Michael Eric Dyson has been named by Ebony as one of the one hundred most influential black Americans and is the author of fourteen other books. He is University Professor at Georgetown University and lives in Washington, D.C.

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.