Who Are We-And Should It Matter in the 21st Century?

From those who insist that Barack Obama is Muslim to the European legislators who go to extraordinary lengths to ban items of clothing worn by a tiny percentage of their populations, Gary Younge shows, in this fascinating, witty, and provocative examination of the enduring legacy and obsession with identity in politics and everyday life, that how we define ourselves informs every aspect of our social, political, and personal lives. Younge--a black British male of Caribbean descent living in Brooklyn, New York, who speaks fluent Russian and French--travels the planet in search of answers to why identity is so combustible. From Tiger Woods's legacy to the scandal over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, he finds that identity is inescapable, but solidarity may not be as elusive as we fear.

Gary Younge is an award-winning author, broadcaster and a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester in England. Formerly a columnist at TheGuardian, he is an editorial board member of the Nation magazine and the Alfred Knobler Fellow for Type Media Center. He has written five books: Another Day in the Death of America, A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives; The Speech, The Story Behind Martin Luther King's Dream; Who Are We?, And Should it Matter in the 21st century; Stranger in a Strange Land, Travels in the Disunited States and No Place Like Home, A Black Briton's Journey Through the Deep South. He has also written for The New York Review of Books, Granta, GQ, Financial Times and TheNew Statesman and made several radio and television documentaries on subjects ranging from gay marriage to Brexit. He lives in London with his wife and two children.