Soul Thieves: The Appropriation and Misrepresentation of African American Popular Culture (Contemporary Black History)

Soul Thieves: The Appropriation and Misrepresentation of African American Popular Culture is a timely and engaging multidisciplinary collection of essays that examines both historically and contemporary manifestations of appropriated and commodified forms of African American popular culture. The book includes analyses of the misuse and in some cases outright abuse of black popular culture through various genres. Hip hop is, and has been, one of the most dominant African American popular culture creations and is denoted in many of the offerings in this volume; however, Soul Thieves is a historically inclusive documentation of the misappropriation of black popular culture, thus spanning other areas and genres besides the contemporary and current craze including music, dance, television, film, fashion and beauty, sports, and popular fiction. This book documents that historically African Americans have been in the forefront in the creation of American popular culture.