Focusing on racial identity, popular cultures, and freedom struggles, these essays and interviews are collected from one of the most insightful and thought-provoking black intellectuals to emerge since the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement.

Focusing on racial identity, popular cultures, and freedom struggles, these essays and interviews are collected from one of the most insightful and thought-provoking black intellectuals to emerge since the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement.

Here, collected for the first time, are interviews and essays representing Michael Eric Dyson's most important thinking on race and identity. Exploring such topics as "whiteness" as seen through a black man's eye, modernism and postmodernism in black culture, and the emancipating role of black music from the plantation to the ghetto, Open Mike is a perfect introduction to Dyson's work and a must-have for students and scholars in African American Studies and Cultural Studies.