Clay, Andreana. The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back: Youth, Activism, and Post-Civil Rights Politics (New York: New York University Press, 2012), $23.00, 240 pp. ISBN: 978-0-814-71717-2 (paper).

The young people who Andreana Clay detailed in the important contribution to the study of contemporary social movements and protest politics live and work in Oakland, California, a place its Poet Laureate, Ishmael Reed calls, “an American wonder.” Clay argues that youth of color activists organize in light of the “burden” of the sixties, and “keeping it real” thus becomes an essential part of their activist toolkit. Clay concludes that “By performing the acts of resistance and identifying as activists, the youth challenge the dominant understanding of activism by taking action to change their communities, however they define them”. She further suggests that the insights are critical to scholarly understanding of contemporary activism and social change. The work of social transformation, particularly one that may foment a feminist, socialist, and multicultural democracy as hip-hop-influenced Oakland youth activists intimately understand, would seem to include the work of inventing souls, not just inventing leadership.