Jeff Chang is a writer and cultural organizer known for his work in culture, politics, the arts, and music. 

His cultural biography of Bruce Lee called Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America (Mariner) will be published on September 23, 2025. He is the host of the Signal Award-winning podcast on artists and ideas, Edge of Reason, produced 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. Slate named it one of the best nonfiction books of the past 25 years. Powell’s’ Books chose it as one of their 50 most important books of the past 50 years. A revised and updated Young Adult edition—co-written with legendary hip-hop journalist Dave “Davey D” Cook—was published in 2021. 

Who We Be: The Colorization of America (St. Martin’s Press) was released on 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 shortlisted for the NAACP Image Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Books For A Better Life Award. 

We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes On Race and Resegregation (Picador), was published in September 2016, was named a Book of the Year by the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association. The Washington Post declared it “the smartest book of the year.” He also edited the book, Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop (Basic Civitas, 2006) and Freedom Moves: Hip-Hop Knowledges, Pedagogies, and Futures (University of California Press, 2023).

A list of all his writings in books in print can be found here.

Jeff has been a USA Ford Fellow in Literature and a Lucas Artist Fellow. 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.” He was named to the Frederick Douglass 200, as one of “200 living individuals who best embody the work and spirit of Douglass.” 

In May 2019, he and director Bao Nguyen created a four-episode digital series adaptation of the book for PBS Indie Lens Storycast. Jeff is featured in the PBS documentary series, Asian Americans. He is featured in the PBS documentary series, Asian Americans, Bao Nguyen’s movie, “Be Water”, and Lisa Ling’s show, “This Is Life.”

His bylines have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as Slate, Mother Jones, The Nation, n+1, and The Believer. He was a winner of the North Star News Prize for his cultural and political journalism. With H. Samy Alim, he received the St. Clair Drake Teaching Award at Stanford University.

A national leader in narrative and cultural strategy and a recognized advocate for cultural justice, Jeff co-founded CultureStr/ke (now the Center for Cultural Power) and the Webby-nominated May 19th Project. He led the Butterfly Lab for Immigrant Narrative Strategy and the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University. He helped to write the Cultural New Deal alongside a number of artists and culture bearers.

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 working at college radio stations KALX and KDVS, organizing for the Center for Third World Organizing, California State Student Association, and the National Hip-Hop Political Convention, among others, 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.