When we find ourselves at the intersection of our social, racial and cultural identities, it is at these times that we gaze intently upon who we are as individuals currently, while being aware of what these categories have meant to human groups across time. It is in this way that history is alive in us all. More pointedly, this book attempts to reframe what it could mean to be African-American in today's contemporary American society, by attempting to defeat the cultural trance and story fields that appear to be so pervasive in modern America. "Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both." C.Wright Mills