Exploring the interface between the cultural politics of the Black Power and theBlack Arts movements and the production of postwar African American popular culture, Amy Ongirishows how the reliance of Black politics on an oppositional image of African Americans was theformative moment in the construction of "e;authentic blackness"e; as a cultural identity. While otherbooks have adopted either a literary approach to the language, poetry, and arts of these movementsor a historical analysis of them, Ongiri's captures the cultural and political interconnections ofthe postwar period by using an interdisciplinary methodology drawn from cinema studies and musictheory. She traces the emergence of this Black aesthetic from its origin in the Black Powermovement's emphasis on the creation of visual icons and the Black Arts movement's celebration ofurban vernacular culture.