Jeff Chang is a writer and cultural organizer who has worked in and written extensively on culture, politics, the arts, and music.
He is finishing a cultural biography of Bruce Lee called Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America (Mariner/HarperCollins). He is the host of the Edge of Reason, a podcast of artists and ideas by Atlantic: Rethink and Hauser & Wirth.
His first book, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, garnered many honors, including the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award, and was selected by Slate as one of the most important books of the past quarter century. It was updated in 2021 with co-author Dave "Davey D" Cook in a new edition for young adults, along with a new audiobook.
Who We Be: The Colorization of America (St. Martin's Press) was released in October 2014 to critical acclaim. It was published in paperback in January 2016 under the new title, Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post-Civil Rights America (Picador). The book won the Ray + Pat Browne Award for Best Work in Popular Culture and American Culture and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Books For A Better Life Award. He also edited the influential anthology, Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop.
We Gon' Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation (Picador), was published in September 2016. It was named the Northern California Nonfiction Book Of The Year, and the Washington Post declared it “the smartest book of the year.” He and director Bao Nguyen created a four-episode digital series adaptation of the book for PBS Indie Lens Storycast.
You can find a list of all his books in print here.
A leader in narrative and cultural strategy, cultural organizing, and advocacy for cultural justice, Jeff co-founded CultureStr/ke -- now the Center for Cultural Power -- ColorLines, and the Webby-nominated May 19th Project. He helped to write the Cultural New Deal alongside a number of artists and culture bearers.
Jeff is currently a Lucas Artist Fellow and has been a USA Ford Fellow in Literature. He was named by The Utne Reader as one of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World,” by KQED as an Asian Pacific American Local Hero, and by the Yerba Buena Center for The Arts to its YBCA 100 list of those “shaping the future of American culture.”
With H. Samy Alim, he was the winner of the St. Clair Drake Teaching Award at Stanford University. He was named to the Frederick Douglass 200 as one of “200 living individuals who best embody the work and spirit of Douglass.”
He has been featured in the PBS documentary series, Asian Americans, Bao Nguyen’s movie, “Be Water”, and Lisa Ling’s “This Is Life.”
As a journalist, his byline has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Slate, The Nation, N+1, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Believer, Foreign Policy, Mother Jones, Salon, and Buzzfeed.
Jeff formerly served as a Senior Advisor at Race Forward where he led the Butterfly Lab for Immigrant Narrative Strategy and was the Vice President of Narrative, Arts, and Culture there. He previously led the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University.
He was a founding member of the SoleSides Crew, a hip-hop collective that included DJ Shadow, Blackalicious, Lyrics Born, Lateef the Truthspeaker, and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Joseph Monish Patel.
He began his journey here working at college radio stations KALX and KDVS, organizing for the Center for Third World Organizing, the California State Student Association, and the National Hip-Hop Political Convention, and writing and editing for magazines like URB, Rap Pages, The Bomb Hip-Hop Magazine, Vibe, The Source, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Weekly, and 360hiphop.com.
Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai’i of Chinese and Kanaka Maoli descent, he is a graduate of ‘Iolani School, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of California at Los Angeles.
For more, visit Jeff's Instagram, Facebook page, Twitter feed, or Linktree.