"This bold, innovative critique of an under-explored area of hip hop culture significantly expands the field of hip hop scholarship. With this book, Nitasha Tamar Sharma makes an important contribution to our understanding of the complex ways that youth from various racial, ethnic, and national backgrounds are absorbing hip hop culture, respecting its cultural origins, and reshaping it in their own image."--Bakari Kitwana, author of "The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture"

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Claiming Space, Making Race 1
1. Alternative Ethnics: Rotten Coconuts and Ethnic Hip Hop 37
2. Making Race: Desi Racial Identities, South Asian and Black Relations, and Racialized Hip Hop 88
3. Flipping the Gender Script: Gender and Sexuality in South Asian and Hip Hop America 138
4. The Appeal of Hip Hop, Ownership, and the Politics of Location 190
5. Sampling South Asians: Dual Flows of Appropriation and the Possibilities of Authenticity 234
Conclusion: Turning Thoughts into Action through the Politics of Identification 283
Notes 301
References 315
Index 335