associate Professor of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, where he teaches and writes about American political ideas. He has also held tenured positions in Political Science and Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri and Northern Illinois University. He is the author of The Accessible Federalist, Liberty & Equality: The American Conversation, and The Foundations of Natural Morality. From 2019-2021 he was on the leadership team for the Educating for American Democracy project. He was awarded the 2021 American Legion National Education Award for his contributions to K-12 American civic education.