In Race and the American Story, Stephanie Shonekan and Adam Seagrave provide a unique window into race relations in contemporary America. Shonekan, a Black woman who grew up in Nigeria and Trinidad before emigrating to the US and Seagrave, a white man who grew up in California's Napa Valley, have entwined their life histories to shed light on how Americans experience race. This book explores the authors' insights into the personal and social effects of racism and contains both an open acknowledgment of the realities of racism and a hopeful approach to confronting it. Race and the American Story provides a historically sensitive, culturally informed, and refreshingly novel treatment of race in the US. Combining the power of storytelling with the authors' expertise as scholars of politics and culture, this book shows how two very different personal stories relate to the American story--a story that is in danger of disintegrating in the twenty-first century.

IntroductionChapter 1: Black, White, HumanChapter 2: Two Experiences, One NationChapter 3: Knowledge and IgnoranceChapter 4: The Road to the FutureChapter 5: Freedom and Hope, Liberation and LoveBibliographyNotesIndex